Sarah Jakes Roberts uses example of Eve to help women 'revolutionize' their life
While traveling the country sharing her story of how, with God's help, she's moved past tremendous struggles and adversities to find her God-given calling, bestselling author Sarah Jakes Roberts started noticing a trend.
“The more that I began sharing my story, I realized that there were so many women who had found themselves in these moments where it felt like, ‘I'm either going to be lost or I'm going to evolve, but I don't know how to do it. How can I trust that God can still be good, even if things didn't turn out the way that I intended?'” Roberts, wife of Touré Roberts and daughter of Potter’s House founder Bishop T.D. Jakes, told The Christian Post.
“Armed with compassion that I‘ve gathered from looking at the scars and wounds of other women, I started really studying the women of the Bible closely to see what I could learn from them,” she said.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
As she delved into the lives of the female figures in the Old and New Testaments, Jakes found herself drawn to a surprising figure: Eve. The first woman God ever created, Eve is best-known for eating a piece of forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden despite God’s clear instructions not to, resulting in the fall of all mankind.
“If you’re like me, you grew up in church saying stuff like, 'When I get to Heaven, I'm going to talk to Eve because she just ruined it for us all,” Roberts said. “And yet, while I’m studying, I had this encounter with God where I realized that Eve knew better and didn't do better. Instantly, in that moment, I realized I, too, had all of these moments in my life where I knew better but didn't do better.”
But even in the middle of Eve’s disobedience, God “gives a promise about what that moment will be when time plays out,” Roberts said.
“As believers, we know that this moment in the Bible is ultimately a foreshadowing of Jesus. That moment — which was probably so devastating for Eve — was the beginning of what would be redemption for us all," Roberts explained. "That encounter changed my life as it relates to womanhood and reconnecting with God.”
Inspired to help other women learn how to use their life experiences, both the good and the bad, to allow them to grow into who God created them to be, Roberts penned her latest book, Woman Evolve: Break Up with Your Fears and Revolutionize Your Life.
“I think that we've all found ourselves in a moment where we have to answer the question: Can I evolve? Can I change? Can I grow? And the answer is yes, but you can’t always do it on your own,” the mother-of-six shared. “My prayer is that this book will be a guide that leads women to the revolution of their soul and then ultimately into the world that exists around them.”
In her book, Roberts shares stories from her own life and draws on the biblical example of Eve to remind women of their God-given worth and encourage them to remember — “you don’t have to live your future defined by your past.”
A well-known ministry leader in her own right, Roberts understands firsthand what it means to struggle with fears, setbacks and failures.
“I was a teen mom, I've gone through a divorce, I dropped out of college,” she shared. “These are all things I don't think were God's initial desire for my life. But, in my desire to restore those lives in my life and in my own strength, I thought I just needed to forget that they happened.”
“But the truth is,” she continued, “when we separate ourselves in that way, we miss out on the lessons that keep us from repeating those past behaviors. So what we were is so important for where we are now, because it teaches us how to show up in life better.”
In her book, Roberts also focuses on the importance of “soul-care,” a practice she said is essential to finding one’s highest potential — particularly in today’s fast-paced culture.
“What I have discovered is, a lot of times, what we're calling ‘self-care' is really an opportunity to connect with our soul without distraction,” she said. “I need to take a moment to say, ‘Soul, how are you doing? What do you need?’ From that place of soul-care, we can determine what boundaries and adjustments we need to make in our lives. Maybe I’m exhausted and I signed up for too many things. Instead of functioning on autopilot, soul-care is a way of saying, ‘What can I actually do with this day, with this body, with this energy I've been given so that God can still shine through me?”
In Woman Evolve, Roberts said her ultimate goal is to help women understand that their purpose in life does not change. Rather, it simply evolves.
“My prayer is that this book will be a mirror for women, that they will see so many parts of themselves in it, but also to have a radical encounter with that as they turn each page,” she said.
Woman Evolveis available now.
