Submitted Wives

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

It has been said, it has been said many times that it takes a village to raise a child. But someone added one time that it takes a lot of solid, stable marriages to create a village. It might take a village to raise a child, but it takes a lot of stable marriages to make a village. Good marriages are the cornerstone for a healthy society. Good marriages, statistically speaking, good marriages reduce poverty levels, they increase mental health, they create more stability inside homes. Even physical health is helped by good marriages.

And we know this, statistics bear this out, sociology bears this out, but we know this because God has designed it this way. And last week we began looking at what are called the household codes in the book of Ephesians. So we've been going through Ephesians all year and so we are in a series right now, Ephesians five and six, called The Submitted Life. We've been working through all of these things, like we talked about the submitted life, we talked about being submitted to the light, we talked about being a submitted church, last week we talked about submitted husbands. Today we are talking about submitted wives. Now, I realize all the,

but I want you to know that probably reflects more about our society than it does the word. In the submitted life at home, so last week we talked about husbands, this week's his wives, next week is gonna be families and jobs. The goal is for families in churches to follow hard after Jesus in such a way that it comes out in sacrificial love. It doesn't come out in dominance or in being right all the time, it comes out in sacrificial love. And not just sacrificial love within that family, but sacrificial love pouring out to other people that when a home is submitted to the Lord, the mark of that home should be that it is a blessing to more than just that home. It is a blessing to others, it is a blessing to neighbors, to friends.

In fact, it's so out of vogue, if you really wanna freak your friends out and you're married, you can say, look, hey guys, I'm submitted to my spouse because of Jesus, cool. Whether you're a husband or a wife, you're gonna get an eye roll, you're gonna get a sneer, you're gonna get teas, you're at least gonna get questions because it's entirely counter-cultural. For men to say that they're submitted to their wives and they're, oh, I mean, you just get all out of sorts with that, you know, it's like, well, it's a different word in the Bible, okay, I get it. If you wanna use how the Bible talks about it, the husbands give themselves up for their wives, okay? You tell me that's not submitted, go ahead.

Husbands give themselves up for their wives and that's what we talked about all last week and if you are interested in hearing about submitted husbands, it is on our podcast, you can listen to it on our website through Spotify, anywhere you listen to podcasts is great. The reason that you'll get all of that is because it's so counter-cultural, it's so different. So for husbands, you wanna give yourself up for your wives. So when you emulate Jesus, we talked about this last week a little bit, when you emulate Jesus, when you demonstrate the gospel, you create space for love and when you do that, people in that space and beyond are spiritually refreshed. Husbands, it doesn't just work at home, it also works at work, it also works among your friends. When you are giving yourself up for other people, it spiritually benefits them in a way that really I can't quantify, the Bible doesn't elucidate very much

and other than to say it is a blessing, it is a blessing to many. And this is how God works in the world. God doesn't wanna just bless you for you, he's always blessing you for the benefit of others. He's blessing our church for the benefit of others, he blesses your family for the benefit of others and this is what it's for, providing spiritual refreshment to other people. And husbands, when you do the opposite, it suffocates and stars people spiritually. Right? And so for husbands, again, giving yourself up for your wives, but for wives, it is a different story, it is a different endeavor, it's not the exact same thing, it's something different. And we see that even in the way it's depicted in Ephesians five, if you look, Ephesians five, 22 and 23, and we're gonna be staying pretty much there, I got one other, maybe two other scriptures to use besides that, but we're gonna be in Ephesians five,

the end of Ephesians five. It says wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Wives are to submit to their own husbands. And it gives a how very quickly, it says as unto the Lord. We will get to the how in a minute. But what we're gonna look at the next immediate verses, 23 and 24, they deal with why. They deal with why wives submit to husbands. Why is it this way?

And it says it's because the husband is the head of the wife. The reason that wives submit to husbands is because they are the head. In Greek, that word means head. There's not like a special kind of like, oh, it means source, it means something, no, it means head. And it's the same word for your head, kaphale. And last week, we kind of touched on this briefly. We mentioned biblical male headship. Right now, I wanna dive in because it matters. Because it's saying why I submit to your husbands because the husbands are the head of your family. They're your head, okay?

I wanna be clear on headship. I wanna give you three things on headship. Headship is about position, not value. Headship is about position, not value. So wives, your family's leader is your husband, okay? Ray Ortland, who is a great guy to listen to, he wrote a book called, A Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. He said, in the partnership of two spiritually equal human beings, man and woman, the man bears the primary responsibility to lead the partnership in a God-glorifying direction. So headship is about position. In other words, headship means you go first. We can see this anecdotally if you are at home with your wife or if you would, let's just say, we're seeing like some house cam of somebody intruding into a house, okay? And you see the husband and wife there. If you see the husband, take the wife by the shoulders and put her in front of him.

Okay, that guy's gonna get roasted, right? And he should, he should. Every man in here is just going like, no, like no. If you see the wife put her husband in front of her, anybody flinching on that? No, not at all. We're like, yeah, yes, that's what should be happening. Right there, yes. Yes, girl, put your man in front of you. Yes, let him be the meat shield. Yes, okay. Because that, look, the husband, that's where he goes. He rides the tip of the spear. He is in front. He's protecting. He's the one who is facing some hard stuff on behalf of the people behind him. So positionally, that's what headship looks like. It is not, however, value. So if you read just a side verse here, 1 Corinthians 11:3, you're talking about headship. It says, but I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ. The head of a wife is her husband. And the head of Christ is God.

If the head of Christ is Father God, it's not about value. If the head of Christ is Father God, it's not about rank. It's not about any of that. It's position. Headship is about position. It's not about value. Secondly, headship is about authority, not capability. Husbands, you have a God-given authority. Wives, respecting your husband's authority means that you are agreeing with God's design. It doesn't mean that you believe he can never do wrong. It doesn't mean that you think he's the pinnacle of manhood. It doesn't mean any of those things. It means that you are respecting the way that God has designed things to work. It is about authority, God-given authority, not capability. Okay, this is all this nonsense about, hey, women have smaller brains. Women are dumb and can't handle pressure. Women, there's things that they should do or where they belong. That is, it gets passed around quite often.

Sometimes between fathers and sons. Definitely between some coworkers. It gets talked about a lot. Headship is not about, however, headship is not about capabilities. Wives are more than capable to handle a lot of things. In fact, there's a lot of studies out there that'll show that women have higher pain thresholds. Women, they're capable in a lot of ways. And not just able to have babies, but able to bear the pain of having a baby. That is just a different thing. Men and women are not the same, okay? But it doesn't mean that one is less capable than the other. That's not why headship is there. It actually has nothing to do with capabilities.

And headship, lastly, is about responsibility, not privilege. Responsibility, not privilege. Husbands are responsible for their family's decisions. Wives, when you submit to your husband's leadership, you are leaning into a God-designed chain of command. When there is a problem, and you wanna get out ahead of your husband, and you wanna make the decision, you wanna push him aside, you wanna not listen to him, you become part of the problem. Submitting to your husband's leadership means you are leaning into God-designed chains of command. Headship is not a privilege. Biblical male headship should, let me be real clear, guys, biblical male headship should lead away from abuse, not toward it. It should lead away from abuse, not toward it. If somebody is abusing their wives and claiming biblical male headship, they need to read the Bible. It ain't biblical. It's not a God-intended use of authority.

Does God abuse you? No, God's kind with you. God waits for you, he leads you. God's patient with you. Biblical male headship warns against trying to keep women under your thumb. It warns against that, it doesn't promote it at all. And the question comes, the question will come out, won't some people abuse this? Don't some people abuse this? And the answer is yes, people do. They abuse lots of things, actually. It doesn't mean the thing is bad, but it does mean it gets abused. And the protection against that is the command to men. You can see it here, you can see it last week, you could say, hey, how does Jesus lead the church? How's Jesus self-sacrificing, how does he benefit the church to be able to benefit other people? There's no room for abuse in that. Abuse is never, ever condoned in scripture. And what you see over and over again, and in verse 23, it's why submit to your husbands,

and it says, as Christ is head of the church, his body and is himself its savior. It's made more clear in the next verse, Ephesians 5:24. It says, now, as the church submits to Christ, so also why should submit in everything to their husbands? I want you to just take a second. Wives in particular, but everybody, let's look at it. I want you to notice the regard for Jesus in all of it. You're not submitting to your husbands because your husbands are great. You're not submitting to your husbands because their leadership is awesome. You're not submitting to your husbands for any other reason other than as to the Lord. You're submitting to your husband as to the Lord, as the church submits to Jesus. So why submit to your husbands? Now, there's a couple of caveats, and I think these caveats are important, and they actually help us understand these verses. Your husbands are not Jesus.

It's a really good thing to mention. So when we get all caught up in Christ following the church, we're not, your husbands are not Jesus. They might be head of your family, but they're not head of the cosmos. They can't will things into existence everywhere. They're not the word of God. And wives are not the church. The wife, this is not a call to worship your husband. The church worships Jesus, but wives do not worship your husbands, worship Jesus.

You don't pray through your husband, right? That's not, there's some limits on what this picture is giving us, you understand, right? I'm being silly, but you need to understand this is for a, this correlation should give us a framework. It should help us understand and see that we are created to complement one another. Men and women are equal, but they are made to come together as a whole, right? If it's true of the same thing, it doesn't come together. You can get next to each other, but you can't really come together. Husbands and wives are made different in order to come together to make a whole. Equality gets confused for sameness. They're not the same. They are the same value, but they're not, you can't go around pretending like men and women are interchangeable for one another. They are not, they're very different. And so the question becomes, like, how do we work,

how do we work within all of these differences to identify, to celebrate, and to make room for all of this? Well, here's the plan. Husbands, give yourself up for your wives. Wives, listen, give yourselves to your husband. Husbands, give yourself up for your wives. Wives, give yourself to your husband. This is commonly called complementarianism, okay? I know. It's like we could've made that word shorter. No, okay, well. And all this does simply is expresses the idea that two things are the same, that they are made in complement to one another. They are supposed to come together, okay? Some people say bad things and weird things about complementarianism. Most of what they say sounds like nonsense to me. All I see is that in the created order, God made men and women different, and he made them to come together. Complementarianism, okay, here we are.

So for husbands, oh, sorry, one more verse, here we go, Ephesians 5, 33, so at the very end. So we did husbands first last week, but in the order of Scripture, wives are first, then husbands, and then there's a recap statement at the end. Ephesians 5, 33, it says, "'However, let each one of you love his wife as himself,'" talk about that last week, "'and let the wife see that she respects her husband. "'In a submitted home, "'husband's submission looks like pricing your wife.'" We talked about this. We talked about attention, detailed attention, right? Knowing your wife, loving your wife in her moment. Wives, submission looks like respecting your husbands. And when these two are in concert, let me just give you a picture here. When these two things are working together, you have people like it says in Romans 12 who are outdoing one another to show honor to one another.

You have people that aren't lording over one another, aren't somehow trying to trade this for that, like you do this for me and I'll do this for you. No, it's service first. I'm gonna lay myself down for you. I'm gonna give myself to you. I'm gonna prize you. I'm gonna respect you. And you have families that are laying down their lives for one another in the everyday. But I really wanna push for practicality. I really wanna say, okay, that all sounds good as a theme, as a concept. That's good. How's this work out in everyday? How's this look? And we need to look at it in two different ways, just like we did for husbands. We need to talk about what submission looks like in the everyday. And then we need to talk specifically about what submission looks like in decision making. Those are two different areas, one's more specialized but it's still helpful. Submission of husbands in the everyday.

I'm just gonna give you one phrase. And ladies, I think it'll just be helpful. This is encouragement toward confidence. Why submit to your husbands by giving encouragement toward confidence. I'm gonna unpack this. Submission looks like emotional support. Why is when you encourage your husband, and I don't mean, look, I don't mean like good job. I don't mean like go get them, tiger. I don't, I mean actual encouragement. I mean, I get the, I'll get the arm punch every once in a while from Christie and that's cool. But here's what I mean. I mean eye contact. I mean stopping and looking at him in the eye and saying, I'm proud of you. You're a good man. I am so glad I married you. We are gonna get through this together.

Why, can I tell you? I mean, I don't wanna make all the promises on behalf of all the men in the room, but I will tell you, when you, if you will look him in the eye and you will say those things and you will mean half of it, he will run through a wall for you. I mean, I'm serious. That is, there is no motivation like a woman who believes in you. There's none. There's no motivation like, I mean, I'm getting a little bit clamped thinking about it. It means so much to the men in your life for you to be able to recognize what they're good at and encourage them toward it. Man alive. Run through a wall for you. Men can be pretty straightforward, but they are not all the same. So each man, I would just encourage you, each man has kind of their own encouragement code a little bit. They're not, again, they're not that complicated. I don't wanna paint it too weird here, but some men are more kind of emotionally self-aware,

okay, and when they need something, they can say something. They can say, hey, I'm having a day right now. I'm fighting off depression right now, right? In that case, if you have a man who is just in tune with his own emotions and can tell you those things, I would just encourage you, wives, listen and discern. What do I need to do? If you've got a man who talks about his feelings, awesome. You've been given a gift from heaven, okay? I know it doesn't always feel like that, but you have been given a gift from heaven, okay? For a man to be able to talk about his feelings. Most men are not emotionally in tune with what's going on in here. They're just not. They're not trying to not. They're just not. When you ask a man who, and this is most men, I mean, to be honest, when you ask them, how are you feeling, and they say, okay, I swear, I swear they believe it. I know, it sounds strange, but they are,

they're just not, they have no words, they're not identifying it, it's not in their consciousness, they're not asking how I feel about something, okay? It's just true. I realize that's frustrating and makes them opaque, and you wanna ring their necks. I understand, I get it, but they're not hiding something, they're just not aware, okay? In that case, okay, you need to understand the code of emotional presence for men. So here's it, here's the code.

Every emotion that is not happy is mad. Every single one. Are you sad? You're mad. Are you frustrated? You're mad. Are you tired? Mad. You feeling overwhelmed? Mad. You hungry? Some of you? You get so weird when you're hungry. You get mad, okay? You get mad. A lot of times when a man is angry, I mean, you kinda have to spin the wheel, like, what's he angry about? Like, there could be so many things, because it just comes out in anger, okay? This is just, and look, we're not trying, we're not like, you know, we're not thinking to ourselves, you know, I'm really sad right now, but I don't wanna talk about my sadness, so I'm just gonna be mad about it. No, like, we're really mad about being angry, okay? I cannot explain that to you. The Lord has made me very self-aware of my feelings, I know how I feel very often, okay? It's great, mostly, and even I, even though I can articulate a lot of that,

even though I'm self-aware on those things, in that issue, the Lord has talented me in that particular capacity. I still have times when I'm like, I'm just mad. I don't even know why, I'm just mad, I'm just mad, I'm just grumpy, I'm just yelling at something, I don't know, I'm just mad. And so women, I would just tell you, obviously, like, you know, there's unacceptable levels of anger, you know, if you're just, guys, if you're just around punching walls, don't expect your wife to be like, hey, what's going on? Like, no, that lady's giving you all the space, and you don't need to punch walls, okay? But if you're mad about something, and women, if you see that your husband's mad, it's okay to say, I see that you're mad.

Do you wanna talk about it? The answer is no. Wait, give it a little bit more time. Are you mad? I'm less mad right now, okay. Do you wanna talk about it? I realize that is a slow, plotting way forward, but I will tell you, that's almost the only way. Because when you have somebody that doesn't identify their own thing going on, and you have to help them do that, you gotta wait for them to calm down. And wives, let me tell you, the Lord has specifically made you in a way that you can intuit and help your husband calm down.

Okay, you know how to do it. You know how to change the subject. You know how to get him thinking about something different. You know how to, you just know how to do it. Or just tame the savage beast. I mean, you know how to do it. I realize that's not great advice, but that's, listen, I'm a 48-year-old man, so give me a break. I watched this happen kind of in real time. I watched a married couple go through a very, very, very difficult time where the character of her husband was under pretty severe attack. It was questioned openly. And I watched her, I watched her emotionally support her husband. She never babied him. She never mothered him. She supported him. She didn't say, you're so dumb. Can't believe you got in this mess, but I'm still here for you. She said, I hate that you're going through this, but I know that you're gonna handle this well and I trust in you to make good decisions

in the middle of this. I know what we're in the middle of is not perfect, it's not great, but I do believe in you. I believe that we are gonna make it through. I believe that you're gonna make good decisions. Man, that was a privilege to behold for me. It was amazing. It's not always gonna be good. It's not always gonna be easy. It's gonna be sufficient. So encouragement toward confidence. So it's emotional support, which admittedly is tricky. But submission also looks like respect and admiration.

Women, hold your eyes from rolling back on this, okay? Respect and admiration, okay? Let me just, this is very misunderstood culturally and it's very counterintuitive for wives, okay? Giving respect and admiration to their husband, there's a couple of barriers internally going on that make it difficult for that to happen. And so I just wanna talk about it in terms of traps and truth, right? Here's the trap. The trap, almost the original trap, the trap is that people believe that respect, women, wives, believe that respect will just happen naturally. That you will just kind of erupt in respect. And so what happens is women meet men, they respect and admire them for what they've accomplished or how they live, but when they find flaws, they lose respect. When they mess up, when their man messes up, they lose respect. Here's the truth.

People find what they're looking for. If you follow anybody, especially your husband, around all day, you will find reasons to respect him and you will find reasons to not respect him. He is a flawed person. There's gonna be some things where you're like, great job, and some things are like, what are you thinking? And you're gonna see, you're gonna see all of it.

It's a trap to think that it's just gonna bubble up naturally because of how great he is. That you're just gonna, that you don't need to work at that, it's not a discipline at all, it's not something that you need to actually, it's like, no, I'm gonna, it's supposed to happen naturally. Here's the second trap. Second trap is, I'll respect my husband when he's more like Jesus.

If I had a nickel. It goes like this, like if my husband was more like Jesus, then I would have an easier time submitting to my husband. Okay. Here's why this is not true. If you're in Christ, you do have Jesus over you. And you still don't submit to him like you should. You get the perfect Lord of the universe. And you're gonna tell me you submit to him all the time? I know I don't. The truth is, how you submit to your husband's leadership probably reflects how you submit to Jesus' leadership. In fact, how you submit to your husband's leadership usually has very little to do with your husband. Here's my encouragement on the truth. Treat him better than he deserves. Because he doesn't deserve it. Your husband doesn't deserve respected admiration. Okay, there, I said it. Right, that's the note you're gonna take. My husband doesn't deserve, right? No. Well, he doesn't, right?

Look, let me translate for women here. The same way women that you want to feel beautiful is the same way that your husband wants to feel respected. The same way you wanna feel pretty is the same way he wants to feel respected. And so what do women do? Women, they get their look, they make sure they're kind of fashionable, they're well dressed, they're kind of putting that image out there, right? And I'm not trying to say it's evil or anything weird at all. I'm just saying it's an orientation. Women want to feel beautiful. And men want to feel capable. They wanna feel tough. They wanna feel hardworking, right? That's why they grow beards. Because it's tough.

Husbands, if you love your wives, you will love her into more loveliness. Wives, when you respect your husband, you will respect him into more respectability. Feels very counterintuitive. And here's the third trap. Here's why it sounds a little counterintuitive. Third trap is I've gotta keep him humble. Gotta keep him humble. He's got too big of a head. Gotta keep him knocked down a couple of pegs. Frankly, respectfully,

that is born out of a completely distorted view of what male confidence is. I mean, with all the love I can muster, you do not understand men if you think that you need to keep your husband humble. You just, you don't. It's a blind spot for you. And I don't mean to speak so harshly, but I do think it's worth saying because the truth is your husband needs all the courage he can get.

He needs all the confidence that he can get. Your man runs on confidence. Can I have an amen, gentlemen? Yeah. We run on that. You wanna see a defeated man? I'll show you one. Just, it's a guy who's lost all confidence in his ability to contribute to anything else. A man will feel lost when he knows that he can't contribute to something, when he's not able, when he's not respected, when there's nothing that he can kinda bring to be useful. Here's the crossroads for women. And it's when you want to encourage him, and you do believe in him, but you see the direction that he's going, and you wish it was kinda over here, right? Like, you're like, hey, babe, great job. You get the respect and admiration going, but you see him kinda going this way, like this direction, and you're like, but babe, what about here? Here seems like a really good idea. Here, over this way, let's make a different decision over here.

When men and women have to make decisions together, men can err on leading too quickly, too strongly, too harshly, not listening, okay? And so practically, what does it look like to submit to your husbands in decision-making when it feels like your only decision is just to just do whatever you want you to do, right? What's the alternative to that? If I'm gonna be submissive to my husband, does that mean I can't disagree with him? If I'm gonna be submissive to my husband, does that mean that he's going to,

he's gonna take advantage of that, he's not gonna make good decisions, whatever, what's going to happen? So I wanna list them all right here, and just like last week, I gave you an acrostic. Look at that, it says, helpa, okay? No, like I'm from the 90s, right? That's awesome. Like 91, that was like helpa with an A, come on now. Helpa. So practically, this is what it looks like to submit to your husband. I'm gonna go through each one, we can just leave them up there. The first one, humble yourself. Listen, getting confident before the Lord about your conviction is absolutely necessary, and that's the first step for a man too. It's not criticizing whatever your husband's telling you. That's not a good first step. A good first step is to remove yourself from that and go get before the Lord and humbly say to the Lord, Lord, we gotta figure this out, and I don't even know what I think about it,

but I know that you have thoughts on it. Would you share with me those thoughts, Lord? Would you guide my thoughts on this? Would you help me to see some things that I can't see? Because here's what's not gonna happen. What's not gonna happen is you have your mindset on decision B, and your husband has his mindset on decision A, and you think I'm gonna go in there, I'm gonna have a discussion with my husband, and I'm just gonna convince him that decision A is so much better. I'm gonna somehow, I don't know, pull the wool over his eyes, I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna change the situation enough to where he's gonna agree with me. I'm gonna make it seem like his idea. Instead of doing that, humble yourself before the Lord

and say, Lord, what do you want? What's the conviction that you have? What do I need to see? What am I missing? Second, engage respectfully. You need to express your thoughts and disagreements respectfully. And guys, and everybody, don't conflate disagreement with disrespect, okay? People can have different ideas about things. In fact, this feels like a very shrinking truth in our society today. Because we don't agree, that doesn't mean we're enemies. Because we don't agree, that doesn't mean that we have to disrespect one another. It means that we have a difference of opinion and we need to keep talking and keep looking at facts and keep praying, keep seeing kind of what's there. Don't conflate disagreement with disrespect, okay?

You can disagree. It's good to disagree respectfully. It's good to bring up counterpoints. It's good to ask for reasoning. Tell me why, like work through it together, but do it respectfully. Again, if you're in the middle of decision making and your husband's on decision A and you think decision B is better, you can't shoot enough holes in decision A to make decision B look great. You have to engage on decision A and decision B. If you just try to shoot down his idea, it's gonna feel like disrespect. It just is. It might not be. But if you go with a full assault on his decision that he's considering, it's just like in the lead even, like he's bringing you in on it, it's not gonna go, it's not gonna go well. Engage respectfully. L, lean into his thinking. Look, here's the great thing about biblical male headship for women. The good thing is at the end of the day, whenever you're making a decision,

you can just lean across the table and say, you sure about that? This is your decision. Are you sure about that? How sure are you? Lean into his decision making. Lean into his thinking. Seek clarification. Work hard to understand his reasoning so you know exactly what you're submitting to. If you cannot see his reasoning, work for it. Submission does not mean being a doormat. It doesn't mean you're just saying like, oh, I guess whatever he thinks is better than whatever I think, no. Make him defend what he thinks. Make him defend what he says. Again, you can do that respectfully, but submission means that you take the time to work it out. And some of you, you have husbands that are high detail and you're low detail, and some of you have husbands that are low detail and you're high detail, okay? And in those kinds of situations, it can make those conversations particularly difficult

when you get to the details, okay? We can't have a marriage counseling session right this second, okay? But what I'm saying is you need to work that out. You need to understand that either you're detail-oriented or you're not, and you gotta work through stuff. And look, for biblical may have a hutch up, here's how this works in my own house, okay? Here's my own, me and my wife, whenever we talk about things, she is more detail-oriented than I am, severely. I am severely not detail-oriented. She is severely detail-oriented and she wants to know all the details, right? And so I'll ask, I'll say, hey, let's do decision A. Like, what do you think about that? She's like, well, have you thought about, and I mean, brrr, brrr, brrr, brrr, just all the detail questions that I haven't thought through and don't care about, and she definitely cares about because that is going to make it a good decision or not,

the details, right? So here's what I've learned in 25 years of marriage. I've said, hey, thinking about this, what are some detail questions? Like, what are some things that you wanna know about it? What are some things that we gotta, how's this gonna make sense, right? And let's, and so my job on that end is to keep all those details prioritized. Some details matter more than others, right? But her job on that is to say, all these details have to line up, okay? And at the end of the day, not every detail's gonna line up perfectly. There is no perfect decision, but at some point, somebody has to pull the trigger. Somebody has to make the decision, and that's on me, biblically, that's on me, right? So I can include her, I can talk to her about it, and she's leaning into my thinking, okay? And she's doing it respectfully, but she's like, what about this, what about this,

what about this, what about this? That's good to ask. That's good to bring in on, okay? Lean into his thinking. Number four, prioritize the goal. Help him make the best possible decision to obey the Lord and benefit your family. The goal in any decision that you are making, okay? The goal in any decision you're making is not for him to get his way, okay? Or for you to get yours, actually. The goal for any decision that you're making is to make the best possible decision to obey the Lord and benefit your family. Sometimes there's more than one way to accomplish that goal, which is where some disagreement can come in. Sometimes it's just pickin', sometimes it's just preference, okay?

But if you're both submitting to one another, and you're not keeping score of who got preference last time, prioritize the goal. That is the goal, the best possible decision to obey the Lord and benefit your family. And number five, and I think this is actually really helpful, number five, add to the decision. As you walk into the decision, find ways to add to it. Not change it, add to it though. Find ways to add variety, fun, color, efficiency, inclusion. However you're gifted. Wives, you need to know that that decision that you are making together, even though you're excited for maybe 30% of it, man, I would just say, then get excited about the 30% of it and just march forward. Make this thing happen together. Here's what will happen. Here's what will happen. As you are listening to your husband, as you're leaning into his thinking, as you're prioritizing the goal,

as you work this out, when you come out on the other end with that decision, and sometimes this is grocery shopping and sometimes this is house hunting, okay, I get it. Not all decisions are created equal. But when you get to the other side of that decision, you'll find two things that are true. Number one, you will find that you are closer to your husband because you have made a decision together. You just are.

You have worked on something difficult together and you've made it through on the other side. You might not like each other for like 30 minutes, but you will find that you and your husband are growing closer together because he trusts you more, you trust him more. You're able to lay your lives down for one another more and that's good. The other thing that you will find is that there is a lot of freedom in a made decision.

There's a lot of freedom in a made decision. It might not be the perfect, might not be what you wanted exactly, but when that decision is made, there is so much freedom in it. Wives embrace all of it. Okay, let me just give you an illustration. If a bunch of men live in a, if four guys live in a college dorm, the decoration in that dorm on a scale of one to 10 is like negative 18, okay. There's no, I mean, if there's a picture up, right, my son's in college and I've seen where he lives and it's awful. No one would wanna live there and that's fine. And nobody cares even, like the guys don't care. People that walk in don't care. I mean, some people might like lament it or something, but nobody's like, hey guys, you should really spruce up the place because nobody cares. Nobody in that house cares, nobody cares, okay.

For women in a college dorm, that thing better not be a pigsty. That thing is ordered, that thing is said, that thing has kind of some line of thought here. There's some intention behind what's going on. There's some intention about what's on the walls, what's the furniture, who gets where the rug goes. All of the things are kind of like thought through. It matters much more, why is that? Well, because men and women are different. But the other reason that kinda is is because ladies, you add color. You add color. You make things awesome. You make things fun, you make things interesting. You make things different. You shake things up. That's a good thing, that's something that you add. Husbands, your wives are made to add color and complication to the simple things that you have in your head, okay. I know for you it's like A plus B equals, I'm like, you're so block headed, straightforward.

I get it, okay guys, listen, I'm there with you, I do. But when women come along, bro, I mean, the drapes go up. When women come along, the intention happens. The throw pillows, all the extra pillows that you hate being there are there. They're all there, okay. Throw pillows is just like, I don't know, it's such a metaphor for womanhood, I swear. My in-laws were talking about it last night. Are they even, are they here? My in-laws were talking about it last night. My mother-in-law said something about all the pillows and my father-in-law said, oh, what's the use of those things? Like, I was just like, where am I? I'm just in some timeless man-woman discussion right now.

Look, adding to the decision is big. It's big because this is, look, this is how you have fun together. And for husbands, like whenever you guys make a made decision in your mind, it's kinda over. You're like, okay, that's decided, it's done. Okay, well, it's not done for her. Okay, because now she's gotta think about the outflow. She's gotta think about all the things that go with it. She's now, okay, what does this mean for every other thing going on? Okay, I get it.

But what you need to understand in decision making is that it's a journey, it's a process. It's not something that you just kind of figure out or something that's kind of like one and done. It's something, it's part of your relationship. And so let it be part of your relationship. I'm gonna end on this. Many times when people say, in response to some kind of argument or some kind of remark or something,

and I've heard it several times, I've heard it kind of in debates or something, that if a woman is having a problem with something, the response is kind of this real blithe, real smug, well, then she should submit to her husband. And it's kind of just done. Anybody heard that? You heard that, anything? Anybody, hands up? No, yes, yes, okay, couple of you. Okay, good. Other ones, I don't know, are you scared? I don't know, anyway, it gets thrown around a lot as a throwaway statement. Like, just shut up and submit to your husband, right? No.

No. Nothing could be further than what it means to submit to your husband. Nothing could be further than what it means to have a submitted life between husband and wife. Nothing could be further than what Jesus depicts as the self-sacrifice. Husband's giving yourself up for your wife. Wife's giving yourselves to your husband. And it's just people just tripping over each other to serve and love one another. Listen, I know that's not real life, right? I get that on like a Monday when you're deciding who's gonna drop the kids off at school, it turns into an argument. I get it, that happens. But what the Lord has designed us to do is to be able to submit to one another in specific man and woman, husband and wife ways. And as we do those things, it doesn't mean the man's domineering and it doesn't mean the woman's domineering. I think the Lord has actually made this

to fit all kinds of people and personality types and situations and cultures. The Lord has made this pretty flexible. But here's what I found, anecdotally. I found that when I got married, I felt the burden to take initiative more. I felt the burden to take responsibility more. I felt more masculine after I got married. I can't really explain that very well other than just to say that. I've heard many men say the same thing. And I've also heard women say the same thing. I'm just like, after I got married, I just kind of felt, I felt more feminine. I felt like I could lean into that a little bit more.

I think what we're all feeling is the way that God intended men and women to be. And when we walk in agreement with that, it just kind of feels right. If you are not following the Lord this morning, I do want to just be clear and say, the reason that we can follow the Lord at all, the reason the invitation is open is because He, like a husband, like a good husband, laid down his life for us. Husbands, you lay your life down for your wives because Jesus laid his life down for yours. Women, you submit to that because Jesus laid his life down for you too. Proverbs 12:4, and I want to just end with this, Proverbs 12:4 says, an excellent wife is the crown of her husband. Wives, crown your husband. Mark him out as a man of distinction, not by telling him things that aren't true, not by buttering him up, not by manipulating him. Don't do any of that. Crown your husband.

Mark him out as a man of distinction by respecting him, and in that process, making him more respectable. Look him in the eyes and encourage him. Help him to be the man that the Lord is calling him to be by submitting to him as your husband. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, we know that you, we know that you ultimately are our husband. We, the church, are your bride. You lay yourself down for us consistently.

The only reason that we can repent, the only reason we can sing to you, the only reason we can praise, is because you decided, you took the initiative to love us, to take us as we were. You decided to do that. We didn't have any part in that, but we do get to decide whether we submit to that or not. Help us to submit to that, not just today, but every day. Help us to live in submission to that, as people, as families, as a church.