Respect

Today, I would just like to share with you a paragraph from 'A Woman After God's Own Heart' as food for thought. And yes, I'm still studying Submission.

"Remember to respect--- Submission flows from the basic heart attitude of respect. God states, "Let the wife see that she respects her husband" (Ephesians 5:33). God isn't tellin us to feel respect, but to show respect, to act with respect. A good way to measure our respect for our husband is to answer the question, Am I treating my husband as I would treat Christ Himself?
"You reveal your respect for your husband in little daily instances. Do you, for instance, ask your husband to do something--or do you tell him? Do you stop, look, and listen to him when he's talking? Do you speak about him with respect?"

Submission (continued)

If you missed my earlier post on submission, you can read it here.

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

"For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

"Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing."

Ephesians 5:22-24

I have not been married long and I don't pretend to know all the answers. I'm just sharing what I learn as the Lord teaches me.

In my Devotions this morning (still studying submission) one of the passages of scripture was Ephesians 5:22-24 (above). It is my choice, as a wife to be submissive. People can tell me that I need to be submissive, or I can read that I need to be submissive, but unless I make a choice to do so, I will not be submissive. And who am I supposed to be submissive to? My husband. Ephesians 5:22 says "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands..." As Elizabeth George put it, the "Who of submission, is our husbands." Now about the how.

The last part of verse 22 tells us how to submit: "as unto the Lord." The root of submission is submitting to God. Colossians 3:23 says:

"And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men."

In every thing that I do (including submission), I need to do it as to the Lord. If my focus is on submitting to the Lord, than I will be submissive to my husband. God placed my husband as the head over me, as He is head of the Church. Yes, I know this and have studied this many times. But it is always good to be reminded of things, and I am always in need of improvement.

On a little "side note" if you will, submission starts with your heart attitude. The Lord has taught me a lot about my attitude over the past couple years. At one point, when I was leading a bible study group with several other young girls, I put together a whole study on one's attitude, because of all that the Lord was teaching me. However, it seems that no matter how many times the Lord has worked in my heart on something, time goes by, and before I know it, I need to go back and be re-taught, or at least reminded of the things that I've learned (like with submission). Anyway, I want to end this post by sharing a quote with you by Charles Swindle. My Dad uses this quote at his manager's meetings, and brings it up in our family Bible Studies quite often as we should be reminded of it daily. Someday, when we have our own house, I want to do a stencil of it on a wall, or something like that. I want to put it in a prominent place so that I can see it daily.

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company... a Church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past ...we cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one thing we have, and that is our attitude...

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it.

And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitude."

- Charles Swindol -

Submission

Here it is, the long awaited post (considering it's been well over a week since my last post (: ).

The above picture is from this past Saturday, on our way from N. Attleboro, MA to Montpelier, VT. The weekends book signings were not the greatest in sales, but it was a great trip. Yes, even though we didn't find a place to spend the night until 9:30pm. :) Most of the Motels/Hotels/Inns were full because it was Parents' weekend at the nearby college. So yes, it took us awhile to find a place that had an opening. When I went to look online last week to find a place, there weren't any openings then, so we expected it to take us awhile. We ended up staying in a nice Motel (Twin City Motel) that was only 4 minutes from our book signing the next morning. That worked out really well. Now for the object of this post:

When we left the book signing, I started out driving. I had packed us sandwiches and fruit that we had for lunch, on the road, and then Scott reclined and took a nap. Normally he has a hard time taking a nap in the car (me, on the other hand, that's a totally different story), but he fell asleep and slept for at least an hour and a half. While he was sleeping I called my Mom because when I had talked to her in the morning, she invited us to come over for dinner when we got back to CT (they were also making Apple Pie, and my Mom promised to make me a BLT with fresh bacon. That sounded really good since I didn't have anything prepared at home, and our estimated time of arrival was just after 6 o'clock.), so I was calling to tell her that we'd be there (remember, we weren't in CT yet, so I wasn't disobeying the law). :) We decided that we'd go straight to my Parents' as there was no need to stop by our place first.

Before I go any further in my story, let me remind you of my recent studies in my quiet time with the Lord.... A Woman After God's Own Heart. That's what my goal is. I'm reading through Elizabeth George's book and studying Scripture on the same topics that I'm studying each day. One of my prayers since I've been married (and long before I was married also), was that the Lord would give me a heart of submission. That includes submission in the little, day-to-day things.

Okay, so back to my story. By the time Scott woke up, we had less then 2 hours left of driving. Then, with approximately an hour left of driving, we hit the 5:00/5:30 traffic. So, Scott got out our big Road Atlas that we just bought at Borders last weekend. (Good thing I was driving so he could look at it, because I don't have much experience with road maps, although I'm getting there.) After looking at the map, he said we should take exit 74 and there were some short cuts we could take that would get us to my parents faster. Well, at the moment, the exit numbers were going up and the GPS (the trusty mechanical device, that only I think is trusty, Scott doesn't trust it as much) said that we should take exit 72 (obviously 72 must come before 74 since we're going up in numbers and the GPS had us getting to my parents at 6:27). Scott was looking at the map and said that, although that exit would work, we should take this exit because it would be a faster route. In my heart, I knew I should do what he said and even if it took us longer, it would be worth it because I let him lead instead of insisting that we should take *my* way. So I said that I would go his way (and I prayed that it wouldn't end up being a longer route). Almost immediately after that, the numbers all of a sudden changed and exit 74 was 1 mile away and the next exit (exits 73 and 72) was 12 miles away (let me insert here that the traffic had greatly increased). I was so glad that I had made that decision to trust my Husband and go with what he said. We took exit 74 and then we followed Scott's directions. Twice he saw a shortcut on the map and said for us to take that way, and although it didn't look much different from the other direction, I didn't question him, I had learned my lesson, and I'm so glad that I did. I know I will still struggle at times with wanting to do something *my* way, and I will no doubt want to question him at times, but I am praying more fervently than ever that I will stop first and ask myself, "how important is it that we do it *my* way?"

To top it off, when I got up this morning and went to start my Bible Study, what do you think today's chapter was on? A heart of submission. It usually takes me at least a a couple days to go through one chapter, and I love how God gave me a physical lesson on Submission, and now to make sure that I really get it, I will be studying submission over the next couple days.

Many blessings to all my readers, and I hope you all have a lovely day. I'm off to reply to some emails from over the weekend, and then start some packing (hopefully) or dishes before I leave to go clean this afternoon. And as for this evening.... we will be having dinner and then playing Phase 10 with Scott's grandparents (last time we played for 3 1/2 hours (: ).