A Testimony

I posted this link over at the Stomping Ground a month or so back. Please take a moment to read it. Tis very moving. She had known of men in only one way: crudeness. We can become arrogent to women, as if we are somehow better. As if they were our punching bags, either verbaly, emotionally, or physically. This sister in Chrst, Clemntine, that is how she knew men to be growing up.

Everyday Mommy asked a question today that I'm anxious to answer. She wrote, "So, today I’d like to ask you to share your thoughts on the practical application of Biblical submission. In other words, how do you do it? What’s at the heart of this instruction, for you, personally? How has God worked in your heart as you’ve learned about submission? What has been your husband’s response to it?"

Well. Let me just tell you THIS: I was born in the '60's (The Age of Aquarius), grew up in the '70's with my sister and our divorced mother (I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar), and came of age in the '80's (Girls Just Want to Have Fun). I learned a lot.

I learned that men can't be trusted. That husbands have their mail sent to someone else's house, and that it was never too early for a Pabst Blue Ribbon. I learned that Daddies are dangerous and that the truth doesn't matter, but keeping Grandma in the dark does.

I learned to go to bed early and keep quiet when my mother "entertained". I learned to make rum and Coke, and to clean the bathroom after our "guests" had exceeded their alcohol tolerance. I pulled my mother's unconscious body out of the backseat of a man's car. He knocked her out when she climbed in his car to keep him from leaving. I thought she was dead.

I learned to cry without making a sound.

Men leave. They use, abuse, ignore, deprive, and lie.

I became a Christian in the 7th grade. The first thing I was sure of was that I would serve God in singleness. I wouldn't marry. Then I wouldn't be subject to a man. Ever.

Fast forward to 1987. I met him through a friend. He was handsome, smart and kind. And he liked me. He loved me.

He loves me.

He has taught me since then how Jesus sees me. He has encouraged me, corrected me, instructed me. He leads me in paths of righteousness for the Lord's sake. I will gratefully follow him until the Lord calls one of us home.

I am his helper. He is my head. I submit to him, he lays his life down for me. He is healing me by washing me with water through the Word and he is in control of this family. I am provided for, cared for, cherished and honored. My children are safe and loved. God's ways are not ours. I will never stop thanking Him for that.

I was born female. I am becoming a Lady.

http://clemntineschronicles.blogspot.com/2007/03/lady-inside-this-woman.html

How to Love your spouse – in one (not so easy) lesson

Most of us in this world function on human love. We love our spouses conditionally – depending on what they do and who they are with respect to us and our own feelings. Or we “love” them through the difficult times, but we sure don’t like them all that much when things don’t go the way we expect.
As God-fearing Christians, spouses are responsible to be obedient to God in His Word.
For the wife, this mean that she is accountable to show respect to her husband, showing honor to him as God’s appointed head over her and the family: “…let the wife see that she respects her husband.” (Ephesians 5:32b). Admittedly, the verse begins with a counsel to husbands that states: “Let each one of you love his wife as himself…”, but neither part of the verse is stated as being contingent upon the performance of the other spouse. Just because he’s not being the husband Scripture says he should be, it doesn’t let you off the hook to be the godly wife the Word says you should be.
The Christian wife is, however, expected to obey God instead of her husband when what her husband demands of her goes against God’s Word. (Note that this does not include a list of “sins” like tracking dirt in the house or leaving socks on the floor – no matter how stinky they are.)
A godly wife has many other responsibilities, but the one thing for which she is not responsible is changing her husband. Only God changes hearts.
Because “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8), we are exhorted to love with that same love: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:7-11)
But how?
I believe that we must first learn to love God before we can love our husbands the way He wants us to – and that is with the Love that God Himself will give to us. The same Love that He has given for us.
We know from Scripture that Jesus proclaimed the first and greatest commandment as: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” (Matthew 22:37-38)
Unlike worldly love, loving God is not an emotion or a feeling. God’s love is not dependent upon our feelings, our circumstances, or the other person’s responses (or lack thereof). God loves us with unconditional love, which is not based on what we do for Him, but who we are in Him.
So how can we learn to love God, when we can’t learn to do what only God can do? Only God is Love, and we can’t learn to be what only God is.
What we can learn is how to yield ourselves totally to God – to set aside our own thoughts, emotions, and desires so that God can love His Love through us. It doesn’t matter how many Scriptures we know, how many prayers we say, or how many Bible studies we lead – it will always be a moment-by-moment choice to love God and to lay our lives down to Him so that His Love can be manifested through us. Not of us, but through us.
We can’t change the circumstances we are in. We can’t change our past, and we can’t make everything turn out the way we want. But we can:
1. Keep and maintain our focus on Christ;
2. Yield ourselves totally (not mostly or partially) to Him; and
3. Allow His Love to penetrate our souls to therefore overflow through us to others.
But if we’re standing in His way, it just ain’t gonna happen.
If our own judgmental, self-righteous attitudes, laden with self-pity, spiritual pride, unforgiveness, resentment, bitterness and anger – stored up over years of hurt and pain – stand between our hearts and our spouses, the Love will be blocked. (Don’t ask me how I know this.)
To love God means to lose self. To set self totally aside. To be broken of self.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)
I think here of a worldly movie called “A Bug’s Life,” in which the children ants are portraying how their presumed warrior bug friends will do battle with the grasshoppers when the latter come to take the ants’ winter storage of food. The children ants are so happy that the other bugs have come to help them (or so they think) that they put on a play depicting the battle. The only trouble is – they depict the full reality so well, wherein the grasshoppers kill some of the warrior bugs, that as children ants chant, “Die! Die! Die!” the “warrior” bug audience gape wide-eyed before slowly backing up and cooing: “Ohhh, how lovely! Great play! See ya!”
How often are we prone in the flesh to the same response: Great Scripture, but die to self?
It’s hard work, choosing to not respond to your own feelings – again and again and again and yet again. And then some more. Then failing, asking forgiveness from God, and choosing not to feed your feelings. Again. (Yup, please don’t ask me how I know this.)
Too often, instead of confessing our negative thoughts to God that arise from our wicked hearts with respect to those whom we’re supposed to Love, we entertain those thoughts. We nourish them. We justify them. And we quench the Spirit.
Whine does not improve with age. Our self-life is just as ugly today as it was the day we first believed, no matter how long we have been Christians. Our motivation is wrong if we are loving only to have our circumstances or the other person change. That is human love.
Abundant life and Love is experiencing God’s Love through us – even and especially in the midst of our trials and circumstances. This is a far more dramatic and powerful testimony to others than the signs and wonders of the world. Joy, peace and love come not with the absence of trials, but with the presence of God in the midst of them.
Maturity in Christ is not knowing a bunch of memory verses, going to church regularly, or attending prayer meetings and Bible studies, but simply knowing how - moment by moment - to love God. And doing it.
Only God can change your spouse’s heart.
Only God can Love your spouse through you perfectly.
But only you can die to self.
In order to live – and truly Love.

“But He knows the way that I take; when He has tried me, I shall come out as gold.” (Job 23:10)

It is easy to become discontent. Our flesh always seems to think it deserves more than it is getting. It is especially tempting when under another’s authority to think that we deserve better treatment than we are receiving.
As wives, we often become discontent when we think our husbands are not giving us the attention and affection we “deserve,” the gratitude we “deserve,” the leadership we “deserve,” or the physical possessions we “deserve.” Whenever I hear the words “because you ‘deserve’ it” in an advertisement, I see a red flag. When we think we’re not getting what we want or expect, we become ungrateful and discontent.
In truth, we deserve nothing but eternal punishment in hell. All else that we are and possess are gracious gifts from a merciful God. We must thank Him for everything – including and especially our husbands.
Scripture exhorts us, in fact, to give thanks in *all* things. “The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” (Phil 4:5b).
The verse does not read “…do not be anxious about anything – except that guy who leaves the toilet seat up – but in everything – except that guy whose daily bread consists of Sports Illustrated and American Hunter – let your requests be made known to God.”
For wives who feel unloved, take encouragement from Leah – the unloved wife of Jacob. How must she have felt when her husband “loved Rachel more than Leah.” (Gen. 29:30b). Living in the shadow of her sister Rachel, Leah’s life must have been one of sorrow heaped upon sorrow - day after day into month after month into year after year.
But look what happened over time as God blessed Leah with children while her sister Rachel remained barren. Notice the progression of names Leah gave to her sons:
“Reuben,” which means “Look, a son!” Scripture tells us that Leah believed that giving her husband a son meant that “now my husband will love me.” (Gen 29:32) Doesn’t your heart go out to Leah here?
“Simeon,” which means “hearing” because “the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also” (Gen. 29:33). Did Jacob really hate her? Perhaps not, but that was Leah’s perception of his feelings toward her. Even so, Leah recognizes God’s grace in her life despite her husband’s perceived hatred of her.
Next came “Levi,” which in contemporary Hebrew means “my heart” and is translated in many Bibles as sounding like the Hebrew word for “attached.” Leah says of this child, “Now this time my husband will be attached to me.” Hope still resided within her heart for her husband’s affections through her own “works” – providing him with sons.
And yet - God be praised - sometime between the birth of her third and fourth sons, Leah’s heart must have changed, for at the birth of her fourth child she declared, “This time I will praise the Lord,” and she named him “Judah,” which sounds like the Hebrew word for “praise,” (Gen. 29:35)
It appears that Leah had learned – but only after many, many years of disappointment and sorrow – to find contentment in the only Source of True Love. She was no longer expressing her broken heart – even if justified – over her earthly husband, but instead praising God and rejoicing in His perfect love, one her husband could never give.
Interestingly, her fourth son – Judah – was told by his father upon the latter’s deathbed that “the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” (Gen 49:10). From the tribe of Judah came the perfect bridegroom to His people – Jesus Christ.
What an example of the blessings – and how very rich they are indeed – of praising God in the midst of our heartache and seeking His way for our lives in the midst of them.
We must not seek satisfaction in anyone but the Lord. If wives look only or mostly to earthly husbands for their peace and contentment, they may well miss their first and only True Love. He also is then robbed of the attention, praise and obedience that is rightfully His.
An unloving husband or even a husband that truly loves his wife, but may not communicate it in a way that she understands, can be used by God to drive that wife closer to Himself. It’s possible that wives may not discover that if they depend too greatly for their joy in earthly relationships.
I’m not saying that unhappy or unloving marriages are desirable, or that women with unbelieving (or even ungodly yet saved) husbands should not pray for God to have mercy on their husbands to bring them to a knowledge of the Truth for His glory, but true Christian women in such relationships must thank God for the work He is doing in their own lives through their marriages – refining the wives as gold in the fire.
It’s not easy. It may well, in fact, be the most difficult thing a godly wife will ever do – respect and love her ungodly husband in a godly manner– but she does so out of obedience to the Lord, not out of obedience to her husband based on what he does or doesn’t do. She does so “as unto the Lord.” (Eph. 5:22)
When do we most grow in sanctification and ever closer to God – in times of trial or in times of comfort? Therefore, be encouraged during times of trial: “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? ‘My son,do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.’ It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.’” (Hebrews 12:3-7)
I consider my own personal spiritual growth during times of trial in my marriage as discipline – God chastening me to be more like His Son. For “He disciplines for our good, that we may share His holiness.” (Hebrews 12:10b).
Meditate on those two thoughts: for OUR good and to share HIS holiness. What privilege. What grace. What love hath our Redeemer for us, even and especially during times of trial, marital and otherwise.
I believe that if a godly wife will ask for the strength, wisdom and discretion needed to obey God’s Word with respect to her heart’s attitude, words and actions toward her husband, He will provide for her: “And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil. 1:6)
He will do the work. You as wife submit to your bridegroom - Christ Jesus. Submit in obedience and with a glad heart, because “those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!” (Psalm 126:5). I believe that this verse from Psalms refers to sowing God’s seed, His Word, even and especially when in tears. And if those tears, dear wife, are related to your husband, recall this Scripture, and continue to faithfully sow His Word both in and out of season.