Wives Series

Real Lives: Playing your Part

Wives

The hard part of being a godly wife

What does it mean to submit?

The good part of being a godly wife

The practicalities of being a godly wife

Help your Husband

Slide 1

Illustration – New Pastor – Not Real Life

I heard the story of a new pastor at this church once who was at the first business meeting.

He asked if there were any prayer requests and an older women named Mary asked for prayer for Annette, a lady who was in the hospital with terminal cancer.

The new pastor heard some audible groans from the others as he wrote Annette’s name down.

Then this women proceeded to tell of her son being away in the military and having not heard from him, and not only that, her husband had just visited her in the hospital and told her he was divorcing her.

The pastor was shocked at how anyone could treat someone this way.

Another older lady told Mary to sit down and shut up.

The new pastor is aghast at this point. He has just heard the most disturbing story and someone from the congregation is telling the other lady to sit down and shut up.

The pastor, being new, does not want to offend anyone, but feels he must step in, says, ma’am, please, let Mary share her requests for this lady.

The other lady says, Mary is my sister and the prayer request she is giving is for a lady on her soap opera.

Now while this lady may have been a bit removed from reality, we are not always far from that either in our view of reality.

We watch a movie or a TV show and we think real life should operate like that.

Maybe we wonder why our wife can’t look like the models on Deal or no deal

Or why our husbands can’t look and act like the guy on the bachelor.

Well, Real life is not found

on TV or

in the movies or

in fiction books.

Real life is lived day by day and it is often not very neat, in fact, it is messy quite often.

And nowhere is this more true than in our marriage relationships.

As we get into this series, Real Life: Playing your Part, we are going to begin with the roles of wives and husbands.

Now if you are not a wife or a husband, don’t tune out. There are practical things found in here for those who are unmarried also in living your life concerning roles of leadership and of following leadership.

And maybe you will be married one day and this will help you to have a good foundation for your marriage.

Whatever, the case there are good things for everyone to hear.

Every role has difficulties

Now as we begin, we need to understand that every role, every part that God has for us to play, has difficulties associated with it, and the role of a wife is no different. But let us remember that these difficult things are there to help us to rely on the Lord.

Two weeks ago, we talked about wisdom. Paul told us to be careful in how we live, not as unwise, but as wise.

It will take great wisdom to play the part God has us in this life. So I ask you to be open minded as the Lord speaks to us today through his word.

Illustration

There was a man who had some terrible symptoms occurring in his life went to the Dr. The Dr. examined him carefully and then went to speak to the man’s wife alone. The Dr. told her that her husband had a rare disorder that if not for a drastic change in his lifestyle, would lead to certain death very soon.

He said that luckily, they could treat this disorder with much rest and proper nutrition. The Dr. told her that if her husband was going to live that she could make sure and fix him a hot healthy breakfast each morning with fresh squeezed orange juice, each day, and that she should make sure that he took a healthy lunch by fixing it for him, and that she could help him get the protein he needed by fixing a meat and potatoes dinner each night. And also to help his immune system respond to these things, she should keep the house extremely clean for the next several months. And it would be extremely beneficial to just not upset him and just do the things he wants.

With all of these things, he had a good shot at recovering and living a long life otherwise, he had little hope

The Dr. asked the wife if she wanted to tell her husband the seriousness of his disorder or should he. The wife said she would.