Sanctification in Marriage // A Great Talk

My husband and I are currently listening to a great sermon on the sanctification in marriage by Matt Chandler of The Village Church in Dallas, TX ... yes, a very hot and exciting Friday night :) (It is actually.) But as we listen to this ... it's based on 1 Peter 3, a chapter of scripture that we've visited a lot on Mark of Beauty, and man does he hit it on the mark!

If you're married or not, this is well worth your time! Enjoy: http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/resource_files/audio/200910251115HWC21ASAAA_MattChandler_ThePathPt07-SanctificationInMarriage.mp3

The Beauty of Submission, Part 3

It's interesting ... I just finished the last two chapters of Feminine Appeal last night and guess what one of those chapters was called? The Beauty of Submission ... how appropriate! I promise I didn't read ahead or catch a sneak peek before I started this submission series.

I haven't had the chance to dive into Genesis like I had mentioned last week, but with the bit of study that I ventured into last week, I believe that Mahaney's wisdom ties up many of the loose ends for me that I was unsure about in 1 Peter 3:6, where we see that Peter uses Sarah as the example for us to follow:

5 For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, 6 like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

As we look at Sarah's life in Genesis, we see that even though she acted in obedience to her husband, Abraham, and accompanied him on a long journey from their home in Ur to unknown places, where she did indeed trust God to lead Abraham, she still failed many crucial times.

1. Not standing up for truth when Abraham asked her to "act" like his sister, not his wife, so that Pharaoh would spare his life and give him wealth
   
   
2. Recommending and having Abraham marry Hagar so that he could have a child with her to be his heir ... failing to believe God's promise to her and Abraham ... ultimately causing bitterness between she and Hagar and introducing violent hostility between two peoples, Ishmael and Isaac, that has evolved into the Arab-Israel conflict today
   

But despite this sin (and maybe her 'good' intentions at times), God's faithfulness was greater. God still chose to bless Abraham and Sarah, and we see this as he gives them new names, a great covenant that they will be the father and mother of great nations in Genesis 17, and that Sarah will bear their child, Isaac, at 91 years old.

And the beauty of Peter's example here is that he does use Sarah, a woman who has screwed up, but even in the midst of her sin and after pursuing forgiveness, continues to put her trust in God, over her husband to do what's best for her. Mahaney says this:

Sarah's story doesn't end in failure. By the time she gave birth to Isaac -- a full fifteen years later -- God had performed a momentous work of grace in her life. Her lack of trust in God matured into a robust faith. In fact, she is one of only two women listed among the Hebrews 11 'heroes of faith.'

This God who transformed Sarah's disbelieving heart can do the same for us. If we embrace his plan for our lives and purpose to obey His commands, He will develop in us the beauty of submission. He will enable us to trust Him to lead our husbands to lead us.

How beautiful is that! That even at 91+ years of age, God still chose to use Sarah and to change her for His glory. So much for the saying, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." Sarah was definitely an old dog (no derogatory meaning implied)! And I think the encouraging thing for us here is that regardless if we've been married for a year, 10 years or 50 years, we ALL still need God's grace to submit well. Hopefully at the 50 year mark (and before) our hearts will be more soft and our attitudes will be more gentle to submit well, but we're all in need of the same grace and it's only through that grace and submission to the Lord that submission to our husbands will ever be beautiful. And it's also through that grace and reliance on the Lord that we can stand firm and "not give way to fear" as we continue down this journey.

Stay tuned ... I think I'll take one more post to wrap up this submission series, but in the mean time, here's what looks to be a great resource on Sarah and Abraham if you're interested in diving in deeper: http://bible.org/seriespage/yes-my-lord%E2%80%94-ithe-story-abraham-and-sarahi.

The Beauty of Submission, Part 2

Continuing on into my study of 1 Peter 3:1-6 from last week, I'll take some time to "talk" through verses 5 & 6. Here are verses 5 & 6:

⁵For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, ⁶like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

(Note: If you're just chiming in for the first time, go back to last week's post, The Beauty of Submission, Part 1, before reading this because there's a lot of good meat in the previous 4 verses that I discuss in that post, and I'll use some of that information to further discuss these last two verses of my study.)

Let me begin by saying that I'm very thankful that Peter reminds us here that we're not the only ones who are called to submit and learn to be godly women ... ALL "the holy women of the past who put their hope in God" did the same thing! We have lots of examples to follow. Praise the Lord! And Peter even gives us a specific example, Sarah.

Now I had originally hoped to wrap up this study with Part 2, but after diving into Genesis to learn more about Sarah and Abraham, I'm not sure that I can just wrap all of this up in this post. I'm confronted with many questions about Sarah and Abraham's disobedience and God's ultimate faithfulness and blessing toward them. So, I think I'm going to need more time to study Sarah and figure out how to follow her example ... aside from just reading Peter's words and understanding that she was obedient to Abraham and called him her 'master'.

I began my study of Sarah in Genesis 12, so if you would like to read along with me and comment when the time comes, hopefully next week, to post Part 3, feel free.

Rest & Renewal

After re-reading my post from yesterday, I feel that I need to offer some words of encouragement since the post was very long and heavy. The words in that post were from my heart and I believe they were truth from the Lord, but they were still heavy, and for those of you that are just getting started on this road toward biblical womanhood, they could seem rather daunting. (Heck, I wrote it and as I thought about submission as I was interacting with my husband last night, I felt overwhelmed too.) However, I was reading Colossians 1 this morning and I feel like Paul's words to the Colossians are great words of encouragement and rest and renewal for us women as we wrestle with growing pains. Let me share Colossians 1:9-13: with you:

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing much fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

A few points that really stand out to me here are:

1. "... fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding." As we long to be godly women who love Jesus with everything we've got and to use that love to love our husbands and children well, we have to believe that if we pray for it, God will indeed fill us with the knowledge of his will as we pursue His wisdom and gain understanding.
   
   
2. "... that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing much fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God;" When things get tough and we want to surrender to the ways of this world because that road seems easier, we have to remember that our lives should please Him and be worthy of Him (we can only do this with Jesus), and by pursuing godliness and surrendering daily, we'll bear much fruit as we grow in the knowledge of God.
   
   
3. "... being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience," The road to godly womanhood is not easy. God never promises that it would be. But if we pray to be strengthened "with all power according to his glorious might," and we pray for that endurance and patience ... we'll be able to keep moving forward. Endurance and patience seem like just the prescription we need to be able to surrender to the Lord daily and to be able to submit to our husbands for a lifetime, ... on our own, it's impossible!
   
   
4. "... joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." And at the end of the day, or the middle of the day, or at the beginning of the day ... we can JOYFULLY give thanks to the Lord, regardless of our circumstance because He alone has set us free from the bondage of sin through His Son Jesus. And again, even when things seem tough, we have to remember that Satan has no power over us because "he has [already] rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves," Halleluiah!!! I think we're going to find that as we do surrender our lives to Jesus and call others to come along with us, Satan is going to do anything in his power to distract us, and when that happens, we have to realize that spiritual warfare is real and denounce Satan and claim Jesus. He has ALREADY saved us from darkness, we just need to claim it and joyfully thank him for it!

I hope that you're as encouraged by these verses as I am, and I hope that this truth allows you to rest well in the arms of Jesus as he strengthens you and renews you for the task ahead!

The Beauty of Submission, Part 1

Ok, Ok ... I know that some of you are reading this and are smirking and saying, "what is beautiful about submission?" But I'm happy to say that because God designed us to be 'submissive' beings (1 Peter 2:13), that when his design is lived out as He intended it to be, it is indeed beautiful! (Jesus even submitted to his parents and to God!) I certainly don't have the whole submission thing down yet, but I'm learning and as I see glimpses of it working out like the way I see it in scripture, I'm in awe of God's design!

Unfortunately, our culture would have us believe that submission is the lack of freedom and ushers in inequality and the free reign to demean women, but I know that biblical submission is very contrary to that. If we do not conform to the lies of this world (1 Peter 1:14) any longer and seek the truth of God, we will find true freedom, true equality and blessing as women!

I have wanted to blog about submission for a while now because I believe that submission plays such an essential part of who we are as women and in our understanding of who we're suppose to be and what our role is ... but the cultural faux pas against submission and my lack of understanding on the subject scared me away. This morning, however, I was diving into 1 Peter 1-3 and I feel like God gave me a greater understanding through this passage and related commentary about this widely debated topic. So, without further ado, here we go ...

Submission In the Garden
If we first go back to Genesis 2 when God created Adam and Eve, we can see how God's sense of 'order' among humanity first came into being when God took one of Adam's ribs and made woman from that rib and brought her to man. In David Guzik's commentary, he says this:

God brought Eve to Adam and created Eve out of Adam. He was first, he is the source, and he is the head. She was created to be a helper perfectly suited to him. Thus, the subordinate relationship of wives to husbands is found before the curse, not only after it.

And in this sense of 'order' that God depicts through submission, we have to remember that since we -- male & female -- are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), we depict the masculine and feminine qualities of God and the trinity, and also exemplify God's order of design through the roles that He created us to have: male = head, female = helper. However, just because our roles are different, neither one is of greater value or importance than the other. Both roles play an essential role in God's design. Guzik has this to say about it:

... submission to authority can be totally consistent with equality in importance, dignity, and honor. Jesus was subject to his parents and to God the Father, but was not lower than either of them. 'Thus the command to wives to be subject to their husbands should never be taken to imply inferior personhood or spirituality, or lesser importance.' (Grudem)

So, even from the beginning, God demonstrates his design for submission through Adam and Eve, but we see all too quickly that Eve gives way to her curiosity and abandons her role as Adam's helper (Genesis 2:18) -- to help him rule and subdue the earth -- when she wanders off and stumbles upon the crafty serpent (Genesis 3).

Now, I'm not sure what really went down between Eve and the serpent, other than what Genesis 3 tells us, but if I put Eve into a woman's shoes these days, I can only imagine that Eve was telling Adam, "I have everything under control. You just sit there, watch Animal Planet and I'll take care of everything." Does that sound familiar? I know that I've said things like that before, and it's not coming from a servant's heart ... it's coming from a woman who wants to take control and feed my husband's natural inclination toward apathy. (I'm not saying this specifically about my husband in general, but it seems like a man's greatest sin is apathy and a woman's greatest sin is to devour her husband as she tries to take control and say whatever the heck rolls off her tongue (Proverbs 11:22).) This may or may not have happened during the Fall, but either way, we see God's design for submission here and because of our brokenness, our natural inclination is always going to be to rebel from it ... heck, it's not something that the world advocates so why should it matter to us? Well, submission does matter to God because His design is perfect and He knows what's best for us! Let's dig a little deeper ....

A Look Into 1 Peter 3
When I typically think of submission, I usually turn to Ephesians 5, but more recently as I mentioned above, I've been studying 1 Peter 3:1-6 and I think this passage provides a great deal of wisdom on this matter.

¹Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, ²when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. ³Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. ⁴Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. ⁵For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, ⁶like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

Let's look at verses 1 & 2 first. To me, it seems as if the statement, "Wives ... be submissive to your husbands ..." just jumps off the page in bold, and I get a little tense and I forget to read the rest of the first clause. But if we reread the statement and see that it says, "Wives, IN THE SAME WAY, be submissive to your husbands ...", the phrase "in the same way" should cause us to back up and figure out what "in the same way" is referring to. And if we look back at chapter 2 of 1 Peter, we see that there's an entire section about how EVERYONE is suppose to submit to someone: "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men ...." This includes the king, governors, and masters (in relation to slaves).

So, when we get to verse 1 in chapter 3, God's call for wives to submit to their husbands is not out of the blue, but in line with the other submission relationships that God designed and Peter mentioned in chapter 2. If we look back through scripture, we see a variety of other submission relationships as well:

• Jesus submitted to His parents (Luke 2:51)
• Demons submitted to the disciples (Luke 10:17)
• Citizens should submit to government authority (Romans 13:1 & 5, Titus 3:1, 1 Peter 2:13)
• The universe will submit to Jesus (1 Peter 3:22)
• Unseen spiritual beings submit to Jesus (1 Peter 3:22)
• Christians should submit to church leaders (1 Corinthians 16:15-16 & 1 Peter 5:5)
• The church should submit to Jesus (Ephesians 5:24)
• Servants should submit to their masters (Titus 2:9 & 1 Peter 2:18)
• Christians should submit to God (Hebrews 12:9 & James 4:7)

In David Guzik's commentary, he mentions that "None of these relations are reversed. For example, masters are never told to submit to servants, Jesus is never told to submit to the church, and so forth." (The list above is also taken from Guzik's commentary.)

And after reading through Wives Like Sarah, and the Husbands Who Honor Them by Wayne Grudem in Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood and through David Guzik's commentary, we see that submission is more about the condition of our heart than an actual action. Submission is exihibited through willing obedience, but that's only a small portion of it. We must trust in our HEART that God knows what's best for us and willingly submit because He calls us to (when that submission doesn't lead us into sin -- Acts 4:19-20).

Moving on to the second half of verse 1, we see that we're suppose to "... be submissive to [our] husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives ...." I think that the later half of this verse speaks a lot about the condition of our heart. Here's a few thoughts from Guzik's commentary:

A wife's submission is a powerful expression of her trust in God. This kind of faith and obedience can accomplish great things, even without words.

Wives may want to shape their husbands -- either to Christ or in Christ -- through their words. Peter reminds them that God's plan is that wives impact their husbands not through persuasive lectures, but through godly submission, chaste conduct, and the fear of God.

There is a sense in which a wife's efforts to shape her husband through her own words and efforts may hinder the power of God's working on the husband. It is much more effective to submit God's way, demonstrating trust in Him, and to let God have his way with the husband.

Ha, I'm sure that we all can relate to these situations at one time in our marriages. As women, since we are naturally inclined to speak our mind and take control, just like Eve, it is our natural inclination to 'demand' that our husbands lead (or just sit back and watch Animal Planet) and make decisions OUR way. We, however, see where that got Eve!

Now, I'm not insinuating that we just sit back, spectate and relinquish our responsibilities as wives and mothers of the family. That's not where I'm going with this at all. God calls us to pursue wisdom so that we can build up our house (Proverbs 14:1), take our family to Jesus and encourage our husbands in the Lord. What I am saying is that if we follow the commands of 1 Peter 3:1, we're not going to impose our own agenda on our husbands. We will not be quick to open our mouth and say whatever we feel like saying. We will hold our tongue and speak wisdom when it's appropriate and participate in discussion, not lecture. And in the end, if it's not our point that is best or even if it's what our husbands deem best, we need to submit to our husbands and trust in God's plan for us in that situation.

Grudem has this to say from Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood:

For a wife to be submissive to her husband will probably not often involve obeying actual commands or directives (though it will sometimes include this), for a husband may rather give requests and seek advice and discussion about the course of action to be followed. Nevertheless, a wife's attitude of submission to her husband's authority will be reflected in numerous words and actions each day that reflect deference to his leadership and acknowledgment of his final responsibility -- after discussion, whenever possible -- to make decisions affecting the whole family.

This is where it becomes very important that we are women of wisdom, not of folly (Proverbs 9:13), so that we can contribute a wealth of wisdom into the decisions that need to be made as a family AND for our own understanding of when it's important to plead for the truth and when it's best just to listen and defer to our husband. I believe this is the part of submission that takes a great deal of humility, discernment and discretion.

If we look on to verses 3 & 4, we see that our beauty should be reflected through our inner self, not through outward adornment and how that beauty is seen through "a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight." If we look at this part of the verse in contrast with the loud, boisterous woman of Proverbs 9:13 that I referenced above (the opposite of pursuing wisdom), I think we can quickly see how having a gentle and quiet spirit is much more Christ-like and will be much more conducive for a submissive heart and attitude than lacking discretion and being boisterous. Having a gentle and quiet spirit is definitely not natural for me, but as I submit to God and cry out for humility, God is changing me (James 4:10). This is the only way we're going to get there!

Take some time to digest this, comment and I'll finish my thoughts and share what I'm learning in verses 5 & 6 sometime next week. In the mean time, check out Chapter 8: Liberated Through Submission of Biblical Womanhood of the Home as you grow in your understanding of godly submission ... it's pretty insightful.

The Beauty of Restoration & Submission

As I was browsing through my blog roll today, I ran across a post from Mary Kassian, author of the Girls Gone Wise blog called A Parable of Restoration, and I thought that her words would add a nice touch to Mark of Beauty since I touched on Ephesians 5 earlier in the week.

Check it out for yourself at http://www.marykassian.com/archives/740.