I love the colored pencil drawing “Mary Consoles Eve” by Sr. Grace Remington. It beautifully depicts the hope and redemption of the Christmas story in an exchange between Eve and Mary. Eve is clutching the forbidden fruit with her head bowed low in shame. Her hair covers her naked body while the serpent is intertwined around her legs. Mary attempts to look in her eyes, but Eve’s gaze is fixed on the hidden fruit in Mary’s womb. Mary has gently placed Eve’s hand on her belly, but Eve can’t fully grasp what is growing on the inside. Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, would later exclaim…

“blessed is the fruit of your womb” (Luke 2:42).

The fruit, of course, is Jesus Christ. His victory over death is the reason why Mary’s left foot is crushing the head of the snake. The drawing symbolizes a passage of scripture found in Genesis 3:15, in which God spoke directly after the fall of man. As God pronounced judgment over Satan, He declared…

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

Jesus is the offspring that would deliver Satan’s crushing blow to the head by allowing death only to bruise him temporarily. Jesus Himself said He came to destroy the works of the devil.

In the picture, Mary appears to be holding a secret that eludes Eve. She is pregnant with hope for Eve, and all who would come after her.

But, it would be 76 generations before the Messiah was born.

As the centuries unfolded, God offered greater insight about the Messiah through the prophets, yet generations came and went without a Savior. As the Old Testament came to a close around 400 BC, it seemed as though God had gone completely silent.

Nothing was recorded in scripture until the birth of Jesus, but a lot was going on in the world.

During the 300s BC, Alexander the Great and the Greek Empire conquered the entire ancient world. In doing so, they made everyone speak the same language, Greek. As Greece declined, Rome rose to power with their incredible transportation system and ancient highways.

By the time Jesus was born, the world spoke the same language and was united in travel by the Roman Roads. After Jesus’s death and resurrection, when His followers wanted to spread the Gospel to all nations, they had the language and transportation to do so.

By God’s design, all the pieces came together, and the prophecies aligned at the proper time.

Jesus was conceived in a specific way, with a specific heritage, so that he could be born in a specific place, die in a specific way, and the Gospel could be spread quickly all over the known world.

The story of Christmas is a reminder that God always has a plan, and He is faithful to watch over His word to perform it.

He never rushes the process but instead divinely arranges the puzzle pieces so that when everything aligns just right, the fullness of His promise can be revealed. As we reflect on Christmas, we are reminded that hope requires waiting and that God’s will happens in God’s timing. We have a reason to hope because we can trust the One in whom we have placed our hope.

When someone makes false accusations, the urge to retaliate can be strong. However, seeking revenge only gives the accuser more ammunition to justify their wrongful actions. In cases of abuse, the victim often remains quiet while the perpetrator speaks out.

When Jesus was on trial for His life, we see this dynamic play out dramatically. Jesus was the epitome of innocence but chose not to defend Himself. His life’s testimony contradicted the accusations, so He trusted God to be His vindicator.

If you are caught in a conflict and uncertain which side to trust, listen carefully to the words being spoken. If you hear half-truths and bitter accusations, then you are hearing the sounds of Satan. Those who have been victimized do not need to justify themselves because they are already on the side of truth.

Perpetrators:
1. Share false testimonies that others do not validate (Mt 27:11-26, Lk 23)
2. Look for reasons to condemn (Lk 26:59-60)
3. Crucify their victims in public (Mt 26:67-68, 27:27-50)
4. Hurl accusations (Mt 24:40-44, Lk 23:11)

Even on His most difficult day, Jesus showed us how to handle mistreatment gracefully and trust God to be the ultimate judge.

Jesus as the victim:
1. Remained silent in the face of accusation (Mt 26:62-63, 27:12, Lk 23:9)
2. Shared the simple truth when asked (Mt 26:64, 27:11-14, Lk 22:67-70, 23:3)
3. Forgave accusers (Lk 23:34)
4. Resisted the temptation to prove Himself and left justice to God (Lk 23:23)

If you find yourself in a conflict that is not your own, take note of the heart and tone behind what is being said. If someone’s testimony does not match your personal experience or seems motivated by malice, it is probably best to distance yourself. And if you feel like you are being targeted, remember to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and trust God to be your defender. Jesus not only taught us to turn the other cheek, give away our cloak, and go the extra mile, but He practiced what He preached. When we follow His lead, we overcome evil with good.

We share food and drink with people we care about so we can deepen relationships, mark special occasions, and begin new friendships. There is an intimacy about sitting across the table from someone to share a meal and enjoy meaningful conversation. This was especially true of first-century Jews, whose culture centered around faith and community. 

So, when it was time for Passover, it was no surprise that Jesus called together his closest friends to share an important meal. As it began, there was no way they could have known the degree to which their relationships would be tested in the coming hours. But if we read again what was said and unsaid, we can measure their relational strength and have a window of what is to come.  

As Passover began, Jesus knew something his friends did not – this would be their Last Supper. One of them would betray him, another deny him, and all but one desert him. Knowing, he must have been keenly aware of every word, glance, and deed, especially of his betrayer.  As he began to speak, there must have been an unmistakable sorrow in the air. Did they feel the heaviness of the moment?  Did they hear the weight of his words or sense the relational tension? Did they notice the quiver in his voice or see the sadness in his eyes?  

If so, it was an invitation to draw near. 

When Judas entered the room, I imagine he sat down at a distance hoping to avoid eye contact with Jesus. That distance would have reflected the detachment that had already taken place in his heart. And so, when Jesus got up from the table to wash the disciples’ feet, I would imagine Judas was extremely uncomfortable. 

Despite the distance, Jesus made a deliberate decision to draw near. 

And not only to draw near, but to touch Judas – to wash his feet, look him in the eyes, and serve him. Shortly, Judas would be the first to leave and distance himself completely. 

When it was Peter’s turn for a foot washing, he refused to be served – until he was rebuked by Jesus. Betrayal was not in his heart but pride was, and it had repeatedly caused a rift in their relationship. Perhaps this tension is why Peter did not feel safe enough to ask Jesus an important question after the cleansing. Instead, he motioned to John who had leaned back against Jesus. 

Their proximity was a reflection of their intimate relationship. 

John felt safe enough to lean in and secure enough to ask a difficult question. John would later describe himself as “the one whom Jesus loved.” John had internalized Jesus’s love, which gave him the emotional security to draw near in a way the others could not.    

Within hours, Jesus would stand trial and so would the strength of their relationships. In the wake of His arrest: 

Judas betrayed Jesus and hanged himself…
Peter denied him and ran away…
And John stayed near the foot of the cross.  

The tribulation had either served to widen existing cracks or demonstrate the durability of their bonds.

If you pay close attention, there are many ways to determine the strength of your own relationships.  Both words and silence communicate a message, as well as actions and inactions. If you tune into what people are saying and not saying, you can measure the distance between two hearts.  

Jesus once said, “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.”  When people speak, their words reflect their innermost thoughts and desires. Their tone is part of their message, as well as the pacing of their voice. If they are talking excessively, they may be anxious. If they are passive, they may be disinterested. When people are unresponsive, they may feel unsafe in the relationship. 

People share when they feel emotionally secure.  

If you want to foster intimacy, notice the emotion behind what you hear and put words to it. “It sounds like you feel… because… Is this correct?”  Communicating on an emotional level cultivates connection and invites the other person to draw near.  Generally, people do not want your advice as much as they want to be heard and understood. When people feel safe, they open up. If they sense judgment, they shut down. If you want to close the relational gap, tune into what others feel and reflect back what you hear. 

Your empathy is an invitation to intimacy.   

It is equally as important to hear what people are not saying. When people are attentive and looking you in the eyes, they are interested in your words. Eye contact also demonstrates respect for you and your message. On the other hand, when people have a hard time maintaining eye contact, they may be communicating indifference to what is being said or experiencing shame. If eyes are the window to the soul, then shame is what makes us look away.  

You can also listen with your eyes by noticing body language. When someone makes eye contact and has an open stance, they are interested in your words. If they get shifty and have one eye on the door, they may feel trapped in the conversation. Pay attention to seemingly little things like crossed arms, facial expressions, and body posture. When people stand up or look away, they are communicating a vastly different message than when they sit down or lean in. 

Lastly, if you want to measure the strength of a relationship, ask yourself if the relationship is reciprocal?  Is one person always the initiator? Is there distance? Their level of engagement is communicating a message. If the relationship is important to you, take a risk to draw near.  

Share a meal, sit across the table from one another, and have a meaningful conversation.

In Ecclesiastes, some translations call the narrator the Teacher or Preacher.
He calls himself the son of David… but interestingly he also designates himself Qoheleth.
It’s a Hebrew term that loosely translates to someone who gathers or calls people to assembly with the implication that it’s to speak or teach. 

Think of him as the preacher at your church calling to those who want to learn. 

In our Life Groups, we’re taking a twelve-week journey with this teacher/preacher who calls himself Qoheleth and allowing him to unsettle us.

Somewhere between the end of chapter two and the start of chapter three, the teacher sets down his cattle prod and takes up his pipe and rocking chair, doling out wisdom for the ages. 

There is a time and a season for everything under heaven, he says in a beautiful poem that spans the first eight verses of the third chapter: 

There’s a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to uproot;
a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to break down and a time to build up;
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones and a time to gather them;
a time to embrace and time to be far from embracing;
a time to seek and time to lose;
a time to keep and time to cast away;
a time to tear and a time to mend;
a time to be silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.

We often don’t do so well with such contradictions. We like either/or logic, not both/and. We like things to be clear-cut and simple. We avoid complexity and complications.

But in doing all that we become fools. 

Just before finishing his introductory remarks at the end of chapter two Qoheleth called us to live simply. Now, in the opening of chapter three he begins to unpack a critical dimension of that calling: be on good terms with reality.

Reality is full of what we might (in our foolishness) call contradictions:
Love AND hate; mourning AND dancing; embracing AND excluding; tearing AND mending; speaking AND not speaking… 

The poem of 3:1-8, chock full of such “contradiction” shows the not-so-faint of heart (and, consequently, those who will become wise) that life is not only full of opposites and contradictions but also, in the midst of it all, God has made it all beautiful in its time (3:11).

There are many ways to define wisdom, but one of my favorites is the ability to hold contradiction in your hands, take it with you on your journey, and allow time, experience, and most of all, God, to teach you something about the limits of your own understanding. That’s what we’re doing in our Life Groups as we journey through Ecclesiastes.

Check out our free resource “Keys to Making the Most of Every Season” to learn more!

Have you ever noticed that the storms of life arise suddenly?
Suddenly the phone rings.
Suddenly you get a bad report.
Suddenly everything changes.

There’s a story in the Bible about Jesus, His disciples, and a storm.

Jesus says, “Let’s go to the other side of the lake.”
But suddenly a furious storm comes up.
Suddenly waves crash over the boat.
And suddenly they are nearly capsized.

What’s curious about this story is Jesus is the one who led them directly into the storm.
After all, it was His idea to go to the other side.

So why did Jesus lead His disciples directly into a storm?

Because during storms our faith is tested.
During storms our true character is revealed.
During storms we are reminded of our reliance on Him.

Jesus calmed the storm and they made it to the other side. Interestingly, the storm is likely what blew them safely to shore. That’s because God uses the storms of life to get us where we need to be. A storm can make a marriage stronger, a business better, or even blow us from a barren place into something brand new.

To get to the other side, we must keep the faith and trust the One who called us into the boat in the first place.

God created every one of us to have deep, meaningful connections with other people.
We need people with whom we can talk, laugh, and express emotions openly.

People who can celebrate with us in the good times and those we can lean on when life gets hard.

If the right people aren’t meeting our relational and emotional needs, we might turn to the wrong people instead.

This is why it is vital that we know how to identify safe people we can count on to meet our emotional needs versus unsafe people who leave us in a deficit instead.

The book of Proverbs describes these two types of people as “wise” and “foolish.” A wise person operates under God’s reign of love, putting Christ and others before themselves. On the other hand, a person who acts foolishly is often driven by their impulsive desires, seeking only personal gain.

Check out our free resource on how to identify the difference between safe (wise) people and unsafe (foolish) people:

Did you know you are one person but with three separate parts: body, soul, and spirit? 

Your physical body is where you interact with the natural world around you through your five senses.
In your spirit, you communicate with the spiritual world of God.
In the realm of the soul, you bring together these two parts of God’s creation – natural and spiritual – to become a living personality. The soul encompasses your mind, emotions, and the power of free choice. 

It is also where a battleground lies. 

When you accept Christ as Savior, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in your spirit, which is the deepest part of you. God’s desire is for the Holy Spirit in you to be released to the world around you. But He must use your soul and body to do so, which requires your agreement and surrender. His desire is that the Spirit would shine through your words and actions, revealing His life and purpose to a desperate world.

However, Satan works from the outside – in. 

His desire is for you to give way to the lusts of the flesh and create strongholds in your soul that block the life and flow of the Holy Spirit within. His strategy is to target your power of free choice with the weapon of deception. 

Satan’s aim is for you to agree with his lies rather than God’s voice. 

Therefore crippling you from experiencing true freedom and hindering your ability to affect your environment for God’s glory.

Every day, you have the power to choose who you want to influence your soul, and often these choices show up in the “little things.” 

It’s that decision to stop and pray when your mind gets locked in a toxic thought pattern.
Or to deny the flesh when the temptation to give in to that bad habit (doom scrolling, anyone?) arises.
Maybe it’s choosing not to deliver that clever, but harmful comeback or to show kindness to someone who frustrates you instead of giving them the cold shoulder. 

Whatever decisions you face, remember these are the ways you give ground to either the Life-Giver or the Life-Stealer. 

And the more you give into one, the easier it gets to make that choice every time.

Have you ever felt confused about who was speaking to you, God or the devil?

It’s one of the most frequently asked questions by believers. Why? Because Satan doesn’t speak to us in some ominous voice that sends shivers down our spine – he imitates the voice of God.

Satan knows that, as Christians, we are seeking God’s guidance. We desire to hear from Him, so Satan uses that to his advantage by dropping ideas around us that sound like something God might say, based on our understanding of who God is.

For example, if you view God as a harsh judge who is just waiting for you to mess up, Satan might send condemning thoughts your way and heap shame upon you the moment you make a mistake. Then, you might think that is the Holy Spirit and feel so ashamed that you distance yourself from God.

We can avoid falling into this trap by getting to know God’s character and discerning the intentions behind whatever is being said.

If it’s coming from God, the intention will always be to draw you closer to Him; both relationally and in your character, but in a loving and gentle way. Satan, however, wants to make you too ashamed to talk to God, too busy to spend time with Him, too discouraged to step out in faith, and too frantic to experience God’s peace.

Next time you’re wondering who it is, ask yourself: Is this a voice that is drawing me closer to Christ? Or is it a voice that is making me want to run away?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could audibly hear the voice of God? It would make discerning His voice so much easier. 

All the questions of, “is this me, God, or the devil saying this?” would quickly be resolved. But God doesn’t speak to our physical ears, He speaks to our spiritual ears, which means we must learn to distinguish His voice from the other voices spinning around between our ears.

In John 10:3, Jesus says, “The gatekeeper opens the gate for him [the shepherd], and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” 

Jesus gives us two clues about how to tell when it’s Him speaking. First, he says His sheep will recognize His voice, and second that He calls them by name. The first is straightforward. If we take time getting to know Jesus, we will become familiar with His voice and know it when we hear it.

The second clue takes a bit more mining.

Whenever the Bible mentions “name” it isn’t just referring to the word someone is called by, it’s also referring to that person’s true identity–who they are at the core of their being. This is why when we pray “in Jesus’ Name” it’s not just about saying that – it’s about praying in alignment with who Jesus is. 

So, when God speaks to us, He will speak to our true identity in Christ. Even when we’ve made a mistake, God isn’t going to name-call or devalue us for it. He will lovingly correct us, but always reaffirm our value in Christ and set us right again. 

So, if the voice you’re hearing attacks who you are, know that it isn’t God and remove any of the false identities that voice tries to place on you.

When something is truly conceived of God – a relationship, a calling, a business, a ministry – the enemy opposes it fiercely while it is still in its infancy. He understands that it’s much easier to defeat a newborn than a fully mature man.

We see this in the life of Moses and again with Jesus. The Opposer sought to kill them both before their ministries even began. He did the same thing with the early church in the book of Acts. Satan’s tactic is to kill a thing before it even begins.

Satan uses this same tactic to oppose our careers, callings, relationships, and spiritual growth. The enemy attacks the hardest when his opponents are most vulnerable, in infancy.

Once a work is thoroughly established, its roots are able to run deeper and withstand any storm that comes its way.

We know that “God watches over his word to perform it” (Jer 1:12), and Satan watches over God’s word to oppose it. If the enemy opposes a new thing in your life – something truly authored by God – take it as a sign. Satan is opposing what lies in front of you and the power that stands behind you.

Satan always overplays his hand and God always has His way.

Every moment of opposition will only serve to make you stronger and more equipped for the journey. Cooperate with God during the season of opposition to allow the Holy Spirit to refine your character. And be encouraged! The struggle will serve to make you stronger.