Week 2
As Christians, placing God first may seem like a no-brainer, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell apart Christians and non-Christians in the dating scene. How are we living out our faith in every aspect of our lives? The popular story of Adam and Eve is a great depiction of the importance of a relationship with God before a relationship with anyone else.
God created man in His image meaning a number of different things, but especially meaning that we were all created for relationships. We are communal beings, as depicted from the beginning of humankind when God said, “It is not good for man to be alone,” (Genesis 2:18). God created men and women with a commandment of increasing in number and filling the earth. Men and women were created for relationships; however, this story speaks to a bigger truth.
As shown in the Bible, the fall of humankind began when Eve valued something over her relationship with God. She was deceived into thinking more value could be placed in the words of the serpent and Adam was deceived that more value could be placed in the words of Eve. A broken relationship with God begot a broken relationship with each other.
God could have created Eve out of anything, but interestingly enough, He created her out of Adam’s side. The significance of this is huge, Eve was created as an equal to Adam. She wasn’t made from Adam’s foot or heal, but instead his side as a partner. However, as a result of her misplaced values, Eve’s relationship with Adam changed from equal to a submissive (Genesis 3:16).
Adam was cursed with incredibly demanding hard labor for the entirety of his life. God speaks in Genesis 3:19 that, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” I don’t know about you, but this is pretty intense. If you think these consequences didn’t have a bad effect on their relationship, let’s think about it just tad bit more.
Working day in and day out for food and shelter is taxing on the body, especially when you’re used to eating your fill of delicious and refreshing fruit at your leisure. Being tired all the time, you don’t think Adam fell asleep on Eve talking about her day? Or getting irritated because dinner wasn’t ready when he got home? Well, how do you think Eve felt when her husband was given rule over her? You don’t think she became upset and tried to assert some authority? I’m sure all these different factors put a strain on their relationship, don’t you think?
The consequences of these misplaced values not only affected their individual lives, but their relationship with each other. In the same way that Adam and Eve reaped consequences in their relationship, we also reap consequences when we value our relationships with each other before our relationship with God. This is why placing God first in ANY relationship is so important. When we misplace our values in life, it affects every aspect, especially those intimate relationships.
In next week’s post, we’ll discuss about what this looks like, focusing on how to apply a God-first mentality in our everyday and intimate relationships.
Until next week,
Ariana
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