It seems that I have gained a wealth of knowledge since I married my knight in shining armor. The crazy thing is, I have a sneaking suspicion that I have that much more to learn about being married...sad, but true. I've been studying various passages in my Bible when the Lord recently laid it upon my heart to dig deeper into my role as wife. The crazy thing is, as I have been studying this, I have found that by looking into what he should be I find a clearer picture of what I should be as his wife.
It all started with this passage, [the purpose of Paul's instruction] "that believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience and a genuine faith." (1 Timothy 1:5) I began to evaluate myself to see if I truly love from a pure heart - trying to determine if my heart motives are truly pure or if I am trying to manipulate - that was something early on in my walk with the Lord, about five years into our marriage, that I determined WAS an issue. Manipulation was a huge problem for me. As a matter of fact, I find that women seem to have an innate sense of manipulation within them that needs very little effort to nurture and perfect it. Do I love from a clear conscience? I am thankful to say that the Lord has worked a great deal on me to get me to this point that I truly feel I love with a clear conscience - but it took a lot of work on that part of our Lord to transform my thinking that I may understand how He has truly forgiven me of all my past sins and there was no need to live in the guilt and shame that I was allowing to encompass my heart. God is so good! And finally, does my love come from a genuine faith? I must admit, I'm working on that one!
Further along in Timothy we are taught about roles of women and men. I jotted down the women's roles presented: be modest in appearance, wearing decent and appropriate clothing; not draw attention to ourselves; we are to make ourselves attractive by the good things we do learning quietly and submissively, not teaching or having authority over men, listening quietly, and living in faith, love, holiness and modesty. (1 Timothy 2:9-15)
Chapter 3 tells of how a man who desires to be an Elder of the church should live. I've read this section so many times but it never hit me as it did this time. My initial thoughts involved praying for my husband to aspire to live this way, but then I was convicted that I, as his wife should enable him to live in this manner through my own actions and the way I support him. So my mind has been dwelling on what I should be doing to build him up in this regard.
Here's the list, he must live...
a life above reproach
be faithful to his wife
exercise self control
live wisely
have a good reputation
enjoy having guests in his home
able to teach
not a heavy drinker
not prone to violence
gentle
not quarrelsome
not love money
manage his family well
have children who respect and obey him
must not be a new believer (because they might become proud for the devil may cause him to fall)
people outside of the church must speak well of him.
So now I am going to spend more time dwelling on this. I have thoughts because I have had a life time to work on helping him to become this - but as I meditate on the subject I find that I am severely lacking on my success rate in this area. Not saying he has not lived up to the things listed above, but I AM saying I haven't made it very easy for him. A very hard thing for me to admit to. So I will be spending time in confession, prayer and deeper contemplation and let you know how it goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment