How do your children see their "Daddy"....? How do you see Him even when he is not all that great? How do others see Him?
Even when Your DH is not happy, cute, smelling good, thoughtful, good looking, and all of the things the world sees as "good"...How do you see Him? Even when you reverence a man that does not deserve it, you are in a sense reverencing God.
Do you understand that? You reverence God because you reverence your DH, not because your husband is a fit representative of Christ, and not because he is a worthy substitute, but because God placed you in subjection to your husband. And when it gets humanly ridiculous to obey him, and when he gives you every reason to not respect him, there is only one controlling factor left---God. You obeying and reverencing God, and no one else. That man of yours is the fortunate one who receives honor being given to God. Your faith sees beyond the circumstances of your sinning man to the God who created us all and "so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son..."(JHohn 3:16).
If your faithfullness is never rewarded with a new-birth change in your husband, your commitment will not be wasted, for the grace that God is working in your heart is making you supremely fitted to be the Bride of Christ. It is an eternal work(we look so temperal)taking place in your soul. Your obedience to God, and your willingness to go beyond the extra mile, prevents your husbands damaging your children. You have covered a multitude of sins with your love and forgiveness(1 Peter 4:8).
Play it again, Sue...
In our own strength, we women tend to have minds like old LP records that are scratched. We take our husbands faults and replay them in our thoughts over and over again, "he's insensitive....he's insensitive....he's insensitive..."We get worked up over the smallest things and offense until our agitation sours into bitterness. He will forget to feed the dog three days in a row. We will look a the empty dog bowl and attribute it to all kinds of evil motives of him. He will leave us waiting in the car for an extra 10 minutes, and we convince ourselves that his lack of consideration is just the tip of the "cold iceberg" in his heart. Since we are "Christian" ladies, and the children are watching, we don't rant and rave; we just give him the cold silent treatment(like that will help!). He must know how much he hurts us, and the best way to retaliate is to hurt him back(STOP!!! This doesn't help!!!)by depriving him of what he wants most---respect, honor, and love.
We know that this will get his attention, and he will eventually have to come humbly asking what is wrong. By then, our miserable countenance(ugly!) should have softened him up for a good case of repentance. Boy, will we make him sorry! But we fully expect that he will try to make up for the birthday he forgot by buying the same kind of candy we told him we hate, and then we hate him all the more for not remembering that we hate that kind of candy. Practice. We are always practicing those awful thoughts!!!!
Remember the 40,000 thoughts a day? Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. How many thousands of negative thoughts are you thinking in the course of three or four hours? It IS YOUR DUTY before God to think differently....God tells you how to think. When our emotions will not freely allow us to think what we ought, our will(we use it for bad, why not for good?) can command our muscles to actions and the thoughts will follow. "Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established"(Prov. 16:3).
Remember the passage in 11Cor. 10:5? "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ"
In the letters I receive, 90% of the offenses are not ony but the wifes imaginative responses to something that could have been easily overlooked......
The difference between a good marriage and a lousy one is not found in good husbands and good wives versus bad husbands and bad wives, for all marriages are made up of 2 sinners with lots of faults. A good marriage is good because one or both of them have learned to overlook each others faults, to love the other as he or she is and to not attempt to change the other or bring the other to repentance. A bad marriage is not one that contains more faults between the 2 of them, it is a marriage where one or both of them gets worked up over issues that good marriage partners let slide and cover up with love and forgiveness.
When a woman gets it in her mind that she must change her husband before she will allow him to relax in the security of her honor and respect, she will never see so much as the bottom side of a good marriage, except when she is kissing hers goodby!!!
~~~Continued next week~~~
Ladies....I hope you thoughtfully pray about all of these tips and truths...
they work....
Love to all who read...
Terri
Posts
