In order for God to extend my influence in many arenas He needs me to be wholly and humbly submitted to Him. One of the clearest evidences of my submission is seen in my heart and life response to “wives submit to your husbands, as to the Lord” (from Colossians 3). God has given my husband greater physical strength, different biology, and different brain wiring. God has also designated him to be the ’deciding vote’ in matters where we disagree. Most people are familiar with a CEO or President in a company carrying more voting power AND more RESPONSIBILITY.
As I submit to my husband, I am not a doormat. I can present my case. I can have a viewpoint that differs from my husband’s. I know he values and seeks out my opinions. But when we disagree (which is often) I can humbly submit, without any bitterness, resentment, nagging or manipulation, knowing that I am actually surrendering my desires in this issue to God.
Ultimately God can turn my husband’s heart. God may also be protecting me from something I am currently unaware of.
It’s not easy and I don’t always get it right (ask my children – or my husband). As I seek to wholly surrender myself to Jesus, because of how He surrendered EVERYTHING for me, my faith in His ability to guide my life grows.
Surrender is a part of the journey, how have you learned submission and surrender?
Well…. one day during the first year of our marriage my husband angrily yelled at me that the Bible commands the wife to submit to her husband. I replied, “Yes, and the Bible also says that a husband is supposed to love his wife enough to die for her, as Christ loved and died for his bride, the church. So, Mister… if you aren’t dying, I am not submitting.”
That was pretty much the end of the discussion. 😉
Submission is complicated!
Actually, I’m really glad you commented on this post because I needed a reminder!
I’ve learned a lot over 34 years of marriage – by the grace of God. Every relationship is unique and God’s puts us together to help us each be more of what He created us to be. Submitting, which means for me to sometimes NOT say something, sometimes to ask before I act, and sometimes go along, even if I might not be wildly excited – all these ways of submitting actually work for good for ME & him. I’ve found it leads to more open discussions, more understanding and more of a realization of how much my husband DOES love and sacrifice for me! I found Shaunti Feldhahn’s book For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men extremely insightful.
I agree, the subject of submission in marriage is complicated. Although, in an ideal world — that is, a world without sin — submitting to a loving, sacrificial, Christ-like husband would be simple, easy, and even joyful.
However, the sad reality in this fallen world is that the subjugation of women to their husbands has been horribly twisted and perverted into something ugly and abusive, similar to the way that evil has twisted and perverted the glorious gift of sexuality. Now, I am not saying that I believe all submission is bad, no more than I believe that all sex is bad — far from it. I am simply stating what I have learned the hard way: that submission in marriage, like sexuality in marriage, needs to be handled with a great deal of reverence, prayer, and above all, with Christ-like LOVE.
After the first few rocky months of our marriage, my husband and I have worked out an equal partnership that works very well for both of us. When we have an important decision to make, we talk it over, weigh the pros and cons, and pray together about it. When we do these things in an attitude of mutual respect and love, we almost always come to exactly the same decision. Probably 99% of the time our decision is the same. On the very rare occasion when we don’t come to the same decision, my husband, like the CEO of a company as you said in this post, has the final say. But this happens so rarely, I can’t even remember the last time my husband made a decision that my heart and mind did not wholeheartedly agree with.
When two have truly become one in the Spirit, and are being led by the same Spirit of Love and truth and righteousness, there really is no need for one individual to lord it over the other one.
However, more than forty years ago, when I was a teenage girl married to my first husband, who cheated on me with many other people, with men as well as women (he was bi), and who physically hit, punched, kicked, and beat me anywhere from 50 to 100 times during our marriage — I am estimating the number of beatings based on the length of that marriage and his average cycle of abuse — that “husband,” who beat me so badly one time that I miscarried, and nearly killed me another time when he shoved me out of a moving car — after one of his earliest beatings, which happened on my 17th birthday, that “man” threw the Bible on top of me and told me to read it and learn how a wife is supposed to obey her husband.
God is love. Love is kind. Abuse is never of God, and I will not submit to abuse ever again. Not to physical abuse, not mental abuse, not verbal abuse, not to any shape or form of abuse. And this is why I told my current husband, when he thought he could settle a minor disagreement with me by YELLING at me that a wife is supposed to SUBMIT, that unless he was “dying” the way Christ laid down His life for His bride the church, the way the Bible commands all husbands to do, that I am not submitting. Period, end of discussion.
I willingly and joyfully submit to love, I willingly and joyfully submit to goodness and kindness. But never again will I submit to evil.