Ephesians 5
Help! I Married the Wrong Person!
No you didn’t!
Now here’s what to do . . . . . . .
“submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” Ephesians 5:21 (NLT)
Reflect
What’s wrong with submitting? Are you afraid you won’t get submitted back to? (I know I dangled my preposition and otherwise mangled the sentence). So what if you don’t get submitted back to? What’s that got to do with it? Here’s the truth . . . 50-50 doesn’t work because that implies score keeping and no one scores correctly. The score keeper always gets the highest score and when the scorekeeper wins, what does the scorekeeper win? Resentment, that’s what! How’s that for a prize?
Try submitting for one day, or one hour, or maybe one instant. Many things will happen (yes, including your resentment at non reciprocation), but what this means is that God is now working in you to do things his way. Maybe if you work on you instead of on him or on her, things might change a bit.
In short, right after God, your spouse is your number one object of love and on this your final grade at judgment day will greatly depend.
"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dealy loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God"
ReplyDeleteI've read and studied and read and studied this whole submission thing until there has been nothing but angst and argument in me. The reason that this is such a hot topic is for the simple reason that it has been used as a weapon. Humans can take the loveliest of things, turn them into rules and laws and twist and turn the truth until one can't recognize anything good in it anymore.
The point is to get along. The point is to resolve conflict, work together, respect each other, learn to recognize ungodliness and help each other get past it.
But, instead, we take out the magnifying glass, not for aid but for finger pointing and condemning.
Submission is a heart attitude and whether it is submitting to suffering as Christ did or allowing ourselves to live subject to another's ideas and askances, our hearts must always be "to seek peace and pursue it".
I ask, is each of us someone who deserves to be submitted to? Do we want control or do we want to love sacrificially?
Submission to each other as Christians involves trust. Are we trustworthy to rise to the occasion to handle submission not with control but with giving?