When Submission is Hard

I have spoken to quite a number of women on this submission issue, and a lot of private responses that I get from my blog messages always takes this form: a lot of women don’t have a problem doing their husband’s laundry, tacking a loose or fallen button on his shirt, making sure he gets good meals and so on, but the idea of obeying their husbands and just following his instructions like a brainless chicken embarking on a task of “follow the leader” is the aspect of this marriage issue that is huge and appears undoable. It’s then gets worse when this husband is not a loving and caring husband (you know that kind of Nabal husband in 1 Samuel 25). For some it’s difficult when the husband is not the one bringing the money and someone now tells you to go work so hard to hand it over to a husband who absolutely does nothing to be the man that he should be for him to spend your own money as he wishes and hands you stipends just because he is your husband and head over your life. Sincerely you don’t have to complain, even God knows and I know that it is tough.  

In some other cases, we have husbands who have not by any chance earned their wives’ respect. We have such husbands who have collected money from their wives with the intention of paying house rents or children’s school fees, only for the wife to discover that such monies where not paid and same not returned to her and the husband does not have any explanation for not paying or returning the money back. So a wife who has decided to cover the shame of her husband by fulfilling his responsibilities for him and then not wanting the world to know she is the breadwinner decides to channel those payments through her husband so it looks like he is the one making the payment but the husband does not make the payment, but uses these monies for something else. Submitting to such a husband as this is really huge and I cannot tell you otherwise.

In all of these scenarios that I just presented to you, there is a big need to work for the unity of that union. The Bible says two are better than one because they have good returns for their labor (Ecclesiastes 4:9), and then Jesus said in Matthew 18:19 that “if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by our Father in heaven.” So that tells me there is something about the force of unity in marriage that far outweighs all of the reasons we may have to work against the unity of that marriage.

Again we see God talk about unity in Genesis 11:6 as an antidote to impossibility. So if unity is an antidote to impossibility as seen in Genesis 11:6, won’t you agree with me that unity of our marriage which is the smallest unit we can have, is actually an antidote to impossibility in our lives and then it should be a focus for us in marriage. If unity and prayers combined together have the capabilities of breaking barriers of impossibility in our lives, then just for the sake of the benefits derived from unity, we should pursue it with every effort that we can.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:7 that “ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you,” and then Jesus also said in Matthew 18:19 that “if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask, it will be done for you by our Father in heaven,” this should give us a clearer understanding that unity and prayer is actually what we need for a successful life on earth. When as a child of God, you and your spouse are united and then in unity make any request from God, it will be done for you. So for those in Christ, unity and prayers form an antidote to impossibilities in life.

Then you will wonder the relationship between submission (especially in impossible scenarios as I have discussed earlier) and unity and prayers in marriage. Well as wives, submission is the sacrifice you have to make in order to promote the unity of your marriage that happens to be an antidote to impossibility in your life.

It then gets more rewarding when you have to submit in very challenging situations as I have described above. The devil who is obviously not interested in your prosperity will work tirelessly against the unity of your marriage and will present to you all the justifiable reasons not to submit to your husband and then there is the breakdown of the unity in your marriage and the invitation of impossibility in your life.

There is no achievement that you have made and can make alone that can surpass that which you are capable of making and achieving as two (you and your spouse), because the word of God says two are better than one and the word of God cannot lie. So look around you now and know that what you see and perceive as achievement can actually be better with unity than what you can or have achieved alone. And when it does not look good at all, know that things can actually get better with unity. 

So despite what your husband has done or didn’t do, the important focus for you is to work over or through the hurt and work for the unity of your marriage. Yes, you have every reason to be resentful, but is that resentfulness worth the cost of the unity of your marriage and the struggles of impossibility in your life? Think about it.

So we are getting closer to the release of "The Marriage Handbook." It's about three years of dropping a message for you on this blog put together in one piece of material. If there is a message that has ministered to you so well and you want to go over it again and again, then you can always just have this book handy with you at all times. Ideal for a gift for someone needing it and a very good counselling material too. It's the word of God put to effect in our marriages.