The Wife of Noble Character 2

I thank God for the gift of another day and for the breath of life and I remain forever grateful. But I won’t forget to thank Him for your lives also and for what He is bringing about in your lives, homes and marriages through the messages shared on this blog.

So we continue on what we started yesterday; “the wife of noble character,” and I hope and pray that great lessons will be learned, hopes will be made alive in so many marriages by virtue of what is learned in this series in Jesus name.

Proverbs 31:13-19

She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands.

She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar.

She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls.

She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.

She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her task.

She sees that her trading is profitable, her lamp does not go out at night.

In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers.

Reading through the next seven verses after that which we studied yesterday, I now understand why Solomon would say that a wife of noble character who can find. The verses we are considering today speaks of the strength and the entrepreneurial ability of the wife of noble character.

We have recognized and appreciated the fact that a wife of noble character is a wife of value. She is a substance that has a great deal of value accrued to her, but what makes her a substance of value is what we will be learning from today’s verses.

Solomon says such a woman selects wool and flax and works with eager hands, so she is not a kind of woman that sits around and expects that all that she needs and wants will be laid on her laps effortlessly. She is a woman who is willing and ready to get her hands dirty in work and by so doing sowing seeds of her labor that will guarantee a harvest for her in due season.

She is like the merchant ships who will not eat the fruit of idleness but rather engage in productive activities with the purpose of providing food for her family. The Bible says she brings her food from afar and not that her food is brought to her from afar. She rises and go get her food from afar and then provide the same food for her family. And I hope and pray that those wives who stay on the word that a man who does not provide for his family is as good as an unbeliever and use that as an excuse to make the lives of their husbands a living hell will also read this and understand that a wife of noble character is one who goes very far to get her food which she in turn provides for her family.

Then we read that a wife of noble character considers a field and buys it, and then with her earning she plants a vineyard. When she considers a field, she is not running to her husband for help, she is standing on her feet and sorting out her issues and desires with her God such that the Bible says with her own earnings she plants a vineyard.

Going forward, she is not just planting the vineyard, but she is setting to work vigorously on the vineyard with strong arms for her task. She puts herself to work until her trade becomes profitable and she is sure that her lamp is not going out at night. She is not just planning for now, but working also for the future. Such is that value of a wife of noble character. So we understand why such a wife as this is scarce.

A lot of wives have relented in effort such that they are non-existence without the income of their husbands. They are comfortably relenting in effort because they have eaten the mediocre bread and have misconstrued the word of God that says that a man who does not provide for his family is as good as an unbeliever. But they forget that the same Bible said that “if a man will not work, he shall not eat” (2 Thessalonian 3:7-10).  

Some wives will fight their husbands tooth and nail because he is not giving them enough money and you then wonder if they are not created to work. There is no one person that God created without the talent to propel him/her to greatness and make good income for him/her. The only difference between a rich man and a poor is knowledge, the ability to discover and nurture your talent to grow and the ability to wait on God. The Bible says the gift of a man will make a way for him and brings him before great men (Proverbs 18:16).

Now we know some of the attributes of a wife of noble character that makes her a woman of value. She is one who is cloth with strength and dignity, a hardworking entrepreneur. She is woman who holds her family in high priority, thus bringing food for them from afar. She is a woman who nourishes her husband's life with value. A woman whose husband has full confidence in, not as a burden or a liability, but as a reliable suitable helper placed in his life by God.

So I ask, are you such a woman as described above? After this exhaustive insight I am also beginning to see a need for me to cry out to God on my life. To be a wife of noble character is a huge task but still attainable by the grace of God. But I want to implore the wives that as we begin a new year and as we continue to seek the face of God for things we want God to do for us this year, I pray that one of our request would be that the Lord will make us wives of noble character. It’s time for us to begin to sow positive seeds into our marriages that will yield for us not just here on earth, but also in heaven.

So we continue in the next post to make new discoveries about the wife of noble character. Until then, remain blessed.   

The Wife of Noble Character

Good day wonderfully gracious people, I trust that by the special grace of God we are doing well. It’s such a wonderful thing to be alive and more rewarding and fulfilling to be alive doing what God created us to do; fulfilling the purpose for which we have been created.

We have taken a couple of days to consider the "overseer husband" and I believe that by the special grace of God that series has breathe life into many marriages and the seed of the word of God in our marriages is beginning to take root and germinate.

There is the need to balance things out so that men do not feel that they have so much to do and prove to God in their marriage while the women just sit and be pampered. I just love the balanced outlook of the word of God. So we will take a couple of days to really consider the wife of Noble Character.

Quite a number of us know that Bible passage of Proverbs 31:10-31, but have we really taken time to properly study this 22 verses of the Bible in order to practice and live by its codes. I believe that a man who means business with his marriage will apply the Overseer Husband code to measure how well he is doing, but in the same way, a wife who desires to be regarded as a virtuous wife will measure herself by the code of the wife of Noble Character as found in Proverbs 31:10-21. 

Proverbs 31:10-12

A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.

Her husband has full confidence in her, and lacks nothing of value.

She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.

The first aspect of the wife of noble character that I want us to consider and score ourselves by is in her relationship to her husband. The first thing that came to mind in these first three verses is that, not every wife is a wife of noble character because Solomon said “A wife of noble character who can find?” Just like precious stones such as diamonds, gold, silver, pearls, turquoise, emeralds are all scarce and costly to come by, so is a wife of noble character scarce of not common. She is of great value that is far above rubies. So there are wives everywhere, but wives of noble character are quite scarce. So you need to evaluate yourself as a wife; are you one of the generally available common wives or you are the wife of noble character of great value far more than rubies that a man will count himself blessed to have as a wife?

The second thing that I noticed about the woman who is addressed as a wife of noble character is that she is a wife who adds value to her husband. Solomon says that her husband has full confidence in her and she lacks nothing of value; the New King James Version translates Proverbs 31:11 as “The heart of her husband safely trust her; So he will have no lack of gain.” On accord of the value accrued to this woman which she pours constantly into the life of her husband, the Bible says her husband lacks nothing of value; and NKJV says he will have no lack of gain.

Now a man who is in possession of great quantity of diamonds or gold or emerald or any other form of previous stone cannot be said to be poor. In the same manner, a man who has a wife of noble character as his wife is a very blessed man, he cannot be said to lack value or gain. There are many wives on the face of the earth, but the wife of noble character is of great value and she is scarce; are you one of such wives who is of great value and not commonly found? Are you a wife who has created a life of value for her husband such that he lacks nothing of value?

Verse 12 says, “She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life,” it is often said that behind every successful man is a woman, but I will say that behind every successful man is a wife of noble character. She brings in good all the days of her life. She does not just bring him good once in a while; she does not just support her husband and when she feel the investment is not yielding a favorable return she backs out, but come what may she brings him good as long as she has the breath of God is in her and her heart is still beating. That is the value-add that comes from a wife of noble character.

Proverbs 19:13 says, “A foolish son is his father’s ruin, and a quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping.” So while the wife of noble character is a wife who pours value into the life of her husband, a quarrelsome wife is one who is a constant dripping in the life of her husband. Rather than add value to her husband, she drips value out of him. Which kind of wife are you? The Bible has only given us two categories of wives and they are: 1) the wife of noble character who is of great value and adds value to her husband and is not easy to come by, and 2) the quarrelsome wife who is a constant dripping in the life of her husband. There is no intermediate wife; you are either noble or quarrelsome. 

Now this is the litmus test for us as wives; when you want to get how well you have performed as a wife, check out the life of your husband. If he lacks value or gain then you have not faired well as a wife because you have not poured value into him, you are a constant dripping in his life. A husband who is doing great and of great value is so because his wife has poured her value into him; she is a wife of noble character.

I hope this is coming as a wakeup call for us as wives. I am blown away by this post and I pray that in the name of Jesus, the lives and homes of many will begin to receive a touch from God in this year 2017 in Jesus name. So we will continue of the series of the wife of noble character in next post. Until then, remain blessed and remain in the will of God for your lives and marriages in Jesus name.  

The Cry of a Frustrated Wife

It’s another new day with new grace and fresh supply of mercy, favor and grace from the living God. It’s so comforting to know that God never runs out of supply despite how many times we approach Him. So please feel free to approach the throne of grace as many times as you need and have to, there is abundance of grace available at all times.

Here is another story taken from the book “Marriage: God’s Rules of Engagement”, I pray it blesses you and you find valuable lessons from it for your marriage and home.

Issue

My husband is a businessman and for some time now the business environment has not been favorable and that has affect his business in no small measure. He runs for days and sometimes months without having any money to give for the provisions in the home. That has shifted on me the responsibility of the breadwinner and this I carry out in a very humble manner, but it appears that there is nothing I do that pleases my husband. The more I pure myself into making ends meet in the house, the more he complains and nags. Sincerely I am fed up. I have tried to support him the best way I know how but his lack of appreciation is really putting me off.

Response

First, I will commend you for taking up this responsibility without any complain. The Lord who made you a helper in the life of your husband will uphold and strengthen your finances until your husband gets back on his feet. But your assignment does not terminate at the point of providing for your family, it extends to the point of upholding your husband in prayer and interceding on his behalf and breaking every stronghold of stagnation in his financial life until you see result.

From what I can perceive of this situation, your husband is not happy, neither is he comfortable at the fact that he is unable to fulfill his God given responsibility as a man and a provider for his family. His ego is also bruised and the devil has infiltrated his thought so that he sees you as a competitor rather than a helper. He sees you doing what he should be doing and he is unable to help himself. Rather than appreciate your assistance he is angry that you are taking over his role. He might even be anticipating you will not to submit to his authority now that he does not have money. These I believe are some of the issues your husband is having to deal with and unable to share with you hence his reactions.

But that said, we seek solution and by the grace of God, solution we will get. Based on the truth of the word of God a man is the head of the family, he is to take care of his family and provide for them and so you will start to pray that God will open heavens for your husband so that he can take his rightful place as the shepherd of the family and that resources will be made available to him to perform his duties and responsibilities as the head of the family. If you need to sow seed on his behalf, please do and make it a fat one too. If you have to have go on vigils for him, please do loose the sleep and don’t stop praying for him until you begin to see the hand on God on his finances.

While at that, don’t get tired of being the helper in his life, even in financial matters. When the harvest comes you will reap the fruit of what you have sown. Continue to be humble and make every effort to erase the fears that might be building in him that you might eventually stop being submissive to him. He needs the reassurance to cope.

Don’t bother fighting your husband; he is just as worked up as you are. Remember we wrestle not against flesh and blood. The battle for peace, love and abundance in your home and marriage is between you and the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly realms. So you fight this not as a physical fight, but as a spiritual battle putting on the whole armor of God and you can be sure that victory is yours because at the name of Jesus every knee must bow and all tongues must proclaim that Jesus is Lord and you are complete in Christ Jesus who is head over all principality and power. 

The Overseer Husband 3

This is the day the Lord has made and we will rejoice and be glad in it. It’s another day to be alive and another opportunity not to waste. So we will share the truth of the word of God and pray that the living God speaks to us and we will leave this blog with valuable lessons in Jesus name.

This will be the last of the series on overseer husband and I believe that we have learned a lot and the Lord is working in the hearts of men to make them into the kind of men that He intends them to be.

1 Timothy 3:1-5

Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not mange his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)   

By the grace of God I will make this post a short one because I believe that the very important points have been dealt with in the last two posts.The ninth and tenth points are quite similar so we can just lump them as one.

Not Violent But Gentle, Not Quarrelsome: I want to believe that an overseer husband who is temperate, self-controlled, respectable, above reproach and hospitable has earned for himself the quality of gentleness along with all these that he already possesses. There are some men who when offended outside the home, come back home and pure their venom of anger on their family; so to say that their family becomes their object of frustration. Well what you are doing to yourself in ignorance is that you are maltreating and disdaining the favor of God for your life. No matter what the situation is outside the home, your home is not and should not be the dumping ground for your emotional outburst. You are the head of your home and the shepherd over them and your assignment is to protect your sheep, shield them and take care of them and not scatter them because of lack of emotional control.

The big of all the attributes of the overseer husband is the last one which says, “He must manage his own family well and see to it that his family obey him with proper respect.” This is God telling the shepherd over the household that he should take very good care of the sheep under his watch and ensure they display good discipline by obeying the shepherd over them. Jesus said in John 10:3-5 repeatedly that His sheep know His voice and they follow Him because they know His voice; and they will not follow a stranger because they do not recognize the voice of the stranger. This is the manner in which an overseer husband ought to relate with his family; as a good shepherd whose sheep knows his voice and follow him. Not like a cruel stranger.

A husband overseer is a man prepared and ready to do great works for the Lord. He is a man who has proven himself faithful in the small responsibility handed over to him and shown himself ready for greater works. If you have mastered these attributes in your small family unit then displaying them on a larger platform becomes a work-over for you. As we start this new year, I pray that our husbands will be overseer husbands and their lives will be vessels of noble purpose in the hands of the living God in Jesus name. 

The Overseer Husband 2

It’s another gracious morning, and another glorious reason to thank God. I feel so grateful, not just to be alive, but to also be well and healthy. Just like everyone else, I have concerns, and I have battles that I am facing and challenges that are distracting my attention and in it all I am still going to praise God with all of my life because He loves more than I deserve. And I am alive and able only because of God’s loving grace. I encourage you to have the same attitude of looking beyond your present troubles and focus on Jesus. He makes all the difference.

So today we will continue on the attributes of the “Overseer Husband” that we started with yesterday, and I pray that we will be able to learn more lessons from it and apply them in our lives to make us totally different people, a kind of people that makes God’s heart leap with joy. 

1 Timothy 3:1-5

Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not mange his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)   

We've looked at the first three attributes in yesterday’s post, and so today we will continue from the fourth.

Self-Controlled: The dictionary defines self-control as “control or restraint of oneself or one’s actions, feelings, etc”. But I will like to define self-control as “the ability to put one’s emotions in check at all times.” So the overseer husband should not be one given to emotional outburst too often. For an overseer husband, when confronted with any situation, it is important that you think it through properly before reacting and not reacting first before thinking it through later. This is very important, not just the overseer husband, but for every child of God. Your actions are valuable and weighty, spend them wisely.

Respectable: Again the dictionary meaning of respectable says “worthy of respect or esteem; estimable; worthy.” So this husband must be someone who has earned the respect of his family first and the outside world in general. And sincerely this brings to mind the complaints of some wives whose husbands are so good and kind to the outside world but mean and unkind to their wives and in some other cases even their children. If only the men understand the important role their wives play in their lives and the kind of value she carries for them. The first place to show kindness and love is in the home to your family which consist of your wife and children and then in flows out from there and not the other way round. The people who hold valuable packages from God for your life are your wife and children; they should always come first. Those are the ones you should attach importance to. Your business partners and your colleagues and friends are like flowers that color the trees and whither in no time; they are very temporal in your life.

Hospitable: Someone who is hospitable should be a person who is warm, friendly, favorably receptive, kind, cordial, open, welcoming, sociable and generous. These should be the attributes of an overseer husband. Not a husband that comes into the house and the entire family runs into hiding. He should be a husband whose wife is free to talk to and relate with openly. He should be a father who is both firm and friendly with his children all in one.

Of what use is a shepherd whose sheep are running away from or afraid to talk to. If you are such an overseer in your household I believe it time to make that positive change. Being the head of the family does not entail be cruel and unkind to those under your authority.

Able to Teach: Interesting that this is coming just after hospitable, because the most effective ways to teach is to be close to those whom you want to teach so that you know their areas of weaknesses and where to put in more effort in teaching, and to teach through the examples they see and copy from you. You cannot instruct someone to go left while you are going right and be sure they will obey. They might obey while you are watching but the moment you turn your back, be sure they are doing the direct opposite of your instruction and just walking behind your footsteps. Effective leadership is the leadership by example and in other cases the servant leadership.

Not Given to Drunkenness: Proverbs 31:4-7 reads, “It is not for kings, O Lemuel – not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer, lest they drink and forget what the law decrees, and deprive all the oppressed of their rights. Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more." This is the scripture that came to mind on the issue of drunkenness, and I will implore overseer husbands to ask themselves this question; are you in the category of kings or you belong to those perishing and in anguish. The answer to this search question tells you what next to do and what God expects of you. If you have to drink, please do it in moderation and don’t get drunk.

Even though I would love to finish off on this and then we can gist about another interesting topic in marriage, I believe I should stop this and continue in the next post so I don’t get this post too long to read.

I am very grateful to God for the revelation of His word to us and personally I have learned a lot of things. Now I understand God’s standard for my husband and though I know and acknowledge that I cannot change him personally, I know how to pray for him.

I pray that as we begin the New Year, the men will know better God’s expectations for their lives and begin to make necessary adjustment where necessary. I also pray that the wives reading this will understand God’s standard for their husband and pray the necessary changes into the lives of husbands. Now you have a better understanding of what should be in your year’s prayer request for your husbands. May the Lord bless our homes and marriages in Jesus name. 

The Overseer Husband

Good morning people of God, I thank God specially for counting us among the living today. That we are awake and alive today is as a result of God’s grace and His grace alone. So I am waking up praising God, and I hope you do the same.

1 Timothy 3:1-5

Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not mange his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)   

In today’s post, I wish to just drop a few food for thoughts for the men who are husbands and I will be tagging this post the “Overseer Husband.”

In the passage above is the criteria Paul gave for a man who seeks to be a church overseer, I want to believe that is what we call Pastors in today’s generation. Quite a lot of us have attributed this overseer role to come with God’s calling you audibly to his service, but in my own interpretation I will say that as long as you are a husband and God has established a family for you, you are an overseer over that small unit of your family. That is where the work begins. If you do not qualify in this small unit, you can’t make it for the big one. So in a nutshell I will say that every married man is an overseer.

1 Timothy 3 gave us the requirements of an overseer, which are the requirements for all husband overseers and those requirements are what we will be looking at one after the other in this post. So we begin with the first one.

He Must Be Above Reproach: This is the first requirement of a husband overseer and so we will first try to know what reproach means. From the dictionary, the word reproach means “to find fault with (a person or group etc); blame; censure; and another says, to be a cause of blame or discredit to; yet another says, disgrace, discredit, or blame incurred.” So we understand that God expects that a husband overseer must be above disgrace or any act that can result in blame or discrediting his person.

So he should not be found in acts such as adultery, lies, wife beating of wife or any form of domestic violence, then in the bigger picture he should be a man of high integrity both within and outside of his home. And least I forget, he should be a loving husband.

No wonder God warned the husband in Malachi 2:16 to guard themselves in the spirit and not break faith.

It always appears that the stakes are high for the Godly wife in marriage, but I am beginning to realize that they are higher for the overseer husband. Some men may want to say that since they do not seek the office of church overseer this is not a standard for them, remember that as long as you are head over your family, you are already an overseer of that family and the same standard applies to you.

The Husband of But One Wife: This is the second requirement of a husband overseer. He should be a man not entangled in polygamy. In as much as God still forgives and walks with a man who puts himself into trouble by taking more than one wife, God does not approve of it still. There is no polygamous marriage whether in the Bible days or in our present day generation that is not smeared with strife, malice, jealousy, anger, hatred and all the ills that can go with it. A man who sought the face of God before taking a wife will not have any reason to find himself in a polygamous marriage. And the task of managing his family well will be less tedious.

Temperate: The dictionary defines temperate as, “moderate or self-restrained; not extreme in opinion, statement; another says moderate as regards indulgence of appetite or passion.” So basically the Lord expects that the overseer husband is not an extremist of any king and in any way. Even in opinion, he is expected not be an extremist. If I understand this well, an overseer husband is one who is opened to the opinions of others. So to say that he should be a good listener. This is quite revealing if I must say. So I can actually infer from this that the overseer husband should be able to give ear to his wife’s opinions; listen to her and hear her out. That does not make him less than a man as some men have conditioned their minds to, but that he is taping into the wisdom of his wife and taking out of her all that God has deposited in her for him. This is really interesting.

So that this post will not be too lengthy, I will halt at this point and we will continue our discoveries in tomorrow’s post. I just hope this is going down well with the men, but the basis of these is found in the Bible. May the Lord strengthen the men to be all that He has called them to be in Jesus name.

My Mother-In-Law is My Greatest Problem in My Marriage

I bless God for another the grace to see another morning. This morning I woke up with a heavy thought and that is, I am alive for a purpose, it’s an opportunity that those in the grave will do anything to have. It’s an opportunity to a second and third chance to make it right with God and fulfill the purpose for which He created me and is still keeping me alive. It’s up to me to make that opportunity count. This is not just for me, but for all of those who wish to have a successfully blessed and glorious 2017.

So it’s another talk day and I feel led to write about marriage and external influence. I wrote in the book "Marriage: God’s Rules of Engagement" that one of the greatest enemies of a successful marriage is tradition. Another innocent looking treat to marriage is the influence of family members in the marriages of their child or loved one so to say. God being mindful of this says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.” The reason for this leaving is because the influence of family factor in any marriage is always one sided and will never promote the unity of that marriage that is requisite for it’s success. This leads me to the story I want to share today and I pray that we lesson valuable lessons from it.

Issue

When I got married it was with an open heart and I looked forward to a loving relationship not just with my husband but also with his family. My husband had warned me that he respected and loved his mum, but would not want any unnecessary closeness between his mum and I. This was strange and different from the training my mother gave me. She always told me that in marriage, you don’t just marry the man, but you marry his entire family too. That I should love my mother-in-law and take her as my mother; so I followed through with my mother’s advice and did all I could to be a loving daughter to my mother-in-law. But that was my biggest undoing. My mother-in-law saw me as a threat and treated me with great disdain. For God knows why, everything I did or said got her irritated. As far as she was concerned I just came to take her son away from her; she was of the mindset that her husband who happens to be my husband is very rich and I am stopping her from having her share of the largesse despite all she sacrificed to train him and all she invested in him to become the man that he is. She always comes up scary threats and when I complain to my husband, he tells me that I brought it upon myself as he had told me to stay away from his mum. There is always this constant cold war between me and my mother-in-law and my husband is always at a loss as to whose side he should be on. This is really affecting my marriage because it is having it’s toll on my relationship with my husband; we often end up fighting whenever issues of his mum comes between us and try as I may her issues come up too often because she always has one complain she is reporting me to my husband for even though they are always lies or twisted stories.

Response

I will tell you that both your husband and mother weren’t wrong in the advice they gave you on the issue of your mother-in-law, it’s just the balanced application of these two advises that you lack. In Romans 13:7-8 Paul said, “Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow-man has fulfilled the law.” From this passage you owe your mother-in-law respect and honor because she is your husband’s mother and because you and your husband are one in flesh and spirit she has become your mother and God says “Honor your father and mother so that your days may be long on earth.” And then because you also owe the continuing debt of love to everyone as a child of God, you owe her love. And this is why I said your biological mother didn’t advice you wrong.

But in marriage you are to leave mother and father behind and be united to your husband; that is God’s instruction in Genesis 2:24. So your husband was also very correct when he instructed you not to get unnecessarily close to his mother. The Bible says you should submit to your husband as unto the Lord (Ephesians 5:22), so you should obey your husband’s instruction above that of your mother. The instruction of your husband should be the priority instruction in your life.

Now here is how to balance out this situation: You are to love your mother-in-law, respect and honor her, but never let her get involved in any affairs that has to do with your marriage. Your marriage and all that has to do with it should be a no go area of either your mother-in-law or even your biological mother or any relative or friend. Any issue in your marriage should be handled between you, your husband and your God. Ecclesiastes 4:9 says “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work," and then Ecclesiastes 4:12 says, “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” This cord of three strands is you, your husband and your God. Any other attachment to this threesome is not allowed and should not be welcomed.

Also never try to get involved in any situation that involves your husband and his mother or family members. Before God, you and your husband are one in flesh and spirit, but before your mother-in-law, you are an intruder. Trying to play the devil’s advocate or trying to mend quarrels between him and his mother will be misconstrued by her and you will be seen as been too forward or domineering. So it’s safer you stay away from anything that concerns your husband and his mother or any relative for that matter.

If there is an issue and his mother tries to report to you or intimate you on the matter, politely refer her back to him in the nicest and most friendly manner; never attempt to come between them. All you should do is play your part of love, respect and honor. Any other involvement should come in the form of prayer within your closet for him as your husband and for your mother-in-law or any relative as it may be.

There are some mothers-in-law that are loving and kind; these ones really do have the mind of God in them and they will attract your love effortlessly by the love they show to you. But still you are to leave father and mother and be united to your husband as they Bible instructs; your marriage should still be shielded from their influence. And for the mean mothers-in-law, you still have to love them anyway, its just that it will take greater effort at love but God’s grace is sufficient for you. In all, do not encourage external interference in your God. God is all you need and He is always available for you.