August 15, 2011

• Choosing Submission (Part 2)

  Read Part 1 here.

  I heard someone say, "When a newly married couple smiles, every one knows why.  When a ten year married couple smiles, every one wonders why."  haha!

  The word submit is surely one of the most difficult, disliked, and divisive words in the Bible.  When Paul wrote Ephesians, a wife had no legal rights.  Her husband could do whatever he wanted in legal affairs without her consent.  A wife had to get her husband's permission before he could buy or sell property or even make a will.  This created a power struggle between husbands who abused their authority over women and wives who resented and rebeled against the husbands authority.  Although our culture has changed, those power struggles continue today.  Paul taught a way to move beyond power struggles.  It's called submission.

  Ephesians 5:21-26 says, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.  Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.  For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives submit to their husbands in everything.  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her..." 

  Submission means I voluntarily limit what I might do naturally in this relationship in order to benefit you.  If I have more power, instead of doing what I might do naturally and using that power to make my life easier, out of reverence for Christ I'll use my power instead to serve you.  I'll give up even my life in order to benefit you. 

  "In life, when you're in a place of less authority and power - don't resist and resent and rebel.  Out of reverence for Christ, respect and honor and work hard at pleasing the other person.  And when you're in a place of more power - don't lord it over the other person.  Don't use them to make your life easier.  Instead, use your power to benefit them." 

  Marriage is the highest adventure we can imagine.  It has drops and curves and climbs and dips!  When they come (not if they come, cause they will come) rather than allowing those things to push us apart, reach out to God and then reach over and hold on more tightly to one another!  Allow God to use those things to draw us into deeper intimacy with Him and each other.  The goal is when we come to the end of the ride screaming and laughing we say, "Wow!  What a ride!  I'd do it all over again with you!" 

  P.S.  The Chief made this video for a sermon series he did last summer.  No roller coaster series coming to LHC.  The video just cracks me up.  Still. 

  • 6:49 am
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