[continued from yesterday's posting...]
...then who is at fault?
If the descriptives fit your feelings about and relationship with your husband, but the same descriptives don't fit how you feel about or your relationship with Jesus, then where lies the problem?
Is it all your husband? Or could it be that we wives are to submit to our husbands "as unto the Lord" and that hasn't actually even happened yet?
The thing I remember reading about Mother Teresa is her answer to the question "How are you able to do all that you do?" She replied, "I see the face of Jesus in every person I serve." In other words all that she suffered through in poverty and filth and disease to bring hope and relief to those the world had forgotten, was suffered so that she could bring Jesus relief - vicariously - through each person there.
How far have we wives suffered for our husbands...vicariously for Jesus' sake?
I have a confession to make...I failed this little test. It said a lot to me about how much I am actually submitted to the Lord in terms of how I relate to my husband "as unto the Lord." The truth is: I am not nearly as surrendered to the Lord as I thought I was! How often I gave more deference to strangers than I did to my own husband!
There's a little book that I have in my possession by Nancy Missler called "Why Should I Be the First to Change? My spouse won't change, why should I?" Really, that is the entire title of the book. It is her testimony of how the Lord saved her marriage. And in it, Nancy tells how after many years of complaining and manipulating and trying every trick in the book to get her husband to understand "his" problems and get them changed, the Lord, in one powerful moment, broke through to her and began to change her instead.
And then she tells about the miraculous changes in her husband that followed! And, how, after 38 years of marriage (at the time of the book's writing) they were as in love with each other as two young honeymooners! All because Nancy changed in her surrender to the Lord!
Yet, before the Lord changed Nancy she could hardly stand her husband, (and he avoided home by being at work as much as possible!) They had grown so far apart that she was two days away from taking all four of their children and leaving him, for she saw no other solution for their very unhappy marriage! And then the Lord spoke a simple word (through her husband) that struck her to the heart and revealed not her husband's sin, but her own: of not taking all of her complaints to the Lord and LEAVING them there so that HE could work it out.
When she finally got that message loud and clear from the Lord, He did just that! He worked it out: first in her, then in her husband! She was always ready to take matters into her own hands, but what a difference her surrendered heart to the Lord made! [Mind you, all this time, Nancy was a Christian believer, she and her husband were strong members of their church, and their home was opened weekly for Bible study/home group! She was already a believer...just not enough!]
My point here is that we wives can complain all we want. We can buy all the books we hope our husbands will read and take to heart (as Nancy Missler did). We can scream and beg and threaten with divorce.
But until we begin trusting in the Lord and become completely surrendered to Him IN THE MIDST OF THE SUFFERING, rather than running from it...suffering for our husbands, even while they don't act as though they love us (as Jesus suffered for us each individually, even while we weren't acting as though we loved HIM), we should expect no change in our husbands or our marriages.
Perhaps, this is the "help-meet" part of our role as a wife. Adam followed Eve into sin. Would he have followed her into trusting the Lord had she been surrendered to the Lord in the first place? Really surrendered?
Perhaps, since Eve was formed out of Adam, she is still needed to "complete" Adam again and to make him whole..and he her. But that can only be done as we walk forward each day in the strength and power of the Lord as Proverbs 31 women.
It was He who made us; it is only He who can make all of us Eves one again with our Adams. We can create nothing. We can do nothing on our own, no matter how long or how hard we try. The LORD is the Creator of us all and of everything that is in the world...and that includes our marriages.
...then who is at fault?
If the descriptives fit your feelings about and relationship with your husband, but the same descriptives don't fit how you feel about or your relationship with Jesus, then where lies the problem?
Is it all your husband? Or could it be that we wives are to submit to our husbands "as unto the Lord" and that hasn't actually even happened yet?
The thing I remember reading about Mother Teresa is her answer to the question "How are you able to do all that you do?" She replied, "I see the face of Jesus in every person I serve." In other words all that she suffered through in poverty and filth and disease to bring hope and relief to those the world had forgotten, was suffered so that she could bring Jesus relief - vicariously - through each person there.
How far have we wives suffered for our husbands...vicariously for Jesus' sake?
I have a confession to make...I failed this little test. It said a lot to me about how much I am actually submitted to the Lord in terms of how I relate to my husband "as unto the Lord." The truth is: I am not nearly as surrendered to the Lord as I thought I was! How often I gave more deference to strangers than I did to my own husband!
There's a little book that I have in my possession by Nancy Missler called "Why Should I Be the First to Change? My spouse won't change, why should I?" Really, that is the entire title of the book. It is her testimony of how the Lord saved her marriage. And in it, Nancy tells how after many years of complaining and manipulating and trying every trick in the book to get her husband to understand "his" problems and get them changed, the Lord, in one powerful moment, broke through to her and began to change her instead.
And then she tells about the miraculous changes in her husband that followed! And, how, after 38 years of marriage (at the time of the book's writing) they were as in love with each other as two young honeymooners! All because Nancy changed in her surrender to the Lord!
Yet, before the Lord changed Nancy she could hardly stand her husband, (and he avoided home by being at work as much as possible!) They had grown so far apart that she was two days away from taking all four of their children and leaving him, for she saw no other solution for their very unhappy marriage! And then the Lord spoke a simple word (through her husband) that struck her to the heart and revealed not her husband's sin, but her own: of not taking all of her complaints to the Lord and LEAVING them there so that HE could work it out.
When she finally got that message loud and clear from the Lord, He did just that! He worked it out: first in her, then in her husband! She was always ready to take matters into her own hands, but what a difference her surrendered heart to the Lord made! [Mind you, all this time, Nancy was a Christian believer, she and her husband were strong members of their church, and their home was opened weekly for Bible study/home group! She was already a believer...just not enough!]
My point here is that we wives can complain all we want. We can buy all the books we hope our husbands will read and take to heart (as Nancy Missler did). We can scream and beg and threaten with divorce.
But until we begin trusting in the Lord and become completely surrendered to Him IN THE MIDST OF THE SUFFERING, rather than running from it...suffering for our husbands, even while they don't act as though they love us (as Jesus suffered for us each individually, even while we weren't acting as though we loved HIM), we should expect no change in our husbands or our marriages.
Perhaps, this is the "help-meet" part of our role as a wife. Adam followed Eve into sin. Would he have followed her into trusting the Lord had she been surrendered to the Lord in the first place? Really surrendered?
Perhaps, since Eve was formed out of Adam, she is still needed to "complete" Adam again and to make him whole..and he her. But that can only be done as we walk forward each day in the strength and power of the Lord as Proverbs 31 women.
It was He who made us; it is only He who can make all of us Eves one again with our Adams. We can create nothing. We can do nothing on our own, no matter how long or how hard we try. The LORD is the Creator of us all and of everything that is in the world...and that includes our marriages.
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