Submission – what does it really mean?

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

Ephesians 5:22-24

What should you do when you feel that your husband isn’t treating you right? Maybe you can sense a reoccurring streak of selfishness, or maybe it’s as bad as a complete disregard for how you feel. Worse than that, perhaps you can see that he is making poor choices or ignoring the mandates set forth in God’s Word. How can you make him understand? The short answer: you can’t. You can try to reason with him; respectfully tell him exactly how you feel. Sometimes your honesty will be enough to make him take a second look at things. But in the long run, you can’t force him to believe differently about something or to behave in a certain way.

How then, should you react? Here’s my advice, although many may not agree. The Bible commands wives to submit to their husbands. I know, I know; it also commands husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church. That means that your husband should listen to your opinions and give them a lot of weight in his decision-making, right? Well, the truth is, however your husband decides to interpret that verse, it shouldn’t have any impact on the way you interpret the preceding ones. You see, those verses aren’t set up like “if…then” statements. If the husband loves his wife, then the wife submits to her husband. What if your husband isn’t a Christian at all, and gives no thought to the Bible whatsoever? Does that automatically make you the decision-maker of the household? Because your decisions are the right ones? No. Every wife believes her opinions to be the right ones – all the time. The Bible doesn’t say, “Therefore, whosoever is wrong shall submit to whosoever is right.” God has ordained your husband to make family decisions.

The only time you can disobey your husband is if he asks you to sin against God. You cannot force him to act the way you believe God wants him to. I have found that approaching God’s command this way frees me from worry about the effects of my husband’s decisions. I obey God by obeying my husband; everything that happens in my life as a result is God’s responsibility. You see, God will never punish you for obeying him. In fact, the only way you can find His perfect will is to obey Him to the letter – even if you feel that God’s will is being hindered by others in your life. Believe me; He does have the power to perfectly order your life in spite of other humans.

Your only job is to act the way you believe God wants you to act. As a matter of fact, that is everyone’s job, and the sooner we can believe that as a church, the sooner we can begin to examine our own lives, and stop nit-picking the lives of others – either audibly by nagging them, or in our thoughts. Think about a common church service for example. Maybe the pastor is preaching about finding God’s will for your life. Maybe your husband is sitting next to you, and you just know this sermon is exactly what he needs. You speak to him after the service and discover that he thought the message was, “ok.” What? That was a life-changing message! So why isn’t he bubbling over and brainstorming areas in his life that need changing right away? Sometimes – I would venture to say all of the time – what people really need in their lives is an example of godly living. My advice is to apply every Word from God to your own life, whether you are sitting in church or having a quiet Bible study by yourself. So much time is wasted by thinking, “So-and-so really needs to hear this. I wish she were here,” or “I hope he’s paying good attention. This message is for him.” When in reality, God has you sitting under that message on that day for a reason, and I guarantee that that reason is not so you can sit there and think about who else needs to hear it. Am I making sense? Let me bring it down to one sentence:

It is not the words you speak that will change the world, but the example that you set.

Challenge: apply everything you read today to your own life.

…from the Mouth of Babes

I recently read Kimberly Williams’ new book …from the Mouth of Babes.

When I was a girl, I always figured I’d marry a preacher. It just seemed like the natural course of events for my life. God had other plans for me, but it was extremely interesting to crawl into the mind of a pastor’s wife for a little while. While Mrs. Williams is full of the wisdom one would imagine a pastor’s wife to have, she maintains a humble attitude. Readers will understand quite quickly that the author’s family is her life. Many of her posts involve either her husband or her children, and they are filled to the brim with encouragement for the Christian woman.

From the very first page, I was encouraged by the wisdom that Mrs. Williams had to offer. Because I am a remarried Christian, I was encouraged by her exhortation to “teach … [my] children the consequences of [divorce] and the standards that God has set (pg. 2).” Too many times, we try so hard to hide our mistakes, that our first-hand experiences can’t be of any use to anyone. We must never brag about our sins – past or present. But we can use them to identify with others and to point others in the right direction out of experience.

Mrs. Williams also touched on service, (pg. 7) which is an aspect of the Christian walk that is close to my heart. Years ago, I was searching for God’s will in my life. For some reason, I thought that God needed to tell me in no uncertain terms what to do next. As I was praying, it occurred to me that if I would only seek out a life of service, God’s will would naturally open itself up to me. It’s so nice to make yourself available to minister to the needs of others, instead of constantly searching for a preconceived position that we think is ours to fill. We wrongly wait for God to open up the specific door we are looking for. In the meantime, nothing else gets done, and the needs of others go unmet. The author writes that “God reminded me in His Word that my service to others is service to Him (pg. 7).” She goes on to explain that even the most mundane tasks can be offered as a service to God, such as doing laundry for our families. (As an added benefit, she also gives us a simple recipe for inexpensive laundry detergent.)

I also really appreciated Mrs. Williams’ take on obedient wives. So many of my acquaintances believe that they don’t have to obey their husbands because their husbands are so very wrong. The author makes the valid point that “you will be accountable to the Lord for your obedience, not your husband’s (pg. 9).” If we could only get this idea across to all of the Christian women, I believe that the world would change as a result. Maybe even the non-Christian women would realize the benefit of deferring to their husbands if only they could see it in action once in a while. Since we already know that it is God’s will that we obey our husbands, “without submitting myself to my husband I could never be in the will of God (pg. 10).”

I will tell you that it is refreshing to me to find a Christian who believes in obedience to our government (pg. 17). When it comes to filling out taxes and obeying speed limits, sometimes I feel like I’m all alone.

I have so many good things to say about this book, that I fear my review will run for pages and pages. To keep from scaring people away, I’m going to cut the review a little short. Allow me to just mention a few more of my favorite passages:

On page 19, Mrs. Williams relates a story that caused me to look at prayer in a new light. She says, “It thrills my heart as a parent to be able to bless my children, especially when it is something they have been diligently asking for.”

I like the way that she takes responsibility for training up her children: “My children’s behavior is a direct reflection of my training…When I allow my children to disobey me I am training them to grow up to disobey God (pg. 28).”

I love her comparison of life to a corn maze (pg. 69). Only God can see the whole picture, and when we do finally see it, it will make perfect sense.

I enjoyed her reminder of the original meaning of the word “Christian (pg. 80).”

She addresses television on page 90, 128, & 139. She touches on modern problems such as evolution (pg. 106-107) and feminism (pg. 108-109). She even gives us practical ideas for how to spend your time or give gifts when you are running low on cash (pg. 51 & 151-153)!

One of the ways this book has most helped me is in the area of contentment. It seems like I constantly think that I need to go buy something. I don’t usually just wander around aimlessly looking for something to buy, but when I’m at home, I think of something that I could really use, and then it seems like I have to run out and buy it. It is especially easy for me to rationalize when it comes to something that would make the educational process easier for me or my students. She addresses this problem on page 49, 53, and even though she isn’t specifically talking about covetousness on page 139, her exhortation about not loving things that God hates spoke directly to the covetousness in me.

And then there are the essays that are so close to my heart, it would take me pages and pages to explain how much they mean to me. For instance, the one titled “I’m Dying,” on pages 156 & 157, and the one titled “Giving Thanks” on the following page. Pondering these essays was like having an epiphany. I walked away thinking, “so that’s what God really wants from me.” I still feel like I need to spend an hour or two just considering the implications in my life. In fact, after reading the entire book, I still have several pages dog-eared for re-reading and re-thinking.

Note: I received this book at no charge in exchange for an honest review.

A Godly Example

Anyone dropping by the house an hour ago would have been surprised to find me sitting on the couch, surrounded by books and notes, and crying like a baby. This morning, I just finished a book by Brenda Haugen about the life of Martha Washington. The entire read was convicting for me. This woman was truly a Proverbs 31 woman. When her husband was away, she managed the estate. When his duty called him to serve in the Army, she gave up her comfortable living conditions to stay with him and his men in the camp. When her husband was elected President, she gave up her private life for eight years and served alongside him. When I read the last two paragraphs depicting Mrs. Washington’s death and legacy, I couldn’t help but feel as though I had lost a close personal friend.  I couldn’t tell from reading the book whether it was written from a Christian perspective, but I could certainly tell that the heroine of the story was a Christian. I look forward to meeting her one day, and getting to know her better. In the meantime, I am going to double my efforts in supporting my husband in all of his endeavors and activities.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from the book, from a letter written by Martha Washington:

“I cannot blame him for having acted according to his ideas of duty in obeying the voice of his country. I am still determined to be cheerful and to be happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.”

Submission – what does it really mean?

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

Ephesians 5:22-24

What should you do when you feel that your husband isn’t treating you right? Maybe you can sense a reoccurring streak of selfishness, or maybe it’s as bad as a complete disregard for how you feel. Worse than that, perhaps you can see that he is making poor choices or ignoring the mandates set forth in God’s Word. How can you make him understand? The short answer: you can’t. You can try to reason with him; respectfully tell him exactly how you feel. Sometimes your honesty will be enough to make him take a second look at things. But in the long run, you can’t force him to believe differently about something or to behave in a certain way.

How then, should you react? Here’s my advice, although many may not agree. The Bible commands wives to submit to their husbands. I know, I know; it also commands husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church. That means that your husband should listen to your opinions and give them a lot of weight in his decision-making, right? Well, the truth is, however your husband decides to interpret that verse, it shouldn’t have any impact on the way you interpret the preceding ones. You see, those verses aren’t set up like “if…then” statements. If the husband loves his wife, then the wife submits to her husband. What if your husband isn’t a Christian at all, and gives no thought to the Bible whatsoever? Does that automatically make you the decision-maker of the household? Because your decisions are the right ones? No. Every wife believes her opinions to be the right ones – all the time. The Bible doesn’t say, “Therefore, whosoever is wrong shall submit to whosoever is right.” God has ordained your husband to make family decisions.

The only time you can disobey your husband is if he asks you to sin against God. You cannot force him to act the way you believe God wants him to. I have found that approaching God’s command this way frees me from worry about the effects of my husband’s decisions. I obey God by obeying my husband; everything that happens in my life as a result is God’s responsibility. You see, God will never punish you for obeying him. In fact, the only way you can find His perfect will is to obey Him to the letter – even if you feel that God’s will is being hindered by others in your life. Believe me; He does have the power to perfectly order your life in spite of other humans.

Your only job is to act the way you believe God wants you to act. As a matter of fact, that is everyone’s job, and the sooner we can believe that as a church, the sooner we can begin to examine our own lives, and stop nit-picking the lives of others – either audibly by nagging them, or in our thoughts. Think about a common church service for example. Maybe the pastor is preaching about finding God’s will for your life. Maybe your husband is sitting next to you, and you just know this sermon is exactly what he needs. You speak to him after the service and discover that he thought the message was, “ok.” What? That was a life-changing message! So why isn’t he bubbling over and brainstorming areas in his life that need changing right away? Sometimes – I would venture to say all of the time – what people really need in their lives is an example of godly living. My advice is to apply every Word from God to your own life, whether you are sitting in church or having a quiet Bible study by yourself. So much time is wasted by thinking, “So-and-so really needs to hear this. I wish she were here,” or “I hope he’s paying good attention. This message is for him.” When in reality, God has you sitting under that message on that day for a reason, and I guarantee that that reason is not so you can sit there and think about who else needs to hear it. Am I making sense? Let me bring it down to one sentence:

It is not the words you speak that will change the world, but the example that you set.

Challenge: apply everything you read today to your own life.