The Nagging Wife

Hello readers.  Welcome to my heart.  Let's begin.

I'm a pretty open minded person.  I have my beliefs and opinions, but I'm not so strong on them that I won't hear you out.  That sounds like a good thing, but when I allow too many opinions and beliefs to crowd my own, it gets overwhelming.  So I hit the "Move To Recycle Bin" button and deal with it later.  But, I honestly love this topic I'm about to share with you all, and again, maybe these are my opinions.  Hopefully, you're a reader of this blog because you value my opinion---hope it doesn't stop here.

So here lately, I've been doing a lot of comparing, or spatial thinking.  Visual learning works best for me.  And I generally love a good PowerPoint slide with images and text that slides and moves, the animation and transitions working in spontaneous ways, entertain me please as I learn---it's not that hard to add that element to learning.  Anyways, so as I've been learning, I have found it interesting that God compares husband and wife to Jesus and the church. But let's pull out a specific detail in this relational comparison and see that when it comes to submitting to authority, here's the layout: the wife to the husband, the church to Jesus, the citizen to the government, so on and so forth.  Are you following that?

You have to get that framework in place for you to get what I'm saying.  So when it comes to us submitting to anything, I've been looking at it through the lenses of wife to husband.  That seems to be easier for me to wrap my mind around.  I'm a product of this cultures having no clue how to honor and submit authority, but when the word "authority" is instead "husband", I can handle that.  So, people, let's talk.

So, the husband is the leader of the family.  He ultimately has the say on the vision of the family.  So, let's say this husband really feels God is encouraging them to have their children home schooled.  The wife disagrees.  (This is getting good already).  So, the wife's natural response is? She disagrees, so she instantly wars against him.  Not intentionally, but, since she disagrees, she wars against him because usually her first response is that she doesn't go and ask the husband and find out the heart behind his decision.  She may find out that his heart is he wants the best for THEIR children and he feels the best is them to be home schooled.  But she never confronts him, she just disagrees without consideration.  She'll even hold conversations with her girlfriends about the stupid decision, and spreads the venom among their circles. But, this Christian wife has two options, well, actually just one, she has to submit.  The husband feels strongly about it so she must submit.  Now, here's where the options get interesting---she can either submit and commit willingly, or she can submit forcefully with grumbling.  Both SEEM desirable and godly because she's submitting, but only the first one is truly godly.  Because if she chooses the second one, this is what happens.

By the way, I'm going somewhere with this.  Hang in there.

So, the wife bitterly agrees to home school her children.  "I just don't believe in this.  I don't want my children home schooled.  I don't want them to be socially awkward and too sheltered and, I just don't agree.  And it's a terrible way to really teach them.  I can't teach them like a public school teacher can.  This is not going to work.  And that's more work on me. And I have to do this and do that."  Only pointing out the negative effects.

So within this grumbling she's half-heartedly going through the motions of teaching her children.  Since she really disagrees and only submitted because she "had to", she's not giving it her all.  Her arm was twisted, so she only serves her children in home schooling them only because she had to and God told her to submit and this suck. So a few years go by and the children are not on a reading level as their peers in public school, and she pulls the husband to the side and tells him, "See, I told you it wouldn't work."

Crazy isn't it?

Glad you agree.  And guess what?  We do this ALL THE TIME.

I'll just hit it in the mouth---church methods.  I'm exhausted with debating and discussing church methods with other believers.  Because I know what we do, we weigh the entire thing based on a few individuals.  We'll say "this method" doesn't work because it hasn't enticed you yet. Only seeing the negative.  Or you don't "see" how it can change anybody.  Only seeing the negative.  Or you want discipleship over evangelism, pastor feeding or self feeding, communion every Sunday, or just on special occasions, Methodist, Baptist, sprinkle or immerse, salvation prayer or explaining what salvation mean and seeing if they still want to receive it or not---(that personally crack me up).


Where's the power at people?  In God? Or the methods?  


Then, this is my favorite part, we'll grab a Bible verse to support our opinion.  Like I'm about to right now.  Mark 5:25.  The story about the woman with the issue of blood had faith that if she touched Jesus's garment, she would be healed.  WHERE IS THAT IN SCRIPTURE?  Were there any other example of that in scripture?  Let me know if it was, where in Exodus Moses commands people to touch the hem of his garment for them to be healed. I mean, help me if there is.  Because I haven't had the privilege of reading the whole Bible yet--working on it---but maybe it's in there.  And I can hear how we would tear this woman to pieces.  With our culture's critical minds.  We see the wrong in everything, and feel the right and need to express our opinion.  I love Twitter and Facebook during high profile crimes, man, everyone has an opinion and a moral code then.  And we'd probably preach an entire sermon on why touching the hem of a garment is wrong, and have three points, and miss the fact that it worked for her.


It worked for her.


The key word is her.  She had the faith that Jesus would heal her, so that worked for her.  This is my opinion and my desire----I just want us to choose a church, submit to the church, and love the husband, willingly and with all we got---oh, and just shut up.  Yes, there will be times, ladies, when you disagree with your husbands, but first hear him out, you might be on the same page, but if you still disagree, just TRUST in HIM.  Not the method, but just TRUST IN HIM.  Just love your husband.  Can we just love our husband?  Can we just choose a method that works for us and love our husbands, put faith in our husband, just love our husband?  Let's commit covenantly to ANYTHING for that matter, and submit our lives to building it up.  You see a crack, go fill it.


Stop nagging.  All the church is doing is praying for a healthy marriage but we're warring against the husband because we don't believe in His methods.  Hey, here's the funny thing.  If you haven't noticed, it's never been about the methods for Jesus.  You realize that He healed people in many different ways.  So he did, ONE THING, multiple ways: by touching them, them touching him, spitting, just speaking, calling their name, commanding them---ahhhh!!! WHICH ONE IS THE RIGHT METHOD!? 

Hey, listen to me.  ALL OF THEM.  Every method is right because all of them have worked.  And why did they work? Because He works.  I mean, God is speaking through burning bushes, why not send a pet coyote to speak to Moses?

Nawww...I want the flaming bush today, that'll really freak him out.

Remove the faith in the methods, and put it on Jesus.  Notices there's never been a message on discerning the voice of God without a burning bush?  It's ALL about God.  Submit to something that's following Him, covenantly, and just...

Love our husband.