Dover Assembly of God
This is week #5 of our series, What Does God Say About _____?
We’ve looked at godliness, fear, marriage and last week husbands, so this week is about wives.
What does God say about the role and benefits and blessings of the wife?
Ephesians 5:22-24 NIV
Proverbs 18:22 NIV
But in reality, all that we will say today is predicated on what we learned last week about husbands.
If you remember, we basically said that the buck stops with the husbands. And if the role and duties of the husband are carried out, all that we share today will compliment and fulfill the marriage.
Back in Genesis, we saw that God said it isn’t good for man to be alone, but that God would provide him a helper. That signifies a partnership. Two working together for the good of the whole.
Each doing things that the other can’t. If we were exactly the same, one of us would be redundant.
1 Corinthians talks about each Christian having different gifts and talents, using the physical body as the analogy.
We all can’t be an ear, we all can’t be the foot. We each have gifts, talents and abilities that compliments the whole.
So let’s really look at what God says about wives.
Again this is all predicated on what we talked about last week. If husbands do their part, the wives will want to do theirs. If we don’t love, protect and honor them, it will be harder for wives to do theirs.
1) BE A HELPER
Genesis 2:18 NIV
The word helper in this sentence is only used throughout the rest of the Bible as it describes how God helps us. God is our helper.
So when God gave us a helper, it was God himself being the man’s helper.
So wives, you are God’s helper to the husband.
One commentary says it this way: “It signifies that women have been given a tremendous power for good in their husband’s lives.”
So basically, if we husbands are to be what God intended us to be, you wives have significant power to enable us to accomplish it.
Your words of encouragement, challenge, a “you can do it” attitude. All that is how God works with us, and God gave us wives to do the same.
That’s what that word “helper” means.
If that is true then the reverse would be true as well. If wives can make us better, then they also have the power to make us worse.
We jokingly use the phrase “Happy Wife, Happy Life”. Did you know that is almost scriptural?
Proverbs 21:9, 19 NIV
Proverbs 27:15 NIV
The Bible does not have the husband version of those. So there must be truth in the adage that the wife sets the mood of the home.
2) RESPECT YOUR HUSBAND!
When Paul gets done talking about husbands and wives, he concludes the chapter with this:
Ephesians 5:33 NIV
Why doesn’t he say that we are to love each other, or respect each other?
Because Focus on the Family tells us that men define love differently than their wives, but women often don’t know how to define respect.
You can love someone but not respect them.
When God tells us to do something, it usually means that we have a hard time doing it naturally.
When husbands are told to love their wives, it is implied that they need love, and it is easy for us not to do it. We define love as DOING.
When wives are told to respect their husbands, it is implied that we need it, and it is easy for them not to do it.
Both of those do not come naturally-we have to work on them.
Wives might reach out with love, but what the guy needs is respect.
If you listen to the radio, you’ve probably heard “Family Life” with Dennis Rainey. Here is what his wife says Dennis said that men need the most:
a) Self-confidence as a man
b) To be listened to
c) Companionship
d) To be needed
John Maxwell says this: If you want to make your mother happy, talk to her, if you want to make your dad happy-listen!
Great example of the differences. Note that love isn’t on the list. Because these things to a man are the same as love.
If you love me, you’ll give me confidence in myself. If you love me, you’ll listen to me, you’ll do things with me and I think most of all, you need me.
Because men need to be needed.
3) LOVE YOUR HUSBANDS!
Talking about the role of older women in the church, Paul says:
Titus 2:4 NIV
You would think that wouldn’t be something you had to teach, but...
It sounds like this is something that is not natural, but something that had to be taught. It could be because the meaning here is to “unconditional acceptance”
That you accept your husbands as imperfect as they are, unconditionally.
It doesn’t mean you can’t try to make them better, but it means you accept them if they can’t become what you envision them to be.
It also means to accept them the way God made them.
There is a movement today to do away with masculinity. The term “toxic masculinity” is being used. The problem is that most masculinity (not abuse) is just guys being guys.
We’ll get into this at a later date, but let me read a quote from a Christian wife and author.
Love also means being committed to a mutually fulfilling sexual relationship. I realize there is a whole lot more to love than sex, but we are looking at how to fulfill God’s command to love our husbands. Therefore, we must look at love from their perspective, not just our own.
When women discount how men feel about that, you aren’t accepting the fact that this is how God made them.
Not is a perverse way, but in a normal way.
4) SUBMIT TO THEIR LEADERSHIP!
Since this verse tends to ruffle so many feathers, we seem to just forget it, but it is a part of scripture so we need to look at it.
Ephesians 5:22-24 NIV
I think the word “submit” is what gets everyone in an uproar. Granted it has been miss-used and miss applied in Christian circles. It doesn’t make what God wants to say irrelevant.
Here is what it is NOT saying: It is not to take away your identity, your ideas, thoughts and plans, your value and worth. It is not blind obedience.
And it especially doesn’t tolerate and abusive situation.
Since we already know that men need help, we’re kinda lost without women.
Genesis 2:18 NIV
This all goes back to the beginning. If us husbands are loving our wives like Christ loved the church and are sacrificing ourselves for her, (even though we do it imperfectly), then our wives will willingly want to do what God has asked them to do.
Coerced submission is not God’s idea of submission. God has always been a God of free-will. He wants us to love him because we want to.
And I don’t believe that ends with him. He has given all free-will and wants us to respond that way. Because we want to. Not because we are coerced.
God wants the wives to have the desire to voluntarily submit to the husbands loving leadership.
I like the word “follow” better than submit . . .
It’s a Catch-22: To be the servant leader God tells the husbands to be, we need our wives to respect and follow your leadership.
You can’t lead if no one is following.
Maxwell says “If you think you’re leading and no one is following, you’re just taking a walk.”
When we as husbands love and protect like we are commanded, it’s easy for our wives to follow. If they follow, then we can lead. We can’t lead if we make them not want to follow.
When we each do our part, as unto the Lord, we are entrusting to Him the outcome.
Since husbands aren’t perfect and we make mistakes, we lead the wrong way at times and make wrong decisions, I believe if we still follow this model, God will honor and take care of the outcomes.
Following God’s pattern has a purpose. Hopefully, we are able to demonstrate to our family and others that God’s way really works.
And I believe that every married person here wants God’s blessing on their marriage (or upcoming marriage if that’s where you are).
God gives us a pattern for success.
It doesn’t mean all rainbows and sunshine, but it does mean if you are committed to God’s pattern and follow God’s lead-over time you will be equipped to handle every bump you encounter.
You’ll be prepared for them. God will have prepared you over time. Every time you follow God’s order, you become better and more in tune with each other.
Even when you don’t feel like it, following God’s order will bless you.
And you can make it to the end. Till death. . .