Are we creating an environment in our marriages where love and respect can thrive? Let’s dig into this together in part 2 of this message on growing in your relationship with your spouse.

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OPENING ILLUSTRATION:

If you weren’t here for last week’s sermon, you really will want to go and listen to it.  If you remember we were talking about

How do you go from frustrated to liberated in your relationship with your spouse?

We looked at Paul’s words in Ephesians 5:33

Ephesians 5:33

33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

and then we started working backward and 

We looked at what it meant for a man to love his wife

We talked about being unselfish, undivided, unstoppable

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and I called you men to be fierce for your family.

Ladies, are you ready for your part of the sermon?

ILLUSTRATION:

Have you ever been nervous to do something?  Like when you were a kid getting up on the high dive at a pool.  If you were like me, once you got up there you were like, “uh, well, l guess this is happening” and there’s the kid behind you going, “Just jump…”

Well, I feel like I climbed up a high dive and it’s time to jump – ladies, I’m going to ask you to stick with me through this sermon, because I have a feeling at first you might want to just turn me off and be like, “Nope, this dudes a chauvinist” but I’m going to intentionally stretch it that way so where we actually land is the right place – you ok with that?

Ok, I’m gonna jump and hope you’ll stay with me…

LADIES: 

When Paul says to respect your husband, this is the same word in Greek used to speak of “fearing” God.

I want to ask the questions you might be asking:

What does that mean?  Is this just an example of men writing something to try and “put women in their place”?

Before we answer that, let me give that argument a little more fuel

Listen to this…

Ephesians 5:22-24

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.

Maybe you are like, “I knew it, the bible’s just full of Chauvinist toxic masculinity” – submit to your husband?  I’d rather stub my toe…

Oh man, see what I’m saying…  Ladies you don’t have to say this makes you mad, but doesn’t it?  Doesn’t it feel like some man is just trying to shut women up?

I’d say that was right if we just took these verses out of context, but that’s not at all what the context tells us… Listen to what Paul says in vs 21

vs. 21, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

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Paul isn’t a chauvinist, he’s a submission-ist (husbands and wives are to submit to one another)

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Husbands and wives both have a role to play in submitting to one another (it’s why we focused first on the men dying for their bride) 

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This is why last week I started with the men – I started by telling men they need to start giving to their wives the love they need – to be willing to die…

Wives, what Paul calls you to is to respect your husband, and he is saying respect comes through submitting.

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My guess is, ladies, that understanding what it means to submit is not near as hard as actually submitting…

(ANTHONY – HAVE THESE POPULATE ONE AT A TIME)

Wives here is a series of questions to ask yourself to find out if you struggle with an unsubmissive heart:

• Do you force your opinion on your husband?
• When deadlocked about a decision does your husband have the last say or do you?
• Does your husband’s opinion about parenting decisions hold weight or are you dismissive of him?
• Do you manipulate your spouse to get what you want?
• Do you belittle your husband with your words and attack him with a barrage of emotions?

Sometimes it can be very difficult to honestly evaluate whether you are engaging in one of these activities, so let me tell you

The secret to knowing if you are struggling with an unsubmissive heart

-If your husband is shutting down (he’s relationally cold) in your relationship he is LIKELY giving you what he thinks you want, his submission

ILLUSTRATION:

I had a friend who I was talking with one day several years ago.  He was expressing his frustration with not knowing what to do in his relationship.  He said that he was just tired of being berated and belittled all the time by his wife.  He said he had decided to put his head down and just do what he needed to do to make her happy because he couldn’t win the arguments.  He loved her, but emotionally he could not keep pace with her and it was easier to just say nothing, clean the house, put in time with his kids than it was to constantly be in a battle.  

“I just put my head down and do it” he kept saying…

I know so many women who wish that their husbands were more responsive

     -that he would woo them again

     -that he would care about their day

     -that he would put down the remote

But those same women are producing an environment where their husband feels like he will either be at war constantly or just puts his head down

-and men follow the sin of Adam

-We duck out of our responsibility

The sin of Adam and that all of his sons have struggled with since is the sin of abdication of our God-given responsibility

Ladies, you have the power to induce your husbands to become Godly leaders or to reduce them to submissive doormats

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It starts with your attitudes, your hearts, and your willingness to do what Jesus called us to “The first must become last”

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MEN:  You either make it easy for your wife to submit or very difficult for her

-A wife who knows her husband will be unselfish, undivided & unstoppable with his love will find it very easy to respect her husband and be submissive to him

-after all, she will never have to question whether he is making the best decision for her because he chooses her over himself every time

-she may not agree, and he may even be wrong ultimately, but his love will trump the doubt

Wives – you are to submit to your husbands, but husbands you are to love your wives like Christ loved the church

CLOSING:

For Jenni and I, most of the time this isn’t an issue, we work very hard to be on the same page.  But there was a time when we were really on two different sides of an argument.  Jenni had been working a job and felt very strongly that it would be wrong for her to quit.  I felt like she was dying working the job and trying to be a wife, mother and pastor’s wife.  I said to her one night, “I am not going to play this card very often, but I am making the decision that you are going to quit that job”.  She did not totally agree with me, but she graciously submitted to that decision.  I’m telling you if she thought it was because I wanted her to stay home and wash my underwear, or for some other selfish reason, that would have been very difficult.  She was able to submit, I think in part, because she knew my heart was for her…

I was submitting my will to fulfill her desires and she was submitting to my decision…  But it all came out of my willingness to die for my bride, which all comes from understanding what I’ve been given in Jesus…