Prescription For A Healthy Family Series

AND it makes it easier for them to trust you with more decisions. Because you have shown them you respect their leadership & values.

Now God understands how hard this is to do… and so He gives you an added incentive… He says: If you will obey me by honoring your father and mother, THEN I’ll make life go easier for you and I’ll make it so that you can enjoy long life on the earth – For added emphasis, God makes sure you realize this was the only one of the 10 Commandments He added a promise to.

So, children obey your parents…

Now, we come to an even more difficult command:

· Wives, submit to your husbands

ILLUS: I once held a wedding rehearsal for a young couple. In my wedding vows I always include a passage like this from Ephesians or Colossians that includes the word “submit.” During the rehearsal, one of the friends of the bride literally jumped up in her pew and cried out “You don’t have to do that! Times have changed and you don’t have to “submit” to anybody!”

Fortunately, the bride graciously turned and replied “but this is what we want in our vows. It’s OK.”

Wives submit to your husbands. Why? Well, because (wives) - that’s your spiritual service. Your objective is to create a spiritual leader in your husband. You teach your husband to be a spiritual leader by training him to lead AND you can only do that by letting him make mistakes.

Does your husband make mistakes (a lot of laughter and agreement in the crowd).

You do it by refusing to take the reins of leadership away from him and refusing to make the leadership decisions him.

God’s goal for your husband is for him to be a spiritual leader. And you assist God in training your husband by displaying proper submission, a submission that honors and respects your husband so that he gains confidence enough to assert Godly leadership outside the home as well.

BUT (you might say) he doesn’t deserve for me to be submissive to him…

ILLUS: That reminds me of the story of a speaker at a women’s club who was lecturing on marriage. She asked the audience how many of them wanted to "mother" their husbands.

One woman in the back row raised her hand.

"Now, let me get this straight, you say you want to ’mother’ your husband? the speaker asked.

"Mother?" the woman echoed. "I thought you said ’smother!"

It’s hard to submit to a husband who doesn’t deserve to be submitted to. But let you in on a secret… NOBODY deserves to be in a position of being submitted to – except Jesus.

Husbands, wives, kids… we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. THE ONLY person who has ever deserved submission is Jesus Christ.

Sooo. If a husband NEVER deserves to be submitted to - why should you?

Because Jesus asked you to. Because this is your spiritual service. This is part of your ministry within the family.

ILLUS: Norman M. Lobsenz once wrote: “One woman I know was distressed by her husband’s chronic thoughtlessness. Immersed in business affairs, he seldom even remembered her birthday.

‘I could have tried to force him into changing his ways,’ she said, ‘but it only seemed to me that this would only make matters worse. Instead, I waited for the first chance I had to praise him for some small act of thoughtfulness. When he finally brought home a book I had asked for four times, I thanked him as if it were a diamond necklace! He looked at me oddly, but I could see he was pleased. I did this a few more times, and gradually he began to want to think about me because he enjoyed being appreciated.’”