Right about now, I wouldn't mind submitting to a woman a bit.
I think the pastor would have his work cut out there. We have 3 pastors for a
church with over 1000 adults in attendance. There is a senior, one who oversees the
youth work and a pastor for the adults generally.
Plus there is a counselling service in the church with trained councillors of
both genders. That requires booking in advance, they are not really their though
as a sounding board for every day decisions.
I would prefer to rely on my Heavenly Father. The whole submitting to
a man just doesn’t work if you are unmarried. Possibly it doesn’t work if you
are married either depending on the couple.
The days seem to be long gone when the husband was considered the head
of the household and was able to make good decisions for his family and hold
everything together in a Godly manner.
A lot over here is probably to do with how society has changed so much, many
single parents raising children without a strong good decent father figure.
Women forced out to work by the government and for financial reasons
while their children are still babies and toddlers. So others are influencing
their children while they are at work.
Even where there is a husband and wife, both have to work to keep a roof over
their head.
Lack of Christian standards generally across the country.
Increased articles of abused women, that’s probably always gone on even in
bible times.
Plus in countries where women are still viewed as property, mostly
Muslim countries, women are abused, lack freedom, etc.
I’m replying to you as you are reasonable and understand where I’m coming
from. Such issues as above are rarely raised when the “women” subject
crops up. Posters woukd rather blame women for all societies woos.
Society at all levels, no longer encourages or for that matter, even makes room
for family life to be run in a Godly manner any more.
I’m glad you found a worthy husband, he is one in a million. 🙂
That pastor I submitted to, long ago? I didn't submit to him right away. I didn't know him. But his wife was a peach. Mom was gone before I went from child to adult, so I never had a female role model, nor just a women to teach me stuff women are supposed to learn just by growing up in it. I was clueless on all things domestic, except how to clean the house. How to clean a house is useful, but it doesn't put a meal on the table. It doesn't teach how to make a house a home. And it really doesn't teach how to love a spouse.
His wife taught me stuff by learning it herself with me there. We made strawberry jam together, learned we hated being that hot in the kitchen during summertime, and had a good laugh over it. But what I really learned was her kitchen was a disaster zone when her husband came home and how the two of them handled that one. I grew up with, if the house is a disaster when Dad comes home, I'm going to be scolded and treated harshly, so don't make it a disaster zone.
They taught me, if the house is a disaster zone, take time out to appreciate the work it took to look like that, (jars of strawberry jam on the table, glops of strawberry jam on the floor, counter, stove, and around our mouths, the dishwasher was still steaming from sanitizing jars, the hot water still causing steam in the sink from boiling jam and boiling the jam in jars, and very frizzy hair on her. My hair looked more like I had just been drowned. Very ineffective mess, but beautifully designed.) He didn't scold her because dinner wasn't on the table. He had us go to another room where the air-conditioning was working better, and asked if it was worth the effort.
She immediately went back into the kitchen and brought back little bowls of jam, so we could find out. I decided the jam was delicious but not worth the effort, and they laughed. Not at me, but with me. Proud that I could make that decision on my own. (Later on, I found out she never tried it again either.)
I had to go home by then, (dinnertime, and boyfriend/soon-to-be husband was making it for me), but when I left they had already agreed dinner would be ordered in that night. Cleaning up mess would be decided on later, if not the next day.
That is what I learned about marriage, submitting, loving as one of my first lessons for marriage.
That pastor's decision on something else taught me he was worth submitting to. My boyfriend had lost his home when his housemate married, and the pastor sent him to live with an elderly couple who never argued. NEVER. Boyfriend was divorced a year or so earlier than that, and his first wife was bipolar, (not the word used back then, nor something she was diagnosed as having until the marriage was over), so fighting happened often in that marriage, and he had forgotten how to talk it out, rather than fight it out. So brilliant decision. And having had that older couple as part of our courtship taught both of us how to live in a Christian marriage, before we I-doed.
The pastor took the time to find people to help us when we needed help, yet without making it counseling or appointment setting. He did it through friendship and getting us contacted with the right Christians at the right time.
That and not getting mad that we made a mess of his kitchen. That's a better example of how to submit.
Submitting is trusting someone enough to have him help you make decisions. It's not forcing you into certain decisions. It's about wanting you to grow, and being proud when you do grow. It's encouraging, when you need encouragement, and telling concerns if he sees a problem with a decision being made. It's not stopping the decision. It's helping to clarify it. And, if you go with that decision, and it is all the disaster he said it would be? Then it's help picking up the pieces, deciding what to do next, and being there, when you need someone to be there. There may be an "I told you so," but only when the mess is sorted and you can laugh at it.
No, the world doesn't give us trust. It doesn't even give us people who are trustworthy. But we are not of the world. And the Lord gives us the people we need at the time we need them. Sometimes those are people who submit to us. Sometimes those are people we submit to. But always they are our true brothers and sisters. The ones the Lord adopted, not the ones biology gave us.
That old saying? "Blood is thicker than water?" We've corrupted it to mean the opposite of what it originally meant. "The Lord's blood is thicker than the watered down version of family." His blood is more than family, because he saved us with it. We can love both God and family, but the Lord is trustworthy. Family is always iffy.
We are foreigners in our lands. God still guides us. Not society. And in his guiding, he does lead others to us that we can trust. Not often, but he does. And not often, because we need to trust him above all others, including those we are willing to submit to.