Equal in Christ with Separate Roles
...don't  be confused

This week, I planned to finish up the office organization so I can start on the sewing room

but there were more important needs this week.

My husband is at a stand-still with all his hard work in our basement
until I can organize some things there. And a few days later, because of a great and immediate need
on a project at a client's home, he asked me to
pick up a part for him in town.
So, my plans were set aside for the more important needs.
Am I disappointed?

Oh, yes..
Do I see that the basement work and picking up the part as more necessary?
Oh, yes.
Does it matter that I agree with my husband's assessment of what is more important?
Oh, no.
The fact that I agree is not why I am doing what he graciously asked me to do.
I would do it even if I disagreed, as long as it is not going against God's Word.
Let me explain.
I see this as logical, the smart thing to do. Without my help organizing and without the part he needed, work on both our house and a client's home would be at a stand still.
But just because I know these things were the best things to do does not mean I would not rather be upstairs  making a spare bedroom into a lovely sewing/project/guest room. I would rather be organizing antiques, hanging lace curtains, quilts, choosing which pictures to hang on the walls, making this the most feminine,
dripping-with-lace room ever!

But I am not going with this change of plans because it is the best thing to do either.
 How selfish would it be to refuse. How foolish.
But is being foolish the reason I am not insisting on  what I want to do because it is fun?
No.......I am doing it because my husband asked me to do this.
Even if I disagree, I need to do what he asks/needs.
This I believe. This I know.
How? 

Because God said so in His Word.
My dad always used the phrase, "Because I said so." when we kids asked, "Why?"
And I used to tell our children that the only thing required of them is to obey us. It wasn't important why. Although I do not think there is anything wrong with explaining as long as the child knows that you are not seeking their approval.

My husband and I enjoy  sharing our ideas with each other.  And, it is fun MOST of the time---
we don't always agree, but we do seek to come up with ideas we both like
 and which are doable!
But the final decisions lays with him.
Why?
Because God said so!
Why?
Everything is for our eternal good and His glory.
He designed marriage to be so.
Why?
It is not important why. Read the Word to find out.
It is His design and it is good.

I don't believe, as so many do, that marriage is about compromising.
How sad.
No, marriage is about each of us giving 100%---not 50%.
You see we are not giving the 100% to our spouse, though they certainly benefit from it, but
to God!

There would be a lot less strife in marriage if we stopped looking at each other  to see if the other one is doing what he/she should.
We are responsible for our own hearts.
We are responsible to do what God has given us to do in our separate roles as men and women,
 husbands and wives.
First we need to learn what roles He has given us.
Otherwise we just end up going in circles.
Don't trust your heart in this.
Why?
Because God in His Word has told us that our hearts are deceitful, desperately wicked, we are easily gone astray, lead astray...
Read the Word to see whether God thinks it's okay to trust our own hearts.
Go humbly before God in prayer and in reading of His Word.
Ask him to examine your hearts, whether there be any wrong thinking, unbiblical thinking.
You, as with all of us, have been infected by what the world thinks.
We have been sold, and have accepted willingly, a bill of goods that is false.
And believe me, we, our marriages, our families, our nations have paid for it!
That bill of goods says that because we have different roles we are not equal.
This is not true!
We are equal before Christ in redemption.
But we were created for different roles.
The "bill of goods" has elevated one role above that of the other when they were meant to be
a complement to each other.

I know, even in Christian circles this can be a hot topic.
But it is only so in so far as we have let worldly "wisdom" infect us and the church body.

The Bible, God, who inspired it, says that the man is the head and he will ultimately answer for his decisions. This is not a license for a tyrant but a role, a God-given role, for a husband. The man is the head and if he  does not seek and  listen to wise counsel, (which includes seeking it from his wife) is opening himself up to fail and to be thought a fool.
The wife is and was created to be his helper. She has influence on him---we only have to read about the Fall of Adam, the Fall of Man, to see that. But there are also many examples in scripture where a woman
kept her man from disaster by her wise counsel.
A former pastor of ours once taught that "husband" comes from a word meaning "house-band" and "wife" from a word meaning "weaver"........a husband provides for and protects his home as a band around it holding it together and the wife weaves inside the home keeping it together providing needs within the home. What a beautiful picture.
I rest in these God-given roles.
There is protection there, comfort, knowing God will lead me through my husband.
And it is said that a husband trusts a good wife who does him good and not evil.
A husband is instructed to love his wife as Christ loves the church which He is the head of, and gave Himself up for it. That's a lot of responsibility.
It deserves the respect, reverence that God requires of us. But mostly, it deserves the respect and reverence because it is man's God-given role.
 For those of you wives whom this rubs the wrong way, and for you husbands who believe this gives you license to be a tyrant, I urge you to search this out, after  humble prayer, with an open heart and mind, in the scriptures. Don't be like those who do not believe the truth but just what they like to believe.
Seek to see what God, who created you, says.
Ask Him for a heart to believe the truth.
We are equal in Christ, but we were created for different roles.
It is not that one is inferior to the other. It is what we were created to do and be.
Is a table inferior to a window? Silly question----they were created by man for different purposes.
The world has twisted this into an issue of equality.
 Though I do not like this saying-du-jour, I find that it helpful here,
"Keep the main thing, the main thing."
The main thing is not equality, we have equality before Christ Jesus in redemption.
The truth is that we, man and woman, were created for different, glorious, most wonderful and fulfilling  purposes.
God created Adam from the dust of the ground, and he was made first.
God said that it was not good that man should be alone.  

But no helper suited to him was found. So God created Eve.
Eve was made out of, and for Adam. 

She was to be a helper who was to be suitable for him.
And he was to be her head.
And yet man is born of woman.
It is a perfect and most beautiful circle.
I was created in my mother's womb to be my husband's wife.
He was created and born to be my head.
How beautiful is this?
Untruths have sullied the beauty in creation on every level but none perhaps more than in marriage.
Seek joy again in this, your God-given role.
Learn to take joy in serving others.
Learn to take comfort in submission.
You will rise up in your heart against it----since the Fall of Man
our tendencies are going to be sinful but God is able to give us strength
and to enable us
to do what He has ordained for our own good.
True happiness is found only in Christ.
Marriage is an example of the relationship between Christ and His Church, His Body.
Be very careful that you do not, by your attitude and example mar that image.
Seek this kind of  happiness and true joy will fill your hearts.
Look at the world.
How has disobedience to God's word, reveling in their own beliefs and pleasures worked out for them?
I pray that you might be liberated to be free in the truth and beauty of God's plan.
Kathi~