Praying for your Spouse

If you have watched many old movies at all you may have seen an old war movie where some poor guy was out walking down a road with a huge metal detector looking for land mines. This happened a lot during world war II and even during Vietnam. You may have heard about the IED’s or improvised explosive devices that were found in Iraq and Afghanistan. These IED’s can’t always be found by metal detectors and neither could the mines in WWII. Germans made mines out of wooden boxes and out of glass so that they were harder to find.

British navy commandos used to lay down on their belly and poke the ground with a metal rod about 2 feet long to look for land mines, how would you like that job? I feel kind of like those guys today. There are some things in the bible that make a preacher feel like he is walking through a minefield and this passage is one of them. There are a lot of emotions and preconceptions wrapped up in this passage and whenever I deal with a passage like that I am always kind of cringing on the inside waiting for something to blow up. The thing is that even if it does blow up it is part of the word of God, and because it might blow up it is a part of the word of God we should deal with and come to grips with. So here we gol

1 Timothy 2:9–15 NASB95

Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.

Now the first part doesn’t wind us up as much as it should and the second part gets us more wound up than it should. The first part talks about what makes a woman attractive. We have a serious problem in our country and in our world today. Women who want to be found attractive take pills, have surgery, starve themselves, vomit up their food and do hundreds of other things to try to achieve what we have told them is beautiful. Men have set the standard for physical attractiveness to movie star levels and there are multi million dollar industries built on nothing but achieving the impossible. Women from early teens on up do all kinds of crazy things to try to make themselves beautiful. In the new testament times most women were thin and it was considered sexy to be obese, fat was in. In our times most of us are overweight so thin is in. We are obsessed with physical attractiveness and we are aiming at a moving target. If women get to where most of them achieve a certain level of “Beauty” we would just raise or change the standard. It cannot be done.

What does scripture say. 1 Tim 2:9-10

1 Timothy 2:9–10 NASB95

Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness.

We have created a culture where women are made to feel bad about themselves if they are not supermodels rather than a culture where women are rewarded for being good people doing good things and acting like godly christian women. We are reaping what we sow. Relationships are failing like never before, marriages are coming apart at the seems and the family is being destroyed because we are focusing on the wrong things, woman are spending their time and effort trying to look good enough rather than the things that make a marriage work and men are looking for the best looking woman rather than the best acting and most godly women, and so we struggle. Men you need to be praying for your wife, or if you are not married for your girlfriend or future wife that she would get her confidence from her relationship with God and not from her appearance. You need to ask God to help you love who a woman is and not what a woman looks like. There is nothing inherently good or bad about how you look, it doesn’t tell me anything about who you are, but how you act, what you do and say and believe tell me a lot about you, the real you.

We have created a culture where what someone looks like is more important than who they are and we are paying the price for that decision. We pay that price in shallow relationships and failed marriages. That is not the only reason marriages fail just like being called ugly or left out is not the only reason for teen suicide, but it does play its part. Way too many marriages fail because they were based on nothing but appearances, way too many kids kill themselves or harm themselves because they are trying to live up to some barbie doll expectation of what they should look like, we need to do everything we can to stop it. It is not godly and is destroying our families.

Ladies pray that you don’t fall into that trap, that your self worth comes from who you are and not what you look like, men pray that God would send you a godly woman and one who you can love for who she is rather than how cute she is. Men are attracted to beauty and it is easy for us to give it more importance than it deserves, women want to be attractive and it is easy for them to make it more important than it should be, we need to guard ourselves and seek God’s help in keeping a godly perspective on what is important. For that we need to pray for each other and four our relationships with the opposite sex.

Now for this other thing. I an now going to jump right out into the minefield and start walking around. I am even going to use the word, submissiveness. We don’t like that word, it seems to mean weakness or oppression. It doesn’t mean those things, it shouldn’t mean those thins but in our mind it often does. The dictionary says it means to yield to superior force, or authority, or the will of another person. Our fear is that it means the first, yielding to superior force, being forced into something we don’t want to do because we are helpless and no one wants to be helpless.

Of course we all have to submit to authority, and we hate it. We want to drive the speed we want to drive not the speed someone else tells us to drive. We want to pick and choose what laws to obey and what rules to follow. We don’t want to submit, we usually do, because we know it is best but we don’t like it. None of us want that other idiot to be able to drive however he wants to because he is unsafe, but we all want to be able to drive how we want to because we believe we know what is safe and what is not. Of course you can see the trap, if there are so many people out there who don’t know how to drive safe, go to fast, pass at the wrong times, text or talk or put on makeup or eat a cheeseburger while driving there needs to be some sort of system to keep them from killing us on the highways. Most of us, if we were honest with ourselves would admit to a time when we did dumb things too, so in order for the system to work all of us have to submit to the authority of the traffic laws. Those who choose to do what they want instead are usually part of the problems on our highways.

We all know that authority is necessary but we still don’t like it. Of course there is a third type of submission. Submitting to the will of another person. Growing up I submitted to my parents. I submitted to my mother because I wanted to please her and make her happy, I submitted to my dad because otherwise he would wear my but out, two different kinds of submission. There are times I let my wife have her way because I love her and want her to be happy, and there are times it is just easier, I would rather let her win than go through the fight so I submit. We all do it. But how do we do it right?

Jesus came to earth and was born a human being, Jesus submitted to the will of the father. Do you think Jesus submitted because Jesus was weak, not on you life. Did Jesus submit to God the father because Jesus was not as smart as God or as capable as God, how could that be since they are both part of the trinity, they are both made out of the same stuff, they are both eternal, they both know everything and they are both all powerful. In fact it is not really right to say that they both do these things because both implies that they are two separate beings and they are one being, and also two beings. Yet Jesus did submit to God the father.

Jesus did not submit because he was less than or not equal to but he did submit because that was his job at the time. God the father put everything under Jesus the son’s feet and Jesus gave it all back to the father. There was no weakness or no better than, nothing oppressive or wrong in that, everything was as it should be and everyone was loved respected and honored for who they are and for the job they had at the time, as well as the job they have now. That is how you do submission right.

I am not going to do what is tempting. When tiptoeing through this minefield it is very tempting to try to explain away God’s decision here, it is tempting to try to make what the bible says fit better with how we want it to be and what would make everyone happy and content. It is tempting to try to defend God’s word and explain why He is right. I will not do that. God is right because he is God, it is his world and he can do what he wants in it.

We know that in any relationship there are times when agreement is hard to find. There are times when no matter how hard or how long we talk about it and no matter how much we want to everyone can’t always win. Sometimes a decision has to be made. Sometimes everyone cannot get what they want. God has established the male as the head of the household and its is on him to lead and to resolve these issues. It is on him to love his wife as Christ loved the church and to give himself up for her. Having authority means having responsibility. Doing it right means putting other before yourself. That is not a natural act. We want to put ourselves first, we want what we want and we want it now. It is only with Jesus’ example and with God’s help that we can put the needs of others before our own. We can’t do it alone, it takes prayer and it takes submission to the will of God. Men that is your burden, and you cannot bear it alone. You need to ask God for help and wives he needs you to pray for him in this area as well.

Wives, you have been given the role of Jesus, the one who submits. It is not because you are inferior or because he is superior, it is because it is his and your God given role. He should take all things into account including every thought you have and every word you say. He should put your needs and the families needs ahead of his own. And he should lead. But what if he doesn’t, what if he is selfish, or wrong, or not as smart as you, what if his instincts are not as good as yours, what if your decisions are better than his. The things is scripture never says obey God unless you disagree, and although we know that God is perfect and your husband certainly is not, he is capable of being wrong, or selfish, or doing dumb things. The thing is he is accountable for that to God, he is the one who has to stand before God and answer for those decisions. Pray for him, help him, he will make mistakes, he will fail, that is how you learn, that is how you get better. He can only do those things if you let him. If you refuse to submit he cannot lead, if you take over he cannot learn, then you are the one responsible, you are the one to answer to God do your part. Ask God to help you, its not easy, we never want to submit, we want our way and we want it now. Pray that God gives you the strength you need, men pray for your wives.

Are you starting to figure out that this thing between a man and a woman is not easy. It doesn’t just come natural for us to do what makes a marriage work. It is unnatural, it is against what we usually want, it takes effort, it takes work, it takes divine intervention to make a marriage work so pray for your marriage and pray for your spouse. Pray that you would do what you should do and that your spouse would do what they should do. Pray that both of you will live with each other in a forgiving way, giving each other room to fail and to learn, room to grow stronger as individuals and stronger together. It just cannot be done well without appealing to higher authority, without submitting to God, without prayer.