I hope you have completed your list of things that cause you to struggle. We all have difficulties, and my hope is that we can learn how to cope with those things that cause us problems by looking at examples from scripture.

The first thing I want us to examine is that of temptations. I suspect that is something on everyone’s list. We are tempted every day. Sometimes we resist, and sometimes we give in.

The first woman of the Bible gives us our first example of women who struggle. She struggled with seeing that which appealed to her eyes, knowing that it was forbidden, believing a lie, and finally giving in to her desires. She gave in to temptation.

God gave Adam instructions about the food He provided for His human creation. God said, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17).

The direction God gave to man was clear. There was no question as to what God expected. According to Genesis 3:2-3, the woman also knew what God’s instruction was concerning the eating of the fruit of the tree that was in the middle of the garden.

When the serpent (the devil) went to visit Eve, he offered her the kind of temptation difficult for a woman to resist, a chance for knowledge of something special. He appealed to her pride (verse 5). He challenged the authority of God. He told her, “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). He lied to her. Then he discredited God with, “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (verse 5).

We learn from Genesis 3 that she not only ate of the fruit, but she gave it to Adam; and he ate the fruit as well. He willingly, knowingly took the fruit and ate it. The apostle Paul told Timothy in I Timothy 2:14, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” Adam knew what he was doing.

Eve had to live knowing that she had changed the direction of her life through her disobedience to God. Not only did she change her life, but she brought sin into the world. Nothing could ever be the same.

What could Eve have done? She could have sent the serpent away. She could have believed God instead of being so eager to believe a lie. She could have…but she didn’t.

When temptation comes to us, it will come in one of three ways—lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, and pride of life. The devil knows that he can get us with one or all of these. He even tried this on Jesus in Matthew 4.

What often surprises us is that there are consequences for sin, and one of the greatest consequences is that of memory. When we sin, we will carry the memory of that sin with us for the rest of our lives.

Think of the memories Eve would have had of that day. The words of God would have been in her mind all of her life. She received her punishment first. “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16).

Next, God spoke to Adam. “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:17-19).

Eve had to live with the knowledge that she had changed the direction of her life through her disobedience to God. She had been responsible for Adam being tempted to do wrong, and she had brought death into the world.

So how do we avoid temptation? When we do sin, what do we need to do?

• First, we need to study God’s Word to learn what is right and what is wrong. II Timothy 2:15 tells us to “rightly divide the word of truth.” Our first responsibility is to know what God wants us to do. We cannot avoid what we don’t know to avoid.
• Second, we need to do what God’s Word tells us to do. Peter and the other apostles told their tempters in Acts 5:29, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”
• Third, we need to weigh the consequences. Paul says in II Thessalonians 1:8 that God will take vengeance on “them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
• Fourth, if we are not in the family of God, we need to be obedient to His commands. Read the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8. Everything you need to know about becoming a Christian can be found in that chapter.
• Fifth, if we are Christians, we should pray for God’s forgiveness. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9)
• Sixth, we need to live like Paul told Titus. “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world, Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (II Titus 2:12-13).

Eve went on to have children and live out her life with Adam outside the Garden of Eden. One of her sons killed the other, and that happened because she brought sin into the world.

May God help us to see Eve as an example of someone we do not want to emulate, but an example of how temptations can come into our lives in the most unexpected ways.

Lastly, may we remember, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (I Corinthians 10:13).

Sandra Oliver

(Next week we will study The Struggle of Being Childless, the story of Hannah in I Samuel 1).