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Submission:
Christian Advice For Marriage Marriage and business have many similarities. Both
take team effort and cooperation, and they both take mutual submission
from the people within them. Just as employees manage a business
according to the owner’s standards, in a good marriage, husband and
wife manage a marriage according to the owner’s standards. Who is the
owner of marriage? God is the Master Designer of marriage.
Your marriage belongs to God and that means your marriage is set
apart for God’s purpose. “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man
to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him’”. (Genesis 2:18) “So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a
deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs
and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from
the rib he had taken out of man, and he brought her to the man. The man
said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall
be called woman, for she was taken out of man’”. (Genesis 2:21-23) In marriage, according to God’s standards, He
gives husband and wife their position and then helps them to carry out
their duties and responsibilities with due diligence. He gives them all
the practical advice and principles they will ever need to keep their
marriage strong and happy. Since
God is the Creator of marriage, without Him there would be no real
purpose for marriage. Business is the same way. Employees have their set
purpose they must carry out every single day according to the standards
of the owner. The owner gives them their duties and responsibilities
they must carry out with due diligence for the business to be managed
properly. “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders
labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchers stand
guard in vain. (Psalm 127:1) What do you see when you walk into your place of
work every day? You most likely see the same people doing the same
thing. Miss Jane is on the computer, as always logging in the inventory.
Mr. Joe is usually talking on the telephone with potential clients, and
Mr. Boss is behind a closed door with his nose stuck in stacks of
paperwork. And you, the cashier are totaling customer’s merchandise
and answering questions about the products. You do your job well; you keep to yourself;
carefully carrying out your assigned tasks the owner has given you. You
wouldn’t even think of barging in on Mr. Boss to tell him how to run
his business. And Mr. boss does not stand behind you telling you how to
greet the customers. It’s not your responsibility to tell Mr. Boss how
to run his business. And a good boss will not frustrate his employees
while they are hard at work. The point is, no one gets in anyone’s
way. Even though marriage only has two employees they
each have their given roles and responsibilities that they must attend
to. If a wife or husband does not attend to their own duties and
responsibilities the marriage will not have very happy people in it.
God, being the boss of marriage has already given a wife her position in
marriage and likewise, the husband his position in marriage. That means,
the husband has his job and the wife has hers. When a wife becomes
bossy, demanding and controlling, it creates chaos within the design
that God meant for marriage. “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the
church, his body, which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to
Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything”.
(Ephesians 5:22) The Boss gave husbands this position in marriage
for a very good reason – it is the depiction of the relationship
between Christ and His church. Christ is the head of the church. The
church (the body of believers) is not the head of Christ? Actually both husband and wife are called to submit
to one another. For the wife, that means willingly following her
husband’s leadership in Christ. For the husband, it means putting
aside his own interests in order to care for and love his wife. In
marriage husband and wife should be concerned about the needs of each
other – in essence that means to “serve” one another. “Husband’s, love your wives, just as Christ
loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy,
cleansing her by the washing of water through the word, and present her
to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle, or any other
blemish, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands ought to love
their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself”.
(Ephesians 5:25-26) What would happen if Miss Jane got tired of her
duties and did whatever she wanted – came into work whenever she felt
like it and then gossiped with her friends on the phone all day, never
doing any of her computer tasks? There would most likely be chaos in the
workplace. When the employees don’t care about their jobs they do
inferior work and the business can fail, or the very least, lose money. The same goes for marriage, what happens if husband
or wife becomes discouraged or tempted and selfishly starts doing their
own thing? The point is God is the owner of marriage. God is the creator
of marriage, and therefore He controls marriage. God’s standards have
already been sanctioned and set apart for couples in marriage and when
couples don’t go by the standards that God has already given the
marriage it will fail, or at the very least be unhappy. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine
and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on a
rock. The rain cam down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat
against the house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundations
on the rock”. (Matthew 7:24-25) Are you a wise man? |