Have you ever noticed that when those award shows are on television, people are very interested in “who” they are wearing? Clothing has a lot to say about what kind of person you are. Clothes carry a price tag which says how wealthy you are or how wealthy you are not. Clothes have a style that gives voice to your personality. Certain clothes are worn to show the work you’re involved in like that of a nurse or an athlete. Clothes can also carry a sense of pride like that of a fire fighter, police officer, or military personnel. If we really think about it, clothes puts us into a community to which we want to belong. Clothes give us identity and we identify certain clothing with certain types of people. Many people will spend lots of time and resources building the identity they desire to have.

Clothing is also a commonly used illustration in the New Testament about our spiritual identity. Paul writes to the church in Colossae about this concept of “putting off” our old sinful identity and “putting on” our new redeemed identity (Colossians 3). Putting on means “to be clothed in, to dress ourselves with, to wear.” Paul says in Romans that we must “put on,” or clothe ourselves with, Jesus Christ and “put off,” or lay aside, our deeds of darkness (Romans 13:12-14). This is not a description of how to get salvation, but how to live out that salvation.

The tendency for us as Christians is to continue dressing ourselves as though we haven’t accepted Jesus as the Savior of our sins and the Master of our lives. The attitudes that we wear on our face and the actions we involve ourselves in, they are our clothing. So we have to ask ourselves: what are our attitudes and actions saying about us to those who are watching? It’s why Paul encourages us to “clothe” ourselves with compassion, kindness, goodness, generosity, mercy, gentleness, love and patience (Colossians 3:12). These things are fruits or evidences of a life filled with the Holy Spirit. I heard someone once say “if you’re happy and you know it, tell your face.”

One of the problems is that we often don’t think much about what we are wearing spirituality. James likens it to wearing dirty and soiled clothing in James 1:21. Many of us would be embarrassed to be caught wearing filthy clothes day after day, yet why do we do this day after day spiritually? We need to spend some considerable time and resources on wearing this identity of being with Jesus. The challenge for us as we leave the house tomorrow and walk down the red carpet of life, would be to ask ourselves: “Who are we wearing?”

No one would deny the power of encouragement. You can probably remember a time when you were encouraged by someone right when you needed it. And you can probably remember a time you really needed it and yet it never came.  Not to make light of anyone’s attempts to encourage, but sometimes, our efforts to encourage don’t really hit the spot. Do you know what I mean? How can we make our attempts to encourage more real for the receiver?

Here are my suggested 5 ways to show real encouragement:

1) Just be there and listen for many days after.

People are pretty good about giving you their condolences during the heat of the battle. They can be quick to show up and help out. But I’ve come to believe that it’s the weeks after and in the particular memorable times later on that become the times when people really need some type of encouragement. The problem is that people don’t go around announcing a battle re-occurrence. Being there right when it counts is huge. And since you never know when those times might arrive, check in often. Job’s friends comforted him for 7 days without saying a word. It’s only when they started talking after Job shared his pain that problems were created.

2) Meet some real physical needs.

In the most commonly quoted Philippians passage of “I can do all things through Christ,” Paul is talking about his ability to live with a lot and the ability to live without. Paul mentions that only a small group of people sent him gifts. This gift contained meaningful items to him. It wasn’t that Paul expected a gift from anyone, but it was nice to actually get something tangible, knowing someone was thinking about him. People enjoy receiving something more than words. Not that words aren’t important. We should give encouraging words. But maybe a little more is required. Sometimes we need to “put our money where our mouth is.”

3) Tell them and remind them of the good things to be done together.

Encouragement comes during times of discouragement. These are times of despair, hurt, and hopelessness. Reminding them of the good they have done in you and could still do may give them a spark to see the value they still play. We, as humans, often respond to what we see. And if we see no one impacted by our existence, it makes us question and even resent many things including our purpose, our personality, our responsibility, our beliefs, our values, our friends, our career, our family, and our God. Yet, it only takes 1 to reset the course of destruction.

4) Make the encouragement personal.

Sometimes there is nothing worse than a boxed encouragement. Christians often like to do this in the form of giving Scripture to the problem. We quote verses like Romans 8:28 or Jeremiah 29:11. Although these verse are very true, they can be misplaced if it makes little sense to the person receiving them. It would be like giving them a snake when they were asking for something to eat.  It would be like saying you would pray for them when they were asking if you could watch their kids or help them move. I’m not minimizing prayer (as you’ll see in #5) or giving of Scripture, but get to know what’s going on with the person so you can rightly land all those types of encouragement on target.

5) Pray for them and, if possible, with them.

Knowing someone is praying for you really does a lot. It helps us know that we aren’t fighting these battles by ourselves. There’s also something about praying with someone in person. It takes that encouragement and makes it personal. We can actually hear the prayers of the other person that said they were praying for us. Jesus said in Matthew 18:20 that “where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them.” We already have Jesus and the Holy Spirit speaking on our behalf. Praying with them in person reflects that God is there for us as well.

Certainly I have a long way to learn these suggestions myself. I know that I could have done better in many cases. There’s plenty of opportunities to encourage someone right around us. What else would you add to the list to make encouragement, real encouragement?

If you’re a Christian, you have heard plenty of times that bible reading is good for your spiritual growth. But what does that actually mean? What should we expect to gain from reading the Bible?

There are some who would say that the Bible is full of wisdom and principles from God that lead us to discover success in life.  In this reasoning, the Bible gives us the keys to know how to unlock God’s secret rooms and methods toward fulfilling our dreams and gaining earthly blessings. These nuggets of wisdom and principles also help us deal with humanity so we can live in the land of peace, liberation, and prosperity. But I don’t think this is what the Bible is for. Most of us would agree that the Bible is God’s story of providing the solution to our sin problem. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ and our need to believe in Him by faith. Yet, why do we continue reading the Bible for anything else?

In one sense, I believe we then reduce the Bible and the hope of its message to following the Old Testament “law of works” to gain spiritual growth. We often resort to learn the “do’s and don’ts” of the Bible in order to practice them to gain something for ourselves or some sort of increase in our spirituality (the way spiritual people would say it). But if we know that we can’t increase our spiritual standing before God, what do we mean by spiritual growth?

We turn into the people of Galatians in the New Testament who added Judaism to Christianity by adding the good works of the Law for their spiritual growth in Jesus Christ. Paul spent a big portion of his letter to this church for deserting the true gospel.  We do the same thing when we buy into this false goal of Bible reading.

When we define spirituality with blessings of this kind, we reduce the idea of spirituality to an odd and unbiblical concept. Spiritual growth is not that we get to a higher level of spirituality (if that would be possible), but that we gain a better understanding of our need for a Savior and God’s solution to that problem. More Bible reading helps us grow in our knowledge of what we learned from the Bible in the first place. Spiritual growth is that we become more obedient to the spiritual life we now live by.  Following those “do’s and don’ts” in the Bible are done only because we know that God commands us to act like we already have a relationship with Him. We show that we are in God when we love one another (John 13:34-35). It’s an expression of our relationship with God rather than a means to gain more of a spiritual standing with God. When we fail to live by those commands, we only express that we don’t live by that relationship, but for ourselves.

We can’t build upon our spirituality with deeds because it’s foundation is not deeds. We live to proclaim our acknowledgement of God in our lives. We read the Bible to understand how we can do that more. We read the Bible to put the goal and center of our existence in God. We read the Bible to be reminded of our need to be corrected and produce more good stuff in our lives for God rather than the pursuit for our happiness and pleasure. Not that God wants us to be miserable. Total opposite. He desires for us to be blessed and have abundant joy, but not so we can spend it on ourselves. During our reading of the Bible, we do find out that God does have blessings for those who live this way. Praise God that He does bless us with every spiritual blessing in heaven through Christ! There’s no secret or key to God’s blessings. They are free for all who live by faith in Christ. Keep reading your Bible to gain more understanding of this truth you believed in already. Keep reading your bible to understand the depth, width, and height of God’s love. You won’t get tired of reading it because it becomes fresh every morning. We have a poor memory, don’t we.

Living a life for God is full of joy, excitement, hope, and blessings. Yet, many Christians might not agree with that statement. Some from a biblical understanding and some from an experience viewpoint. Both the bible and your Christian life experience give evidence that a life for God is also full of hardships, haters, times of confusion or dread, and going without. Many of us are not really quite ready for the latter. I think there are two main reasons our faith can get shaken and two ways we can stay grounded.

Problem #2: We live in a world that is broken. Genesis 3 describes sin entering into the world. It destroyed the relationship between God and man, between one human and another, between humanity and the earth, and between God and the earth. Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and ascension brought restoration to many of these relationships. However, heaven is not here on earth yet. Jesus’ second return and the entering of the new heaven and the new earth will finalize the restoration of these relationships. Even though sin has lost it’s power, it is still prevalent in the world. Christians can still sin and often do. On top of that, the world has plenty of people who are greedy, liars, cheaters, idolaters, haters, full of jealousy, full of envy, sexually immoral, etc. This is the world’s natural tendency and it often trips us up.

Solution: It’s wise for us to remain deeply rooted in Jesus. We need to surround our thoughts with truth. Don’t allow the pressures of this world, or hardships, or selfish ambitions, or wealth keep you from being daily connected with Jesus. It’s during those times, that we need that connection the most. Jesus promised that if we would stay with Him, He would be with us (John 15). It is through this relationship that Joy can be had. It is through this relationship that we experience the Hope will not disappoint us. It is through this relationship that we are blessed with Every Spiritual Blessing in Heaven.

I have told you this so that my [Jesus'] joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. (Joh 15:11 NIV)

Problem #1: Satan desires to mess with you. It’s shouldn’t be any surprise to know that Satan is as real as God is. Satan was involved in deceiving Eve and Adam in Genesis 3. He is still that ancient serpent that is sly and crafty. He is still prowling the earth, seeking whom he may kill, steal, and destroy. Only at Christ’s second return will that beast be bound from his deceptive works. We are given much proof of this in God’s word. As recorded in Luke 22, Jesus warned Peter:

31 “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked [or demanded] to sift you as wheat.
32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”
(Luk 22:31-32 NIV)

Solution: The “you” in verse 31 is in the plural form. Jesus was warning more than just Peter (Simon). In fact, Peter writes a similar warning in his letter for all believers (1 Peter 5:8). Peter did indeed experience Satan’s desire to mess him up, even though Jesus warned him shortly before the incident. The amazing thing to catch in this conversation is that Jesus didn’t desired or pray that Peter would escape Satan’s schemes (that may be nearly impossible). The thing that Jesus desired for Peter was not to lose faith.

Not losing faith allowed Peter to hold onto a piece of that Hope and Joy and Love he knew existed between him and God in spite of Satan’s attacks. The point I want to make is that no matter what you have experienced in the way of living in a broken world or in the way of Satan’s fiery darts, there is always a way to turn back when you hold on to believing that God is doing something in you, with you, through you, and for you. Hold onto believing. Hold onto the faith. It will not fail if you don’t let it. And who knows, maybe your best life happens once you’ve fallen, but got back up.

People of all ages regularly feel the desire to be wanted. Just as teenagers want to be recognized among their peers, adults don’t grow out of the desire to belong. We all desire to be noticed, to be given attention to, to be recognized, to be noticed…to feel important. This doesn’t have to come from pride or selfishness either. I think when we boil it down, we desire to know we are being productive. We desire to know we are an important piece to the whole. This is good.

Longing to make a difference in our life, with our family, in our careers, in our church, or in our culture is a part of maturity. Think about people who would be viewed as foolish, naive, simple, young, or “wild and free.” They have a careless way about their life that doesn’t see how God has given them things in order to be productive for Him. They enjoy life to the fullest, but only for themselves. They don’t seem to care at all.

There is this other dangerous side to wanting to be recognized, to feel important, and to know we are providing something productive. In this sense, we care too much. We make everything a big deal. We tip the scales to believe that we are to make a difference because it needs to happen right away. We have an urgency about problems around us, which is good. We should be aware of issues and have some urgency in seeing these corrected. However, I’m amazed at how God views productivity and time.

Productivity in God’s eyes is different for every person. He never supports the lazy person, but He doesn’t see productivity as the same for all people. This is because He doesn’t necessarily equate productivity with results. Your level of productivity is not defined by the amount of results. Your level of productivity is also not necessarily defined by your type of results. Your productivity should bring results, but we must be careful how we believe the results should look like.

I think about how my life is where it is today. There were people in my life that contributed to me devoting my life to vocational ministry. There were messages and events by pastors that spoke to me. There were messages and events by pastors that I don’t remember. They never knew which message or event would be used by God for anyone listening and participating in. They were just being faithful to being productive for God. I think about the faithful testimony by my parents of going to church. I think about their concern for me to develop a desire to read (I saw them always reading and I learned never to say “I’m bored…” Answer: “Read a book”). They developed the desire in me to learn that contributes to my desire to learn about God. I think about the faithful testimony of my grandparents that influenced my parents. The dots to connect for my life probably go way back to people I’ve never met. And I pray that those dots continue to influence people I connect with.

God’s plan of productivity is focused on long term results. Our seemingly “little” piece is so important. Don’t beat yourself up to perform. Don’t be lazy either. Do what you can and know that God is working it all together to make a difference not only in this generation, but the ones to come. That makes me feel productive. How about you?

The book of Job in the Old Testament is a fascinating glimpse into the faithfulness of Job towards God. Yet, as a book in the Bible, it is first and foremost about God’s character, thought processing, and a view of how God operates in this world. In the first couple of chapters, we get a behind-the-scene view of God and Satan talking about Job’s faithfulness and integrity. In a proof testing, God allows Satan to take away Job’s business, possessions, sons and daughters, and health. Of course Job is affected by all this, as well as is his wife.  Although we really don’t get her perspective much in the book, we do see her frustration in Job 2:9

“His wife said to him, “Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!”" (NIV)

This response by Job’s wife is commonly our response when bad things happen in our life. Job’s wife is most likely very faithful to God as well, but in this moment of confusion and hopelessness, she responded like a “foolish” (or godless) woman (2:10). The ideal (though not easy) response seems to come from Job. Job’s response was to remain in faith no matter what the issues.

“…Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.’ In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.” (Job 1:20-22 NIV)

Job was very confident in his faithfulness to God. Job believed that he did everything God asked of him and more. Job believed this was not punishment for some wrong-doing. He was also confident in the God that he was faithful to. He believed that God wasn’t a cruel God, nor a God that could make an oversight, nor one that could make mistakes. God couldn’t be accused of doing wrong. Job held his belief that whatever was going on, God was not against him nor was God absent from what just happened.

To believe that it was God Himself who could take those things away sounds correct in the understanding of God being in control over everything, including Satan’s activities. This story illustrates God’s Sovereignty. It also illustrates God’s ability in being God, by doing whatever He desired (an ability none of us have). These qualities can bring us both assurance as well as humility. But to believe that God Himself would take away doesn’t always set right with our idea of God blessing those who are faithful to Him. Isn’t blessings suppose to be about getting more of something? Isn’t God about GRACE (giving gifts we don’t deserve) and MERCY (withholding the punishment we do deserve)? So, is a God who would take away from me simply being cruel by making life difficult on purpose?

There are many “reasons for” God taking things away that we could talk about. There are “results from” God taking things away that we could talk about as well. I talked a little about this earlier in pivotal circumstances and giving God the benefit of the doubt. However in one sense, I feel that the more we talk about the reasons for or the results from things happening, we tend to talk about it from a selfish perspective. We want to be blessed. We want to gain from the loss. As much as I’m for believing that God is doing something in us, through us, with us, and for us, we must question whether we will remain faithful to God. Are we willing to not accuse God of wrong-doing? We must believe that no matter what happens, we are going to respond in God, through God, with God, and for God.

He does work out all things for good according to those who love him (Romans 8:28ff). He has worked before the foundations of the earth to bring us salvation through the blood and sacrifice of His one and only Son (Ephesians 1).  He does all these things to bring Himself glory. He desires to see you happy…in Him. The things that we can control are our responses. How good are we at responding in worship when God takes away? These are the only things that we could change, but would we? Can we respond to God when He takes away in the same fashion as when He gives?

In the previous posts, I talked about the marriage relationship. I talked more about the philosophy behind the relationship than about some practical applications of “do this” or “don’t do that”. My aim was to properly give you the tools to see yourself in your marriage relationship at the truest form. Long before problems arise in marriages, there are some assumptions, desires, and thoughts about your spouse, your role, and expectations (or myths if we can be honest) of life through this relationship. To get to the heart of the matter, we must ask ourselves “how did I think my way to this point?”

There are several examples in the Old Testament of marriage relationships: some good examples, some not so much. Because I started talking about the connection between God/His people and Jesus/the Church, I wanted to take a look at Hosea. Hosea was a prophet who was warning God’s people to repent of their sins against God or they could expect God’s discipline and judgment to drive them into exile (away from their promised land). To literally illustrate the relationship God was experiencing with His people, God told Hosea to marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her. While most of the book of Hosea is God describing what His people have done against Him and what they can expect in return (not all punishment, there is always a promise for faithfulness to His covenant), there is this correlation between that and Hosea’s marriage.

Hosea’s wife longed to be loved and feel loved by men. Her drive to please people and to be pleased was her pursuit of happiness. She looked for what other people could give her and provide for her.  She was unaware though that during her prostituting Hosea was actually looking out for her, giving her the things she thought the other men where giving her. Hosea eventually spent everything to literally buy her back from prostitution. Hosea didn’t give up on her, somehow allowed her to commit the grievances (which is a curious thought in itself), and still showed unconditional love and forgiveness. That’s not to say there wasn’t pain to work through once Hosea and Gomer were back together. In the end, there was hope, redemption, and even a renaming of their children (Check out the book of Hosea to get the full details).

We need to recognize that our satisfaction, our provision, comes from God. We need to recognize that God alone is faithful to us.  There is potential for all of us to turn our backs to God because our marital desires, wants, expectations for someone or something else to do that.  In a sense, we have, as Eugene Peterson translates it, “replaced their God with their genitals” (Hosea 4:12 MSG). James in the New Testament puts it this way:

1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?
2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.
3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? (Jam 4:1-5 NIV)

Marriages can often be started or based upon some faulty thinking about the meaning of marriage, the purpose of marriage, the role of marriage. Marriages can often be started or based upon some faulty assumptions, desires, expectations, and thoughts about the relationship.  Some people marry for money, sanctioned sex, social status, to escape embarrassment of a pre-martial pregnancy, or simple to move a friendship with benefits to a solo commitment. Ultimately, we marry for a reason and we live with desires and wants.

A marriage relationship should be built upon unconditional love, forgiveness, commitment, and companionship. We love one another in recognition of God showing love and grace to humanity. Our marriage helps one another reflect the redeeming power of living in a relationship with God. It certainly helps in forgiving others to know that you too have been forgiven by God. We love because He first loved us. When we pursue our spouse the way God pursues His people, great things are in store. It produces a husband that his wife wants to follow. It produces a wife that her husband gets excited about sharing life with. These types of marriages are the marriages that marriages look up to. This happens when each spouse lives out of a heart like God’s and not like His promiscuous people. What does your heart desire?

This week I’ve been talking about the relationship between a husband and wife. Today we finally get to a piece of contentious debate about the rule, code, or authority between the two. In the midst of an argument or divided solution to a problem, what is a couple to do? Sometimes, the bible gets a bad image about the hierarchy of authority in the home. Verses taken out of historical, cultural, literary and theological context causes some of the problems. Other times, they might be read with assumptions and personal feelings without a desire to truly learn and obey the Scriptures objectively.

22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church–
30 for we are members of his body.
31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
32 This is a profound mystery–but I am talking about Christ and the church.
33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Eph 5:22-33 NIV)

There are several verses in the New Testament which say similarly the same thing as the Ephesians passage (Col 3:18-4:1; 1 Peter 3:1-7; Titus 2:1-10).  I’ve chosen the Ephesians passage because it places the husband-wife relationship in correlation with the Jesus-church relationship.  Primarily, it puts the husband as the head of the relationship, while the wife is told to submit (and it would serve us well to read the context before this passage, especially the preceding verse right before).  Although there is much more to this correlation, this part is what gets people feeling uncomfortable. The word submit means to “put under one’s advice or control.” There are several things that must to noted about this statement in this context of husband-wife. There is also so much to this passage and understanding that we just don’t have the space in this post to discover them all.

In no way does submission imply a qualitative difference. Women are not inferior and men are not superior. Woman are not unintelligent and men are intelligent. Woman are not less gifted and men are not well gifted. This description of authority must stand within the context of God redeeming the husband-wife relationship that we talked about in previous posts. God does not call this a monarchy. God does not call this a dictatorship. God does not even call this a democracy. This is not a status level of hierarchy. For even levels of submission are found within the Tri-unity of God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Harold Hoehner says it like this in his commentary on Ephesians:

Though all are equal before God, this does not exclude lines of authority…For example, all citizens of a country are equal but there are also many different ranks in the power structure of the country. It does not mean that those in authority are better citizens of the country than those whom they rule…More importantly, another example of equality and yet subordination is the persons of the Godhead. All three persons of God are qualitatively equal [Matt 28:19; 2 Cor 13:14; Eph 4:4-6; 1 Pet 1:2; cf. also John 13:16; 17:21] yet the Son is subordinate to the Father [Matt 10:40; 26:39, 42; John 8:29, 42; 12:49], the Holy Spirit to the Father [John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13-15], and the Holy Spirit to the Son [John 16:7; cf. 14:26; 15:26]. Thus, subordination does not imply a qualitative difference.

When God created, in Genesis, male and female, Adam and Eve, husband and wife, He created them in “our image” as He says. Not only is humanity to be a reflection of God in their personal actions, attitudes, desires, etc., but our relationships between one another should reflect that Divine relationship as well. That’s why Paul also talks about the relationship between child-parent and slave-master.  Relationships are to reflect a loving and yet sensible order.  Paul’s mention of the husband-wife relationship fits within his focus on unity throughout the whole book of Ephesians. The entire Godhead worked together to bring salvation to humanity! Jews and Gentiles are now one. Slaves and masters are now the same. Every person in Christ works together as the body with many parts (none more important than the others) to reach the full unity of the faith and the knowledge of Jesus Christ to make us mature.  Again, a redemptive relationship is about unity.

It was important for the early church to understand how their conduct was to reflect this redeeming importance of Christ. Not only did Christ provide a redemptive way to have a relationship with God, but every relationship from home, work, and government was to reflect this redemption. (This “household code” may have also been a cultural practice among Jews and philosophers of that time, such as Plato, Aristotle, and Philo. Their views of men-woman, husband-wife, child-parent, and slave-master can be seen in their codes of conduct.) Man and woman were not to follow the suite of the Fallen Adam and Eve, constantly battling against each other. That’s how they were used to living before Christ. Paul’s “household code” was meant to both bring man and woman to equal grounds and to create respective order. Disorder and fighting would lead to a distaste of Christianity and the church for outsiders, just as much as a degrading of women has.

Now, whether we like this or not, we must accept that no matter how we play the equality card or the cultural card, the husband plays an important role of the “head” of household. It’s not the same as a child-parent, nor is it like a slave-master relationship. It’s like Jesus and the church. My point in this is to describe what it should look like and to talk about how it’s not about pushing woman down. Far from it. How husbands carry that role should reflect the sacrificial, humbling, ever-caring, enormous-loving, constant teaching, nurturing, comforting, gentle, protective spirit that Christ showed the church. I tend to think that if a husband reflects Jesus, submission is both modeled and easier to subject oneself to. We’ll see more of this as we look at the book of Hosea.

The real battle as we have begun to see has always been between good and evil. And no, your spouse is not the evil one. God was battling for the desires and worship of His creation since the beginning of time. The good and evil battle is still between God and our own wants/worship (James 4:1-8). God is the main character and the main hero of this story. God’s people have always wandered away or sought out to do things their way. Ultimately, it’s about keeping the power with God (as though we could actually take it away from him!). It’s recognizing Him as King of Kings, rather setting ourselves up as mini-kings of our “domain.” Despite our slang language, men are not kings and woman are not queens. It’s why Paul the apostle tells us in Ephesians that our real battle is not between another human being:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.
Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Eph 6:10-12 NIV)

The battle for your own heart and mind is not with your spouse, but with the devil himself. What we need to ask is where in the sand do we drawn the battle line in our marriage? For example, my sons are competitive (they get it from their mother). Whether they are playing a game on the Wii or hiking on a mountain or eating dinner, they are trying to beat their brother. I constantly seem to be saying “stop fighting, your brother is not the enemy, this is not a race, work together to beat the game…” Yet that same advice is harder to put into practice in my own marriage.

Hurting marriages are drawing the battle line between one another, even using the kids to form their team against the other side. Marriages aren’t aware that they are leaving no battle lines between them and Satan. Satan is free to attack both sides. And since God is not at the center of their thinking and desiring, there is a battle line between each spouse and God. Fighting among each other actually creates a bigger war then we imagined. The only one free to fight all sides is Satan. Rather than figuring out who is going to wave the white flag of surrender, who is right and who is wrong, both sides must see how the battle has fallen exactly where Satan wants it: back to the natural, sinful pattern of Genesis 3:16.

Before the Fall, I believe the husband and wife understood where the line was drawn. In Genesis 2:18, it says:

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” (NIV)

The battle line was never between the two. It was not good this way. It was good for man to have someone else with him. The word “helper” has often created a biblical reasoning for hierarchy in marriage. However, this is to be understood as an assistant working together against or for something. It is used many times in the Old Testament to describe someone (mostly God Himself) who aided in military assistance over a common enemy (1 Chronicles 12:18, 2 Chronicles 25:8). Being a helper is not a wife who does the tasks that her husband doesn’t want so he can focus his efforts on “bigger” things.  It’s a picture of a spouse who lacks in the ability to complete the task, even to be a complete person. It’s a picture of drawing the battle line around each other and working jointly together. Without a helper, it’s just not good to do it alone. Two are better than one. Draw the battle lines wisely.

In the previous post, I talked about how the original sin of man and woman puts marriages automatically on shaky ground. For many marriages, this is the only place they live. The only “solution” for them (if they decide to stay together) is to manage the tension by developing a give-and-take relationship. “I’ll give you power over this and I’ll take power over that.” “If you give me this, then I’ll give you that.” Remember, this is about control and getting what you want. This strategy of peaceful domination is still a reflection of sinful humanity. This type of relationship actually sounds more like a peace treaty than a loving-trusting-building relationship.

I know you’re waiting for some juicy details or some practical how-to’s, and those will come, but rather than knowing how to apply some band-aids or how to cope through your marriage, let us get to the heart of the matter and deal with things in their basic form first. This lays the important foundation for why you should be married in the first place.

So when we talk about what a marriage is suppose to reflect, what do we have as a goal? I believe the standard is shown in God and His chosen people. It is shown in Jesus and the church. Not only in the New Testament, but the Old Testament has much to say about a healthy and redemptive relationship that is worth calling a marriage.

Before we get further into this, we need to note that a comparison between a husband-and-wife with God-and-His-chosen-people does not mean we completely identify the husband to God and the wife to His chosen people (though we will discuss this connection in Hosea), nor do we completely identify the husband to Jesus and the wife to the church (though we will discuss this connection in Ephesians 5).

It’s too easy for some Christians to jump immediately to this connection and play the Bible card in order to set “godly” structure to this power struggle. This mentality places the husband in his “rightful” higher position and often then gives the woman a reason to believe the church sees wives as doormats or service employees. Women evidently lash back because we haven’t changed out of the power struggle described in God’s judgment of sin. When the husband tries to rule over her, she will try to rule over him. And when she tries to rule over him, he will try to rule over her. Calling it biblical or godly, doesn’t necessarily make it righteous or redemptive.

To me, the redemptive power of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is not a better way to move the pieces around, but has always been about a change in the pieces altogether. When God through the blood of Jesus Christ redeemed the relationship between humanity and God, it brought about a new creation for those who believed and trusted in Jesus as the Savior of their sins and the Lord of their life (2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 6:4, Galatians 6:15, John 3:1-3). When God talks about redeeming the relationship between humanity and creation, it is brought about in a new heaven and a new earth at the end of the age found in such passages as Revelation 21, 2 Peter 3:7-13, and Romans 8:19-23.

It’s then no surprise why Christian marriages don’t often look much better than non-Christian marriages. At any point of conflict, husbands and wives have the choice to live out their marriage relationship in reflection of the natural and sinful power struggle or to live out their marriage relationship as a reflection of a person changed by the saving power of God. All power struggles are solved when we realize that the power is really God’s. His power was used to completely change the game and win back the power struggle. He redeemed the relationship not only between husband and wife, but between God and His chosen people and between the good and evil that battles within each one of us individually.

If we hope to win in this power struggle in marriage, we need to make sure we understand where the real battle exists and what the goal of winning reflects.