Dealing With a Third Party Situation in Your Marriage

I am so very grateful for the responses I always get from you. I really appreciate you and by the mercy and grace of God, I won’t stop sharing these truths with you as long as the living God inspires me to share.

It’s a beautiful day and a beautiful time and opportunity to share the word of God with you. So in today’s post I want us to consider the reaction that we can possibly have if for any reason we discover or suspect any infidelity in our marriage.

I have heard a lot of women say that that will be the day their marriage ends. I have equally heard a handful of men say they can never go on with such a marriage. Sincerely speaking I believe God Himself understands how hurting such a feeling can be because God in whose imagine and likeness we have been made is a jealous God. As a matter of fact, infidelity in marriage is about the only reason Jesus gave as a near acceptable reason why a man can divorce his wife. But let’s look at it from another angel.

I always try to advice that when you are faced with a situation the first thing to deal with is the emotion arising from the situation before dealing with the situation itself. For whatever problem you have in your marriage, and even in any other area of your life, never deal with the problem in the middle of boiling negative emotions. Because when you do, you might not particularly like the outcome of your reaction to the situation. So it’s always advisable to deal with the emotion first. Suspend your reaction to the problem for as long as it takes for you to deal with the emotions within you first.

With that said I want to go back to the intruder matter; what I am about to write next might seem almost impossible, but hear me out first. Now, when you suspect your spouse is cheating on you, its important not to react because your suspicion might be wrong. No matter what it looks like, it’s important to have a confirmation of your suspicion before jumping into conclusion.

If you have confirmed that what you fear is happening is actually happening, please take as much time you wish to either cry or mourn the betrayal that you feel, you can even ask God why He allowed that to happen to you, but please don’t react. Hold back your anger from reaction to the situation. Don’t fight your spouse, and don’t do anything irrational.

When you are done with the emotions and you are able to think objectively, weigh the options before you. First you can decide you don’t want to continue with the marriage, but before you take that decision, you need to understand that the marriage is not all about you alone. First you are in that marriage because you are on assignment for God, so you need to put that into consideration. Then you need to consider the children in the marriage, is sacrificing the happiness and the need for your children to grow up in a normal home worth the breakup of your marriage in the wake of a betrayal? Then you need to consider yourself, the time and effort and sacrifices you have put into building your home to the point it is at the time of the betrayal. Is all the effort going to waste really worth it? And then lastly you need to understand that once you go for the decision to divorce, God’s verdict is that you are not allowed to marry someone else (1 Corinthians 7:10-11). The option you have left is to reconcile with your spouse.

But there is a side to it that I think is very interesting; it’s the decision to forgive rather than walk away. When you choose to forgive, it’s important to do so prayerfully. You won’t just forgive and hang in their feeling miserable with a chance of a repeat and the probability of being taken for grant by your spouse. But when you choose to forgive, you hand over the situation into the hands of God; you commit your cheating spouse into the hands of God that the Lord will fill him or her with a sense of remorse and a sense of guilt such that he/she will not be willing to return to that sinful act any longer.

You can just imagine that you caught your husband in an affair with another lady and he expects you to react but you don’t. And he tries to push you to just say something but day in and day out you just keep mute over the matter without any word or reaction. You carry on with your life and marriage as if nothing happened; after a while such a man will be consumed with guilt, then with a deep sense of remorse. Without any reaction from your end but you pray rather than act, it won’t be long before the man calls off the affair and put his act together. That singular act of holding your peace rather than fighting back will make you his queen for life. He will never want to hurt your feelings again because he feels grateful to you for the way you handled his misbehavior.

I really understand that things like these are really hard to hold in, but they are not impossible. When you consider the fact that you have labored so hard on your marriage only for an intruder to come steal it away from you, you will be wise enough to keep that which God has blessed you with. But when you are weak with emotions, pray for grace from the Living God to see you through. He is always willing and available to answer when you call and provide for you all that you need when you need them. May the Lord bless our homes in Jesus name.

It’s Time to Change That Mindset 2

It’s a new day and a new week, and its almost the end of the 11th month of the year; God has kept us this far and personally I just want to give all the praise and glory and honor to Him. And again it's a very good feeling to share something valuable on this blog and impact your marriage in a positive way. I thank God for His word and I pray that our lives, marriages and home will please God and give us all round peace. I have come to discover that when a man and his wife are at peace with each other and I mean genuine peace and not pretense, there is prosperity in such a home. I plead with you to try it out and get back to me on your personal experience on this piece of experiment. Let your husband win all the arguments if you are the wife, and let your wife win all the arguments if you are the husband. First there will be peace in your home and then you will begin to discover that prosperity is creeping little by little. Just do away with your will to be right and see what happens next.

In my last post I promised to deliver the part B of the changing mindset post; one that speaks to the men. There are areas of marriage norm and culture that we have lived with and used as a yardstick to measure the performance of our spouses, but when these traditional norms are not giving us the desired result, then its important to change our mindset and measure the performance of our marriage based on different set of values.

Below are some areas where the men need to change their mindset when it comes to their marriage. Please just give these new values a good consideration, hopefully we will have better marital experiences with them.

• Your wife is your suitable helper; she is God’s assigned helper for your life that enables you succeed exceedingly. It’s like a man on assignment and he needs tools to succeed on that assignment. Without these tools he will fail woefully. Now what God has done for you as a man is to package all that you need for success in your assignment for God and all other areas of your life and put them all in the wife He has given to you as your suitable helper. So Proverbs 18:22 says “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.” Your wife is that container in which the Lord has package all that you need to succeed in life; she is the favor of God in your life in the form of a person. Rather than disdain and maltreat her, you better start handling her with care and love.

• The secret to unleashing your God given deposit packaged inside your wife is by loving her. Do you desire that your wife be all that you want her to be and more? Try loving her unconditionally and you will be surprised at the extent to which she would pour herself out for you. It is often said that women have the capacity to multiply whatever you give to them so if you desire to reap the best qualities from your wife, then give her your best and it will be returned to you in multiple fold.

• Maltreating your wife is a very wrong approach to handling the mistakes your wife does or the things you perceive not right about her. When you maltreat your wife, you stand the risk of having your prayers not answered by God (Malachi 2:13-14 and 1 Peter 3:7). When you maltreat your wife, you mishandle God's favor for your life. If you then do that, is it possible to go back to God for another gift? Obviously not. If you really need the favor of God in your life, then begin by taking good care of the container of favor that God has blessed you with - the wife of your youth. The best way to right the wrong in the life of your wife is to love her. God requires unconditional love from you to your wife and so when your wife does anything that displeases you, correct her in love and go the extra mile, pray for her. Pray and don’t stop praying until you see the desired changes in the life of your wife. 

In a nutshell, when you change your approach from seeing your wife as that woman who should just bear you children and rear them for you, cook your meals and be quiet when you speak and you form an habit of showing unconditional love and care for her, then you have the best woman in the world as your wife. If you desire to be the king of your home and in the life of your wife, then you should begin by making your wife the queen of your life. It’s just that simple. 

It’s Time to Change that Mindset

Good afternoon wonderful people of God I trust that we are enjoying our weekend. I was almost not sharing anything today being a weekend, but I after speaking with a friend I felt the need to share a word.

Quite a number of people are falling into depression to the point of developing psychiatric problems owing to issues in their marriages; some people have become suicidal as a result of problems in their marriages and a handful of some have opted for the divorce option as a means of escape from marriage problems. Now, does it have to get so bad? Marriage is a very beautiful thing but I am sensing that the number of people who feel fulfilled in their marital experience is far less than those who don’t. Some walk out of the marriage when they have exhausted their endurance threshold, while some stay for fear of shame or thought of where they would possibly go when they leave and the thought of starting life all over again.

We then get to wonder how God would fold His hands and watch our marriages degenerate to this level or is this what God had in mind when He instituted marriage at the beginning?

I have experienced God so well in my marriage to know and appreciate those words when God said in Jeremiah 29:11 that “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” So if this is the mind of God for us, then we need to begin to search Him out for better marital experience. In Jeremiah 33:3 God says, “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” And that’s just want we will do in today’s post.

I titled today’s post “It’s Time to Change that Mindset,” because I believe that if we dear to change our approach towards some issues in our marriage we will get better results. When you do something in a particular way and you are not getting the desired result, it’s just simply wise to change approach and so I will list some of the things we need to change our mindset on in marriage.

• As a wife, never expect your husband to be perfect. As a matter of fact it is because he isn’t perfect and he needs help that God placed you in his life as his suitable helper or helpmeet. Accept him for his many shortfalls and pray for him always.

• As a wife, never try to change your spouse because you can’t and never will in self-effort. When you see traits in him that are not right, pray about it and allow God make the change for you. You will only get frustrated and depressed trying to change your spouse. You call it helping him, he calls it dominating and controlling. Always be reminded that your husband’s character is beyond your control, his spending habit, talking habit, eating habit, choice of friends, his relationship with others are all outside of your control. So take care of the things that are within your control and leave those things which are out of your control. It is within your control to fulfill your God given assignment in his life do that with all diligence seeking God’s approval and anticipating God’s reward. When you do this, the Lord will do for you what you cannot do for yourself because nothing is outside of His control and He alone can right the wrongs in the life of your husband and put your love back into him and he will love you beyond what you ever imagined. Remember Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

• When you are in a troubled marriage, expect very little from your spouse. Remove your expectations from your husband and place them on God. Have this approach: It is God who assigned you as a helper into your husband’s life and it is from Him that you should expect a reward for work done. Don’t whine if you don’t get gifts like you should from your husband, a time will come that you will have abundance of gifts; by the time God is turning the situation around in your favor. Don’t hold it against your husband if he is not yet treating you like he should, the Lord who sent you on assignment in his life will equip you with all that you need to succeed. Know the Lord who is your God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. If your husband is not fulfilling his responsibility as a husband by providing for his family, that is his problem and not yours. Malachi 2:13-14 and 1 Peter 3:7 says he risk his prayers not being answered by God, but as for you, you will never lack anything good because you put your hope in God. The Lord will always find a way to meet all your needs, if not through your husband; He has a million other ways to do that. But be rest assured that your needs will always be meet as long as you remain in Christ Jesus. Never let your husband’s action make you lose focus of God in your life or your assignment as a wife.

• In a troubled marriage, your husband will always say things or do thing that will hurt your feelings. But your husband’s actions and words will only affect you to the extent to which you let it. You can go on and reminisce or even meditate on your husband’s wrong doings and get depressed by them or you can choose you block it out of your thoughts. So in short your husband’s actions and words affect you to the extent to which you allow it. When you keep going over it again and again the end result is depression. But when you see him as a man needing help and you have been placed in his life by God to help him, you will pray for him more rather whine over his actions or inactions, noting that it is for that purpose that God made you his wife and God expects that you help rather than get hurt by his actions. Always keep it at the for front of your mind that whatever you do for your husband you do in obedience to the word of God and when you obey God’s word you receive God’s reward.

I so strongly believe that if we can re-orientate ourselves with these values then we will be having more happy and focused women in marriage that can face the challenges of their marriage headlong and still come out victorious. Depression and suicide thought over marital issues will be on the decline. And the beauty of it all is that at the end of the day our husbands will love us more than we imagined because we let God do the work for us that we could not do by ourselves.

Yes I have the men in mind too; by the special grace of God, in my next post we will deal with changing mindset for the men. So please just keep your fingers crossed, it’s going to be a very interesting one too. 

Feeling Neglected? 4

Hello people how are you doing? I trust the Lord that we are all doing great and we give all glory to God.

So today we continue in our Bible research on how to earn the love and attention of our spouses. I pray that the Lord has spoken to your hearts from the previous lessons we have learned and He will still speak to our hearts as we continue to learn.

Quite a number of times, I marvel at the insight of God; in truth we cannot match the wisdom of God in any way and when God tells the husbands that they should love their wives just in the manner in which Christ loves the church He sure knows what He is talking about.

As a woman, I can tell you for free that there is no better way to earn a woman’s attention, love, devotion, respect and even submission than to prayerfully love her. I will always add the word prayerfully because it's actually not your self-effort love that makes your wife the wife you desire or want her to be, but rather it is God who makes that woman the perfect woman for your life through the love that you show to her in obedience to God’s instruction for your life as a husband.

Ephesians 5:25-29 states God’s instruction to the husbands and begins with: “²⁵Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” When a man loves his wife because of what she has to offer, then the wife’s self-services becomes the reward of his love and the moment the wife changes in character the love ends because that which is fueling his love for her has gone dry.

But when a man loves his wife, not just because of the self-service that he derives from her but as a man obeying the command and instructions of God for his life as a husband, then come what may, he won’t stop loving his wife. Even when the wife misbehaves, the husband is quick to forgive her despite the hurt he feels. This unconditional love has the capability of filling the wife with guilt and make her come into repentance over her wrong actions and is also quick to seek forgiveness. This is when you hear people say that the marriage has been tried and tested but it is still standing because the fuel of love in the life of the husband in not found in the good deeds and actions of his wife, but is found in God.

When you have a wife that you need to win her love and attention, love her unconditional and let that unconditional love that springs from the your will to obey the command of God in your life as a husband compel you to pray for her. When you continue to pray and love her, it’s just a matter of time for her to become the virtuous woman that you seek in her, knowing that it’s not just your love that will change her life, but that it is God working in her and bringing about the changes you seek in her working through your love for her.

And so we round up this four part series on winning the attention and love of your spouse. By the special grace of God, the next post is something to look forward to. Until then, stay blessed. 

Feeling Neglected? 3

It’s a bright new day and a great opportunity to do something for God; so if you are yet to be a blessing today, then make sure that before the day runs out, you do something that will count for God’s Kingdom in the life of someone.

I was hoping that we will be moving on to check out the men aspect of our discussion; how a husband can earn the attention and love of his wife, but I think it’s better I share some of the responses I got from the last post and try to answer some of the questions asked. So below are some of the questions raised and the answers to these questions will follow.

Question

@ Mrs. Derin Obasa, “when you combine your outward beauty with the inner beauty of submission to your husband which shows forth through the purity and reverence of your life and you garnish it with prayers to God, you will not just earn your husband’s love and attention, you will be the queen of his life.”

This quotation is from today’s word. Hmmmmmm, I know of a wife who has done both beauty and service to her husband for almost 5 decades, I have never seen such loyalty, patience and submission and perseverance in my entire life, and her reward is nothing but being taken for granted, neglect, and treated shabbily. Now the lady is soooo bitter that all her years of labor to this man was all in vain. And she can hardly free herself, forgive and live happy for the rest of her life. What is your take on this ma.

Response 

I am so very sorry that this can be happening to a dedicated wife in our own perspective. The word of God does not lie and God would not give an instruction for us to follow and then not give the benefits accrued to those who have followed through with His word diligently. You will note that I mentioned in my last post that a woman can slave for her husband and yet be neglected, this is because God didn’t asked us to slave for our husbands, He said we should submit to the authority of our husbands.

A woman can respect her husband, protect his interest with her blood and yet will be neglected and this is because there is a difference between respect and submission. In fact there are so many prayerful Christian wives in that category of which I was one of them. From the very first day that I got married, I worshiped the ground my husband stepped on. You would hardly find me talking back at my husband and I would do everything to avoid an argument with him but that didn’t make him love me or treat me with the dignity of a wife. In fact I saw myself as a glorified housemaid to him and this went on until I began to grow hatred for him.

When I noticed that I was beginning to hate my husband, I began to pray and ask God to help me. The Lord saw the sincerity of my heart and spoke to my heart that I needed to submit to my husband. Sincerely I was almost angry with God, and I thought what more submission was there to give, as far as I was concerned I had given it all. But I went back to God and prayed that if there is still any submission to give, then He should help me out and give it through me.

It was not until then that I realized that I only respected and honored by husband, but I really didn’t submit to him or obey his instructions. Because I felt more righteous than my husband, I didn’t think it right to follow his instructions because I didn’t just want any man to lead me away from God. But the Lord being faithful helped me to submit to my husband. Anytime my husband gave me an instruction and I was going to do anything to the contrary, that small voice will always put me in check and gradually I started submitting. Overtime I began to see the changes in my husband’s attitude towards me and today, after almost 13 years of marriage, I feel like a new bride again. For over 5 years now my marriage has been a paradise for me. Though we are not rich but we have what money cannot buy in the love, joy and peace we share in our home.

One truth we need to understand is that nothing we do or do not do can change our husbands, only God can. Now if we want God to intervene in our situation and change it positively then we first need to follow God’s instruction. If God says submit to your husband, don’t submit to your husband because you expect any returns from him, but because you expect a reward from God. Your husband didn’t instruct that you submit to him, God did. And so the reward is not earned first from your husband, but from God which is then made manifest through your husband.

You and I might look at this woman who has been loyal, submissive, endured much, is patient and shows forth perseverance in her marriage and give her the credit, but what is God’s assessment of her? Has she convinced God enough with her submission to her husband for Him to do in her marriage what her self-effort cannot do and make her husband love her? Or are there hidden secrets that are known only to God and not you and I?

God not a partial God, for every instruction He gives, there is a blessing attracted to those who obey. If we truly are in submission to our husbands as unto the Lord, then we can be sure that the Lord will come into that marriage and perfect all that concerns it.

Question

Derin, please can you tell us the difference between respect and submission for clarity sake.

Response

The dictionary defines respect as “to hold in esteem or honor; to show regard or consideration for. Another definition says esteem for or a sense of worth or excellence of a person.” So I would say that to respect someone is to hold the person in high esteem or honor or to have high regard for the person. But on the other hand, to submit is to yield oneself to the authority of another; so to say that you are placing yourself under the authority of another person. The synonym word for submission is obedience. So when you submit to someone, you obey the person’s instructions and commands.

Now from these two definitions we can obviously see that we can actually respect our husbands, hold them in high esteem, regard and honor them and still not submit to their authority by obeying their instructions. But when we submit to our husbands, we respect them in doing so. Now if we find it hard to obey our husband's instructions who we can see, how can we then prove to God that we are capable of obeying Him who we cannot see?

What a lot of women have for their husbands is respect which they conveniently translate to mean submission. But respect will not earn you your husband’s love and attention, obedience will. Submission is what God instructs us to give and not just respect. And when you have to submit to your husband please do so prayerfully as one obeying God’s command not expecting a reward from your husband, but from God.

Question 

Derin but there are people who don’t do both (respect or submit to their husbands) and their marriage still works out.

Response

Well one truth is that many people speak down on their spouses in the open but in the privacy of their homes, the reverse is the case. Don’t just believe the gist of a wife who talks down on her husband behind him, when they are both seated and she has the courage to disdain him in public then you can believe her claims.

But one truth is that no man will endure a marriage where his wife has no form of respect for him at all; men are more logical in the actions they take than doing things out of emotions. No man will tie himself to the wimp of any woman if there is nothing he is gaining from her. So my sister, if this wife truly does not respect or submit to her husband and her marriage still works, then she is satisfying him in other ways untold, unless such a man has a similar calling to that of Prophet Hosea in the Bible. If she is not making good her sex activities, then she is his ATM machine. With all due respect to all men, this is just being real.

If we want God’s intervention in our marital situation, then we must follow God’s rules and instructions in our marital lives. As God’s children we operate only by God’s rules. 

Feeling Rejected? 2

Hello people, it’s another blessed day for the people of God to praise Him and live in victory. The greatest secret to divine victory is to praise God even in the face of great challenges. You get your enemies confused when you put up a positive attitude and show a calm spirit even when everything around says otherwise. You move God to handle the impossible desires of your heart when you praise despite your circumstances.

In my last post we began trying to look at the possible ways of gaining our spouse's attention and love in the face of obvious rejection, and the first thing I discussed was the need to please your husband with your outward appearance. But like I mentioned yesterday; of what use is a beautiful face and appearance when the attitude and character is ugly. 1 Peter 3:1-2 reads, “Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own 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, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.

So in today’s post we will consider how we can draw our husband’s attention and love to ourselves through our inner beauty. According to 1 Peter 3:1-2, this inner beauty consists of our submission to our husbands and the purity and reverence of our lives.

In my walk with the Lord as He began to teach me on steps to take to heal my troubled marriage some years back, I learned that respect for our husbands is quite different from submitting to their authority. Although you cannot submit to your husband without respecting him, but you can respect your husband without submitting to him and this is the mistake we make as wives. Although you don’t argue with your husband, you don’t talk back at him when he shouts insults at you; you can even go as far as doing his personal chores, wash his cloths, cook his meals and take care of all his chores, yet you might not be submissive to him. When you do all these without submission and he does not show you love and reciprocate the attention you have given to him, you get frustrated and begin to whine.

But what will do the miracle of drawing your husband’s attention and love to you is submission. The synonym word for submission that best fits what I am talking about is obedience; that is obeying your husband’s instruction. This is getting to sit when he tells you to sit, and getting to stand when he tells you to stand. When you practice and imbibe the habit of avoiding those things that you know displeases your husband and you replace them with those things that you know will make him happy. In doing this prayerfully, it is only a matter of time before you draw the love and attention that you so desperately long for from your husband.

I just mentioned prayerfully doing this because it is God who redirects your husband’s love to you and cause him to notice and appreciate your submission to him. When you learn and practice submitting to your husband, you are also learning to respect him and respect his authority over your life. Ephesians 5:22 says “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.”

Surprisingly, women find it very easy and convenient to obey their bosses at work; they follow their boss’s instruction to the later and this they do for fear of losing their jobs. But yet they find it so convenient to disobey their husbands at home and treat him with disdain and disrespect and yet whine and complain for lack of love and attention. What we have failed to realize is that just as we stand the chance of losing our jobs when we disobey and disrespect our official bosses in the office so also do we stand the chance of losing our marriage, our peace, the love and attention of our husbands if we disobey and disrespect the God ordained head over our lives (our husbands).

When you combine your outward beauty with the inner beauty of submission to your husband which shows forth through the purity and reverence of your life and your garnish it with prayers to God, you will not just earn your husband’s love and attention, you will be the queen of his entire life.   

Feeling Neglected?

Hello wonderful people of God. Yes it’s another beautiful day and another wonderful reason to be thankful to God. I took a brief overview of my life and I can’t just help but thank God for His mercies, grace and goodness. By His grace and mercy alone we’re closing in on the last six weeks of the year and it’s another great and glorious year coming to an end by the goodness and grace of God alone. And it’s another wonderful opportunity to share the truth of God’s words for growth, peace, joy and love to be experienced and enjoyed in our marriages.

Quite a handful of wives either complain of been neglected by their husbands or that they feel neglected by their husbands. One hidden truth that we should realize and understand well is that in order to get the attention you require from your spouse, you need to earn it. You need to work hard to earn your husband’s attention. And that is the simple truth. So in the next couple of post that I will be sharing, we will be looking at the various things we can do to earn the attention of our spouses; and I mean earning this attention in a positive manner that is wrapped up in tender love.

In truth its not only the wives that feel neglected in a marriage, the husbands feel so too. But we will take the matter one at a time starting with the various ways in which a wife can earn and keep her husband’s attention and love. So we will start with the wife’s appearance. How she takes care of her appearance.

In my last post I shared a story of a wife whose husband’s complaint was that her dressing was not impressive and she does not socialize and that he attributed to her addiction to the Bible. In truth, this man is not alone in his views, quite a number of wives have driven their husbands into the waiting arms of strange women owing to their skewed believe that as a Christian moderation in dressing has been termed as never looking good at all. As a matter of fact some women are of the opinion that making effort to beautify yourself is a sin. Some churches have absolutely kicked against the use of jewelry for women of God and facial makeup for women is a taboo.

In as much as I don’t have anything against these doctrines as long as it’s a doctrine held by both the husband and the wife, but how do you explain a wife who has totally downplayed the need to make herself look good for the pleasure of her husband in the name of holiness. If you are married to a man who wants you to dress well and look good, then why deprive him and make your marriage an unnecessary misery? Did God not say that you should submit to your husband as unto the Lord? Where is submission in disobedience? Or is God an author of confusion? You cannot earn the love and attention of your husband when you disobey him or do not submit to his authority. No matter how mean or harsh a husband is, he will soften up and become ever so loving when you treat him to a continuous does of submission and prayers.

Esther 2:12

Before a girl’s turn came to go in to King Xerxes, she had to complete twelve months of beauty treatments prescribed for the women, six months with oil of myrrh and six months with perfumes and cosmetics.

Genesis 12:11-14

As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.

When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that she was a very beautiful woman.

Genesis 24:53

Then the servant brought out gold and silver jewelry and articles of clothing and gave them to Rebekah; he also gave costly gifts to her brother and to her mother.

1 Peter 3:3-4

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and wearing of gold jewelry and fine cloths. Instead, 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.

1 Timothy 2:18

I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

I have taken time to dig through the Bible in search of what the word of God says concerning the appearance of a woman who profess to worship God as I strongly believe that God is not an author of confusion, all that we need is spiritual revelation of the truth of His word.

In all that I have read and I understand of the word of God; as a child of God, nothing prohibits a woman from wearing gold jewelry, or braiding her hair and making good effort in looking good. What I understand from the word of God is that this should not supersede the inner beauty of a woman of God which consists of good deeds and a gentle and quiet spirit. One does not negate the other, but that there should be an appropriate balance between the two with more effort on the inner beauty far above the effort made on the outer beauty. Of what use is a beautiful woman with an ugly character?

God does not expect a woman to have her hair unkempt in an effort to be holy and also the abstinence of the use of gold and silver jewelry and the wearing of fine cloths does not translate to holiness. So if your husband enjoys seeing you look good and well decently dressed wearing fine decent clothing and gold jewelry and you disobey him or deny him that good pleasure, does that then translate to the fact that you are holy? Between disobeying your husband or to wear good and decent cloths with gold jewelry in obedience and submission to your husband, which one of the two scenarios pleases the Lord?

There are many occasions in which we suffer in ignorance. We erode the peace and joy of our marriage just because we pursue outward holiness at detriment of our obedience to the word of God that instructs the wife to submit to her husband in all things (Ephesians 5:22-24). Do you want to earn the love and attention of your husband? Then do that which pleases him. If your husband loves to see you beautifully dressed, then oblige him that pleasure. God will not send you to hell is doing this. And if your husband forbids that you wear gold jewelry, please run away from them. Disobedience to your husband is disobedience to the word of God. Your dressing and appearance should tally with what pleases your husband.

But please note that this does not translate you to committing obvious sins and wearing indecent clothing in public places and exposing parts of your body. DRESS BEAUTIFULLY, BUT YET DECENTLY.

Looking beautiful is in line with God’s will for us. Sarai was so beautiful that the King of Egypt took her to be his wife; and not just the king of Egypt (Genesis 12:10-20), even the King of Gerar took her as his wife too (Genesis 20). She was beautiful enough that her husband looked at her in the eyes and said to her you “I know what a beautiful woman you are?” Won’t you like it if your husband looks into your eyes and say to you, “you are a beautiful woman, " or would you rather he says that to someone else.

Your husband won’t tell you that if you neglect yourself in the bid to pursue outward holiness. If you don’t want your husband to neglect you, please don’t neglect yourself. But in doing this please balance your effort at beauty. Your inner beauty is of more importance than your outward beauty. May the Lord help us walk in His will and way at all times.  

In my next post we will look at another important way by which we are sure to attract our husbands' attention in a positive way. Please look forward to it.