God sized needs on a man sized back...

This past Saturday at Coffee & Jesus we discussed respecting our husbands. We discussed Ephesians 5 & 1 Peter 3. I personally have walked through my own version of the popular book The Respect Dare over the last few years & have thought more than once that experience was a tough teacher. What I left C&J with swirling in my mind is something that one of our girls Janey brought up. She is so neat & has a way of relaying what she has learned in the Bible in a way you won't soon forget. While she was telling the story of it being Eve that feel for the deception in the Garden & not Adam I was struck with this. Eve was to be Adam's helpmeet. Not his mom, not his Holy Spirit, or His boss. His helpmeet ladies! This was so deep I had to search more. What I found was so clear. God knew how much our men would need our support, our words of encouragement, our gentle touch to help show we believe in them and you know what the enemy turned into motion that day? The nature of a woman to be persuaded by emotion & then to attempt to persuade her husband. I don't know about you all but control was something I was persistent & talented in. I learned early on in life how to get my way, even if it took the gift of persuasion or in many instances manipulation. I know first hand what it's like to feel justified in behaving this way after all, it had been up to many for much of my adult life to get things done (bills paid, kids cared for, dr appt, school, etc.) What I discovered back then was that my behavior towards my spouse didn't look much like a helper, much less a companion. I think many times women just naturally keep things together & that's all fine and well until we cross the line like Eve and start making executive decisions without consulting our husbands, start telling our husbands what their gonna do & tear them down with our words or loud voices when they don't. What did it cost Eve to listen to the tempter? It cost them a life of pleasure & ease in the Garden of Eden. I'm thankful God delivered me from that behavior & I'm thankful He opened my eyes to my destructiveness. I finally stopped looking at my husband as someone who had to fill all these longings inside me and began to see him as the man God created(this is a continued process that requires fully depending on God) The neat thing is when we treat our husbands as God has commanded we free up the Holy Spirit to freely move in our homes & in the life of our husbands. Changing the way I spoke to my husband completely changed our marriage. I took the God sized need & let God meet it instead of continuously placing my needs on my husbands man sized back. He felt respected therefore easily offered up the love I needed from him. I no longer told him what to do but instead asked if he could help me & he gladly did. I try not to have a hateful tone when I speak to him even when I'm tired or have had a bad day. I ask him his opinion & then value it enough to trust him to make our decisions as a couple & for our family. I know some of you may be thinking "Well, you don't know my husband?" and chances are I don't. I want to remind us all that God didn't call us to treat our husband's according to their behavior. He called wives in 1 Peter 3:1 to this specifically: "In the same way, you wives must accept the authority of your husbands. Then, even if some refuse to obey the Good News, your godly lives will speak to them without any words. They will be won over by observing your pure and reverent lives." There it is, crystal clear, without words by example of our own lives. I'm not addressing the men here because that’s another place & another time and I don't feel like that's my goal. I want women to be able to live free inside & joyfully follow what Christ has set before us. Not based on men but based on our love for God & our desire to please Him above any of our fleshly desires. There truly isn't a way to know for sure if this works unless you try it for yourself. It may be met with opposition & potential adversity because guess what when we make a stand to live for Christ we can expect resistance from the enemy. He was in the garden, he'll rear his ugly head now too. But we are victorious & Jesus already paved the way for us to live lives that pleased God. Respecting & honoring our husbands is a choice. Let's choose what we know to be TRUTH!

fc

 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.~Genesis 2:18-24