Leadership & Subjection

My husband, Ricardo, has been leading a class on Wednesday morning on Marriage Enrichment.  We are watching a video of a seminar given several years ago and then discussing what was taught in the video. We’ve been married 40 years (this month), so what could this class possibly teach us?  Plenty! Married couples get into a rut, get busy with other things/people, or get lazy and our marriages suffer for it. We all need a refresher course once in a while to get us back on tract.

The 5^th chapter of Ephesian should always be front and center in any marriage:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. – Eph. 5:22-24

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself…each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. – Eph. 5:25, 28b, 33

One area where we may need a refresher is in our roles of leadership and subjection. These are not easy things to discuss in this day and age where the lines have become so blurred between the two that no one truly understands the distinction between them and, how they support, balance, and protect each other.

Learning and living our roles

Godly subjection and loving leadership demand that both the husband and the wife learn what their roles are in the marriage and how they are to go about living those roles.  This takes studying God’s Word to appreciate what our roles are and aren’t. First and foremost, we need to recognize that fulfilling these roles require sacrifice on the part of both husband and wife.  Selfishness has no place in a marriage. 

The Husband Proves Himself Loving

“Husbands, love your wives, and do not be embittered against them.”  - Col. 3:9

This verse doesn’t say, “Wives, see to it that your husband loves you and aren’t embittered against you.” Instead, it says, “Husbands, love your wives.” Likewise, God directs every other verse that deals with a husband loving his wife toward the husband, not the wife. (Eph. 5:23-33). God places the responsibility for a husband loving his wife upon the husband’s shoulders. A wife cannot make her husband love her.

In loving his wife, a man acts in her best interest. He guides, guards, listens to her needs and provides for her. He does this unselfishly without thought as to what’s in it for him. Even if his wife takes him for granted, God still expects the husband to continue sacrificing himself for her and acting in her best interest.

The Wife Proves Herself Submissive

 “In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they behold you chaste and respectful behavior”  - I Pet. 3:1- 2

Many husbands falsely assume that they are to force their wives to be submissive, Yet the verse doesn’t say “Husbands, place your wives in subjection,” but “Wives, be subject to your own husband, In all the commands concerning subjection, God tells the wife to submit herself (Eph. 5:22; Tit. 2:4-5; Col. 3:18; I Pet. 3:6; and Gen. 3:16) Subjection being a freewill act on the wife’s part is probably the most misunderstood facet of subjection.

           

God gives the command to be submissive to the wife, just as the church is submissive to Christ, and He holds her, not the man, responsible for obeying it.  God nowhere gives men the authority to force subjection upon their wives, but consistently commands women to place themselves in a sphere of obedience. A woman is to submit to her husband because she fears God, not because she fears her husband.

In properly submitting to her husband, a wife acts in his best interest. She acknowledges his leadership (I Peter 3:6), encourages him to lead and looks to him for guidance, protection and sustenance while providing for his needs.

Requires Sacrifices

The husband gives himself up just as Christ gave Himself up for the church. (Eph. 5:25). Christ gave the supreme example for a loving husband by dying for His bride (the church). In this same manner, God expects a husband to deny himself to the point of giving up his life to preserve the life of his wife.

By fully submitting to her husband as God wills (I Peter 3:1-2), a wife may have to give up a career, her “rights”, independent nature, etc. She allows her husband to fulfill his role of leadership, respects his decisions, even when she may not agree with them, and follows his lead. She doesn’t take it upon herself to do the leading, even if she thinks he’s not doing his job.

Both husband and wife must make sacrifices for the marriage to work. This is not a 50/50 deal, it’s a 100/100 deal. All your effort needs to be directed towards making the marriage work. You can’t give yourself 50% to a marriage and expect it to last. It demands a full time, “all in it for the long run” effort. When both subjection and leadership is properly practiced, personal happiness and a successful marriage result. 

How Do You Want to Be Remembered?

When my father died in 2005, we held a Memorial Service for him at the Maverick Boys & Girls Club in Amarillo, Texas. This was attended by many men and women who my dad had coached or mentored over the years he was affiliated with the Club.  A couple of the men told how dad impacted their life and the influence he had on them had helped them to make better choices in later years.  Last year, this same club, honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award and once again men came up to us and told us how dad had impacted their life. He’s still being remembered by others, even though he’s been gone for 10 years.

In a way the Bible is a book of remembrances. It contains numerous stories of people and the way they lived their lives. Some are remembered for the good they did and some for the bad.  In Acts 9 we read the story of Tabitha. 

“At Joppa there was a certain disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and charitable deeds which she did.” (v.36) ...And all the widows stood by him weeping, showing the tunics and garments which Dorcas had made while she was with them (v.39).

By recording the miracle that Peter performed of bringing her back to life, Luke left a remembrance of Tabitha for all time. She will always be remembered for the good deeds she performed.

In Matt. 26: 6-13, the story is recorded of the woman who poured oil on Jesus’ head. Jesus said of her:

“Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her." (v.13).

No matter what else the woman did in her life, the one thing she will always be remembered for would be this act of kindness.
           

In I Kings we have the story of Jezebel, maybe the most notoriously evil woman of all time. There is nothing good recorded about her. Her defiance of the Lord led Elijah to prophesy that dogs would devour her body (I Kings 21:23). Even today her name carries an evil connotation. Who would name their child Jezebel?

           

The story of Potiphar’s wife’s seduction of Joseph is told in Genesis 39. No matter what else she did in her life, this is the one thing she is remembered for throughout the ages. This one act gives us an insight into her manner of life.

           

Now, imagine that you have died, and your family is talking about you. They’re telling someone who’s never met you what kind of life you’ve lived, what kind of person you were, the mark they think you’ve left on this world. What will they say? Will the things they’ll think were most important to you be what you think were most important? What they tell of your values and primary commitments be something you’d feel good about? Will the way they’ll remember you be the way you want to be remembered? Just what are your family and friends going to say about you?

Back in 1888, Alfred Nobel had the unusual experience of being able to at least partially find out while he was still alive. You know that name. What you may not know is that Nobel was, for most of his life, best known as the Swedish chemist who made a fortune developing explosives, and then selling his formulas to countries around the world so that they could be used in making weapons. One night his brother was killed in an accident. A newspaper got the story mixed up and, the next day, reported that it was Alfred who had died. From his published obituary, it was clear that the only way he was going to be remembered was as “the dynamite king”—the man who had amassed an incredible fortune by creating armaments for mass destruction. When Alfred Nobel read that obituary, he was shocked and saddened. Realizing that this was how he was going to be remembered, he resolved right then and there to do something to turn his life around and leave a different legacy. The ultimate result of that realization was the establishment of the annual prizes which bear his name, including the Nobel Peace Prize. These awards came about because one man became deeply dissatisfied with the direction, the focus, and the impact of his life. He decided to do something about that before it was too late.

           

Seriously consider the legacy you’re creating with the life you’re living. Are there any changes you would want to make? Would your priorities be any different? How about your goals? Would you want to modify your attitudes or your behavior? Would you change the way you invest your time and energy? Unless you think you’re already as good as you’re going to get, ask yourself those questions, and do it in light of Scripture. If one of your aspirations is to be remembered as a follower of Jesus Christ read Philippians 4:5-9.  

           

The majority of us not will have our names written in a book that will be read thousands of years from now, but the way we lived our lives will be remembered by our family and close friends for many years. 

Will you be remembered for the good you did or the bad? Will you be remembered for the “Christian” character you possessed?

...to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. - II Peter 1:5-7  

 Or the ungodliness in your life?

They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,  slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;  they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. – Romans 1:29-31

If you aren’t living the way you want to be remembered, change starting today and live the life you want to leave as a legacy for your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her – Proverbs 31:28

Spring – A New Birth

I love Spring. Spring is a time for renewing birth. The trees bud in an array of colorful blossoms and leaves, the tulips and daffodils display beautiful new petals reaching for the sun and its warmth. I love to sit outside and watch the birds flitting back and forth frantically looking for materials to make their nest for the hatchlings that will soon fill it. I know that if I were to go to a farm I would see new chicks, calves, lambs and ducklings dotting the landscape. The whole realm of nature seems to sing with the anticipation of new life.

 
Spring reminds me of the new life we have received from of our Lord. In Romans 6, we read of this new birth.

“We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (vs. 4).

When we were baptized in the likeness of Christ’s death, we put off the old man of sin and its follies, and rose to live a new life. A life free from our past sins (v.6), a life lived for Christ (v.11). We sometimes forget in our daily struggles the wonderful way we felt when we rose from that watery grave, a new creature, forgiven of our wrongs, and freed from the guilt of those wrongs. We came from that state of death, into new life just as nature comes to life after a dead winter.  We need to remind ourselves how it felt…that moment we were reborn. We need to “get excited” about it once more and sing with joy and thanksgiving that we have been given that chance to start over.

 “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin– because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.  Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. .” – Romans 6:6-8

Just as a seed must be buried before it can bring forth life, so must we do the same to the old man before we can be reborn as a new babe in Christ.

But it’s not just a rebirth from sin we should look for, but a rebirth of our mind.

“you were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”. - Ephesians 4:22-24

When I read this passage I think of a bird that returns each year to build a nest in the same place. Does she use the same nest that she used last year? No, she cleans it out and brings fresh things to make a new nest. She wants to lay her eggs in a clean, fresh and unsoiled nest. That is the way we must be once we have become baptized into Christ. Our manner of living, the way we treat other people, the way we speak, even the way we think must be reborn in a spirit of newness. We are never to return to that old man. Will we stumble and sin along the way?  Yes we will, but like that mother bird that continues to refresh her nest when her hatchlings soil it, we have to return (repent) clean out that sin and start fresh once again.

So as you watch the unfolding wonders of Spring...remember Christ and the new life he has given you through his death.