I Think I Got the Message

Don't you just love the way God works? I know that sometimes He must just shake His head at me and wonder how it is He created such a thick headed woman. I pray that He would reveal His will for me and that He would make it so clear that I can't possibly miss it knowing that if He would just do that, I would so very gladly follow exactly where He is leading me without the slightest gripe and a smile on my face (so not).

The sad thing is, He has been so very clear about what He wants from me, but I don't like it, so I've been trying to just ignore Him and get Him to tell me something else. It just doesn't work that way. I can see that He is going to harp on this until I am willing to get serious. So, now I have enlisted the help of some wonderful friends, and I am going to buckle down and get to work. I am even going to get you to help me out because I am going to confess my sinfulness to you and ask you to pray for me when you remember (and maybe some of you could use the same prayers). Here it goes: I am not a submissive wife to the wonderful husband God has blessed me with. I can put on a good act sometimes, but I am not what He has called me to be in this area, and now, He is getting me to work on it.

A couple of years ago I heard a sermon on submission. It was a bad sermon and not biblical, but it got me thinking about what biblical submission was, and that showed me that I was falling way short of the mark. Nothing new about that in my life. Since I didn't really want to work on that part of my life, I went on my merry way only to be brought up short a few months later by a discussion with a friend on the difficulties she was having in this area. I pointed her to scripture. We prayed, and I was done with that. At least that is what I thought. Then months later a sweet young friend was lamenting the lack of Titus 2 teaching going on. As friends and I reminisced about some godly women who had poured their lives into us, I remembered vividly their call to be submissive as God requires. Okay, now I got it. This is something I need to work on, but I know that I will give up all too soon without accountability.

Enter a really awesome group of women who have agreed to go through the book "The Excellent Wife" with me. We are going to meet weekly (online and off) to discover just what the Bible has to say to us and how we can apply these things to our lives and our relationships with our husbands. I NEED this. I am desperate for this. And just when I think that God and I are good to go now, He pounds in the last (?) nail so that there are no lingering doubts or going back.

I have been eagerly awaiting my Tabletalk subscription renewal. I had let it go to help the budget, but found that I don't have an acceptable replacement for that first thing in the morning time in the word. Tabletalk works well for me. My September issue just arrived. Do you know what the verses are for Sept 1? You bet. "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior" Eph 5:22-23.