Welcome to the PoG blog!
Thank you for taking the time to check out today’s blog. One way we honor God is with how we spend our time. You are entering into a time of intentional connection with the maker of the universe, our Heavenly Father! Before you start reading the scripture verse chosen for today,
please spend some time in prayer. I recommend you ask God to: 1) free you from any distractions that might keep you from focusing on God’s word 2) quiet your heart and mind so you would be able to clearly hear His voice and 3) speak to you through his Holy Word and through this time of prayer and meditation.
Ephesians 5:22 – 27
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
I found myself thinking of a number of married couples, specifically my wife and I and a close relative and her husband, as Pastor Delton preached on Ephesians 5 this Sunday. The word that keeps coming into my consciousness is “submission”. God is calling husbands to submit to Him and wives to submit to their husbands. I love the definition given for submission – submission is a surrender of the absoluteness of my personal will.
As I look back at the times when there was serious conflict in our marriage I can see now that I was pretty much sticking to the absoluteness of my personal will. If I’d had an attitude more along the lines of “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” as I related to my wife, I’m convinced our level of conflict would have decreased significantly.
My number one responsibility in my role as a husband is to love my wife. Love is the first and most important thing a woman is looking for from her husband. If the wife does not feel loved I am fairly certain there will be troubles in the marriage. When my wife and I were having some pretty serious problems, we spoke to a couple we both respected. The woman told me I needed to “win back my wife’s heart; demonstrate to her (not just with words) that you truly do love her”. I took that to heart and it has made a huge difference in our marriage.
Submission is critical in the life of a Christian: whether married or single, male or female, young or old. May God grant us the strength and courage to submit to God and to each other!
May God bless your day,
Mark