The Prepper Broadcasting Network - 2024.03.19 - Reliance - Love Your Wives

Episode Date: March 24, 2024

God bless the Menking family

Therefore be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints, neither filthiness nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light. For whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore, he says, awake you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is, and do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is head

of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for your truth. Thank you for your presence. Holy Spirit, preside over this time. Be with us as we hear and as we learn and as we listen. Use this time, Lord, for your glory and for our edification. Strengthen our spirits, strengthen our souls, strengthen our faith. Give us the nourishment that we need from your word, Lord,

and help us to come into line with your will. your word, Lord, and help us to come into line with your will. Let families be restored and strengthened and more committed, Lord, to you and to each other. We pray, Lord, for the raising up of godly children in this generation. We pray that you would establish a hedge of protection around the children who are being raised in the way that they should go. That you would bless parents with seeing the fruit of their labor as they endeavor for their children to walk with you in increasingly difficult times. Lord, we pray that you would make a way for their education, for their faith to be matured, and for them to exceed their parents in the faith. Lord, I pray this for my children too. May they be more powerful and mighty for you than I could ever be.

Establish them, strengthen them, set them on a firm foundation. Give me wisdom and discernment to know how to lead them in the way that they should go. Help them to have their first instinct be to look to you, to seek your will, to seek your word, to pray, to pursue you, Lord, with all their hearts. Don't let them get discouraged, God. Help them. Help them to know that you are present and with them and for them. And Jesus, we pray that you would strengthen them amidst any trials that they encounter. God, we love you, we bless you, and we enter your courts with thanksgiving.

We enter your gates with praise. Holy Spirit, be magnified and glorified in this time. In Jesus' name, amen. Before I jump into these passages from Ephesians 5, I want to provide some context about why I tend to read longer portions of Scripture. Ultimately, I think that a lot of the teaching that gets done in the Christian church these days, while it can be tremendously edifying in a variety of different contexts, sometimes people miss the surrounding verses. When we take things and we preach about them, when we speak about them, when we try to elucidate them, and when we try to give exegesis of them, the Bible needs to be taken in the fullness of its context. And so I'm intending about talking through the relationship between husband and wife today. But if we don't hear the run-up to what

Paul is providing through the guidance of the Holy Spirit to the church at Ephesus, then we may miss something that can help us be informed about this. And it may be the case that someone listening hasn't gone through this chapter in full in a while. Maybe they've heard some verses from it or are familiar with things from memory, but the full context of scripture is extremely helpful. Now, we don't have the bandwidth on this program, nor have I been called to or am qualified for a verse-by-verse formal teaching of all of the implications of these things. There are churches who do that and praise God for them. I pray that the Lord would lead you, all of our listeners, to a Bible-believing church that stands firm on the truth of the Lord, because that is absolutely what is necessary in

these days, regardless of the surrounding milieu that we find ourselves in. We must follow the Lord. That call is always urgent and particularly so now. And I also don't know if the Holy Spirit will quicken something in someone that isn't part of the main text that I want to speak about that's on my heart today. There might be something else in those verses. There might be something the Holy Spirit wants to bring to mind. And so I don't want to restrict the landscape of what the Holy Spirit can accomplish because the entire scripture, all scripture is worthwhile for teaching, for edification, and for helping us. These words should be comforting. Even if they're challenging, they should be comforting. Comforting in that we have a specific guideline that we can establish.

Even if we don't yet totally understand how this comes into play and what the parameters are day in, day out in every single decision, just knowing that we have guidance, knowing that we have a plumb line, knowing that there is a measurement standard, knowing that there is something for us to look at and aspire towards is extraordinarily helpful for us. Because if we're in a situation where we don't even know if there is something to pursue, if we don't even know if there is a true north, and so we're just fumbling about blindly, that kind of state is even worse in many ways than us realizing that there is a standard and that we have fallen short of it. It's in fact that realization that we have failed to live up to God's standard of morality,

God's perfect holiness, that invites in our hearts through the calling of God, this awakening of a knowledge of a need for a savior. And it motivates us to look upon Jesus and to see what he has accomplished on the cross and to commit our lives and entrust our souls to him. Because if you're a Christian, dear brothers and sisters, then you are saying that on judgment day, you will stand before God. And the only thing that will allow you to be saved to the uttermost is your faith and confidence in Jesus Christ. We will not stand before God and say, look at what we did. We will stand before God and say, look at what Jesus has accomplished. He has done this on my behalf and I surrender everything to him. And I pray that you would do the same. Think about the consequences of this decision. There will come a day at a

certain point. Most of us will not see this in our flesh on this side of eternity, but there will be a judgment day where every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And the time for us to make this commitment is here and now, because if you've never really thought about this, because it seems so far off, it seems so foreign, it seems so challenging. I don't blame you because we don't know what the exact picture of this will be of the great white throne judgment. We don't know what will transpire between now and then exactly. It's impossible, I think, strictly speaking, for us to picture it in our minds. And yet it is a worthwhile enterprise to understand that we will come face to face with a holy God and that the only thing that we can do is plead the blood of Jesus. Understanding

that it glorifies God to see the sacrifice of Jesus treated appropriately and appropriated. Think about this. Let's say you are a judge in a courtroom and you are earnestly seeking to provide leniency for someone who you love, who is guilty and you love them deeply but justice must be served and so instead of handing down the punishment to them you hand the punishment down to your own son and you say i love this person so much that i would rather punish my own son. And here the metaphor breaks down slightly, just as an aside, we don't want to say in the theology of the atonement that the cross was punishment for Jesus. Jesus was voluntarily taking our place to die the death that we should have died. We do want to say that he underwent the wrath of God because there is demanded by the justness,

the justice of God himself, that guilt not go unpunished. But Christ took that punishment for us. unpunished, but Christ took that punishment for us. And God says that we can be pardoned. And don't imagine you're God. Imagine you're back in the seat as the judge. There is someone who you love who is guilty, who is on trial and has been pronounced guilty. And you say, justice must be done. And so I will mete out this justice and I will mete it out on someone else instead of upon you, this person who I love. All you have to do is accept this pardon. Do you want this pardon? Do you trust that the one who I have declared guilty instead of you is the one who has saved you. And imagine that this person who you love, family member, friend, colleague, says no.

No, I don't accept that pardon. I don't accept that restoration of right order. that restoration of right order. I have a variety of different objections to it and I just don't accept it. How would that grieve your heart? How would that grieve your very soul that you have done everything to provide a way for this person who you love to be restored and to be declared free. Now, think about the glory it then gives God to extend this incredible blessing of salvation. Think about what it means when God sees you on the great day of judgment, on the great white throne, and he looks at you and you say, I have nothing to plead but the blood of Jesus. It brings glory to Jesus. It does say in scripture that even the righteous are scarcely saved, to emphasize the distinction between works and faith.

But our salvation is to the glory of God. It's not as if God begrudgingly lets us in because of this loophole. He has created a way that gives him tremendous, tremendous, infinite glory. And it gives Jesus glory. And it's something that we are created to participate in. It's something that it's almost essentially impossible to express. But even if we try to wrap our minds around it, we should hopefully endeavor to make sure that we understand the gravitas of this, that eternal consequences are eternal consequences, that all of this matters, that the decisions that we make matter, and that they will

have these eternal ramifications. So if you don't know Jesus as your Savior already, there is no other order of business that is more important. There's no self-help book, there's no lecture, there's no talk, there's no other piece of knowledge more important than the personal knowledge of Jesus as your Lord and Savior. He died to pay the price for you. He extends out his nail pierced hands with love and invites you into an eternity of being in the right place, being where you were created to be in an ever-expanding, ever-increasing joy of fellowship with your creator who is infinitely powerful, infinitely loving, and knows everything about you already. So please come to him today.

Cry out to Jesus and believe in the power of his name. It's in his name alone that we must be saved. And when we profess our faith in him, when we declare that he is our Lord and our Savior, when our faith is established, then we will be saved as the Bible suggests. Not just suggests, that's to put it a little too lightly. saved as the Bible suggests, not just suggests, that's to put it a little too lightly, intensely teaches with the fullness of God's declaration that can never be broken throughout all of eternity. It's not just a suggestion. It is the most important decision that you can and will ever make. The most important decision potentially that could ever be made on our side from our

standpoint. So let us follow the Lord into that, and we will then think about what the ramifications are as we join in this family of God, this great mystery that Paul speaks of, the mystery concerning Christ and the church, how we are part of the body of Christ and how that works. And there are points at which the analogy breaks down in the literal sense, the physical sense. And so we don't want to press this analogy too far. But what we can say is that God has a very special place in his heart and in his plans for his family. And he has a specific design for it. And what we understand as right conduct based on the spirit of the age may be out of alignment with what the Lord is speaking. So I want to walk through the ending verses in Ephesians 5 again. And first we'll make the commonplace observation that these verses feel very out of touch with the seemingly majority opinion of Western society. So when we

read in verse 22 and following, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is head of the wife as also Christ is head of the church, and he is savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands and everything. That chafes many people. It rubs them the wrong way, certainly. But we do have to understand what this looks like. If someone comes from a home where their father was very domineering and abusive and in control and had to have his way in every single thing, then these verses are going to create imagery and bring up memories that are painful. And it's not surprising in those contexts to see people rebelling against those. And so it's important for there to be good teaching about what these verses actually mean.

So there's been plenty of ink spilled, plenty of keyboards worn down in service to this idea of what does it mean to submit? What does it mean for the husband to have headship? Does that mean that the husband is standing in the place of God and has that entire authority, et cetera, et cetera? And the answer is yes and no, because the husbands have a role to fulfill that is outlined in the subsequent verses, which don't get talked about quite as much because they're not as abrasive with the current lens of culture. In verse 25, and these passages have to be taken together, they can't be taken individually. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and

gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands, what does that say about us and our leadership if we are not serving the way that Jesus served his church? How many things has Jesus done for his church? How many things has he done for you today? You're breathing. You can hear this message.

You are awake. You are alive. Jesus has done thousands of things for you today, and most of them go unnoticed because they're part of what God provides for us every day. And it's one of those aspects of our nature that once we get familiar with something, it becomes the normal and we acclimate to it and we just adjust. And that could be as inclusive as taking every single breath that the Lord gives us, every single heartbeat, every single time when our cells divide if there aren't harmful mutations in the process of mitosis. Think about that. Now we're

talking about billions and billions and billions of individual quote-unquote things that Jesus is doing for us. And regardless of the forensic accounting of all of this, just think about how Jesus serves us all the time. He is our high priest. He intercedes on our behalf. He has opened up a way for us to come to him in prayer. He has told us to ask and we will receive. He has given everything. He gave his own life for us. He gave up the state of eternality that he had to be incarnated for us. He humbled himself. He took joy in going to the cross, even in the anticipatory agony of it all. He did it for the joy that was set before him. He knows you, he loves you, and he serves you. And it should be stupefying that that is the case, but he is exemplifying the kind of love that we are to show. And I can tell you, husbands, that as you endeavor

to be led by the Holy Spirit into that approach to being the head and taking on the responsibility where everyone else comes first before you, not just, oh, I get my way in this because I'm in charge, according to the hierarchy here, but that I'm going to lead the way that Jesus led to the extent that it's possible only by the power of the Holy Spirit. When you ordain that, as opposed to simply speaking a pronouncement of verse 22, wives submit to your husbands over your household, then the right order of God will take place. Jesus didn't demand that everyone follow him when he was not in this place of perfectly loving everyone else. He was saying, come to me, you who are weary, come to me and be at rest. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. And so when we think about this, we have to think about as husbands, are we doing the same for wives? Now, obviously Jesus is in a different position than us,

but are the lives of our wives easier when we come home or are they harder? Do our wives eagerly anticipate us being involved with things or do they prefer us to just stay away? Do they want to see us or not? If you went to your wife right now and said, hey, we need to talk about something, what would their reaction be? If you had to make a decision that you thought was important for the family, how would you do it? How would you follow all of these steps? How would you rightly appropriate these verses? How would you lead? If you asked the dozen people who know you the best, would they say that you are actively loving your wife the way that Christ loved the church? Is that your reputation? That's not everything that matters. God knows the truth. And if there are misapprehensions about your reputation and the way that you handle your affairs in your household, that's one thing.

But is that what you are known for, for being a husband who serves, a husband who provides, a husband who leads properly? Now, this is one of those balancing acts that we need the Holy Spirit for. balancing acts that we need the Holy Spirit for. Sometimes discipline, sometimes leadership needs to be more definitive, more declarative, more forthright, and other times it needs to be more empathetic, more loving. And both of these things can be true simultaneously. You can't just speak one tactic into every single situation because serving someone and loving them is going to look a lot different if you are preparing to entertain house guests versus if you see a serious problem that is coming your way and need to head it off. Now, for those of you who think that entertaining house guests is a serious problem that is coming your way and need to head it off. Now, for those of you who think that entertaining house guests is a serious problem coming your way, fair enough. I hear you.

I think we've all been there to one degree or another, but then the question would be, how can we look at that situation and how can the grace of God be extended to us to change our attitudes or to change the circumstances so that that's not the case? Another brief aside because, you know, we've all been there. That's for sure. So, husbands, I have a question for you. Do you know when the right time is to bring up something with your wife? right time is to bring up something with your wife, something that you've noticed that you think it would be better for everyone if a particular behavior changed or you want to do something and you want to make sure everybody's on board, et cetera, et cetera. Do you know when the best

time is? Well, I don't. I'm asking you. Have you thought about it? Have you thought about the idea that your ideas will be taken with a different perspective depending on a variety of different factors, many of which we don't necessarily pay attention to? many of which we don't necessarily pay attention to. In the past, I have felt like, okay, there's a problem. We need to deal with it. It needs to get handled right now. That is what will make me feel like we're making progress towards a problem. And I've learned over many years, and plenty of you have been married longer than I have been,

and you can give me advice on this topic as well, I have found that it is absolutely to my benefit to bring things up at an appropriate time. And what I do these days is I have a tendency to avoid worrying about when is the right time to bring it up too much. You know how in the Bible it talks about there being an appointed time? And this is not just for the sake of prophetic fulfillment. This is for the sake of miracles that Jesus performs in his ministry, other specific aspects that are confirmed in scripture. But the idea is that God can provide these appointed times. And that should move us to say, Holy Spirit, help me to recognize when the appointed time for this particular issue is. I would then say that if you're paying attention

to something and something keeps on coming up spontaneously and it gets past this first check that it's not like a fiery dart from the enemy that's trying to distract you or throw you off or things like that. Sometimes things need to get done. Sometimes things need to change or be adjusted. And sometimes the way that the enemy will try to circumvent that is by throwing enough of those fiery darts at us that we approach things from the wrong perspective. And you likely know how this feels. When you are approached with something and it's like, this is a huge deal and you had no idea that it was, that feels dislocating. It feels strange. It feels like there's now distance between you and your spouse. Because if there was something going on that was this huge deal and you had no idea about

it, then yeah, you're not of the same mind. You're not truly in every single way as one flesh, truly in every single way as one flesh, as Ephesians suggests we need to be, calling back the very beginning of scripture in Genesis. And so when these things get brought up, we can use this idea of, okay, this has occurred to me several times. It's clearly something that needs to be addressed. That can be separate from, okay, when is the best choice to address this? When is the appointed time to bring something up, whether it's large or small? Now, if it's an immediate danger thing, if it's something that requires addressing immediately, there will be an urgency about it if we have a sound mind and sober judgment to say, okay, let's get this handled right here and right now. But gentlemen, husbands, we all know that can solve the problem, is not communicating to your

wife your emotional sensitivity and presentness to her situation, which we are commanded to serve, by the way. We are commanded to understand and to serve someone whose thought patterns, whose spiritual patterns don't perfectly align with our own. They have different skills, different interests, and different perspectives on things. In any given circumstance, our gradation of what are the most important things on our plate today or tomorrow, our priorities are going to be different. Now, God willing, they're going to be aligned at the topmost level that we want to serve God. We want to serve each other. We want to serve

our children and the rest of our household. We want to fulfill our callings. We want to proceed further and grow in the faith. All of these things, all of these are good things. But we all know that usually our day-to-day to-do lists and other aspects take a place of priority in our minds, where in some cases they can even push these bigger picture, higher priorities to the back burner because there's a specific deadline about a decision that has to get made. There's a specific pressure that's being brought to bear. And that is a challenge for us. And I do somewhat apologize for speaking in generalities. I want to avoid a misstep where I provide advice that is overly specific that doesn't apply to someone's situation. The last thing I want to do is get you into

trouble. I just want to point out that we are supposed to serve our wives and love our wives as Christ loved the church. Now, I can speak for myself, and I'm pretty sure I can speak for everyone else, if we're being honest, that we have not lived up to that standard. And I would say, husbands, gentlemen, brothers, could we take one step closer to that standard, whether it's listening to our wives when they have something to bring to us and just being there so that they understand and feel like we are paying attention to them, that they are valuable and validated. If we're supposed to love Christ the way that, or we are supposed to love Christ, obviously, but if we're supposed to love our wives the way that Christ loved the church,

Jesus hears our prayers all the time. Can't we hear our wives when they want to speak to us? And sometimes this is difficult for us because if it was something big, you know, your wife comes in, there's been an accident, there's something wrong at home, immediate attention, big problem, we're right there. But if it's for the dozenth time, some little thing that's going on, some nagging issue that shouldn't in your mind be a problem at all, wouldn't we want Jesus to hear us out on those sorts of things too? And he does. He absolutely does. He hears about every single aspect of our lives. Then we need to pray that

the Holy Spirit would give us the same attitude towards our wives. And this is not to say that we shouldn't be able to speak a word into a situation, but that if our words are few, but direct and purposeful and God-oriented and stabilizing, then that will create a situation in the home where there is a greater degree of security, a greater degree of comfort, and a greater degree of peace. a greater degree of comfort, and a greater degree of peace. How often does Jesus escalate with us in terms of if we're angry and we're coming to him and we're upset, how often does Jesus go over the top with his anger as a way of retaliating? I'm going to go out on a limb and say never. Now, in certain cases, God had stern words for people. When Job challenged God, God challenged Job right back.

But in all that, God said that Job didn't err or sin in what he did, even in the times when he was questioning God. So God is willing and able and ready to endure us questioning him or us bringing things to him that we might perceive as small. God doesn't perceive anything as small. Everything has consequences. Everything matters. Everything has a purpose. But shouldn't we be trying to do so even to some degree, even to a limited degree degree to the extent that we're able through the power of the Holy Spirit? Shouldn't we treat our wives the same way when they have small things to bring to us? Like I said, it's easier for us to imagine us behaving properly

when there's some kind of emergency or something rises to the occasion. But it's also easy for us to feel like, oh, you know, I don't need to be bothered with this, that, or the other thing when we perceive it as not rising to that level. But, you know, ultimately, if we're to be a priest in our home, the priest has to be concerned with every single aspect, not to the point of literally micromanaging every single thought, every single thing and bringing things into some line of created order by force of our own will, but rather to create a space where people feel confident and secure so that they can explore, so that they can pursue God, so that they can become the best versions of who God has

created them to be. And so we know that we're not going to get there as husbands by our own strength alone. For the vast majority of us, myself included, it's not in our disposition. It's not in our carnal nature. It's not built into our character, this ideal set of frameworks. I get frustrated as much as anyone in various instances where I'm like, really? This is what we're dealing with again? Haven't we had the same conversation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And those things, those reactions need to be subjugated to this idea, to this scripture that we have to love our wives the way that Christ loved the church. In order to be the head of the church, Jesus showed himself worthy of that. He was always worthy of it, but he showed himself in that role by laying down his life

totally, by giving everything of himself, of being a servant as leader. And it's this idea that because of Jesus has the supernatural power to transform the world. And I'm not being melodramatic or hyperbolic in this. This notion of servant leadership is how we will see the kingdom of God expanded. And if we are not modeling this in our own homes, or at least attempting to, if we're attempting and trying and failing and repenting and going back to Jesus and saying, Lord, I need help with this. I need help with this.

It's a battle. I need help. Strengthen me, Holy Spirit. If we're not trying to do this, then how could we possibly expect to stumble into a situation where our households are properly ordered, we see the power of God at work, we have testimonies of the Holy Spirit acting in our midst all

the time, and we just see these things in our own lives. We need to get into this virtuous cycle of earnestly pursuing this in our relationship with Christ. in our relationship with Christ. And even if our wives are not on board with every single aspect of what this means and what the family is going to look like and everything else like that, we have to take the initiative. We can't just wait around sitting and praying that something is going to happen. We have to pray with purpose. We have to follow through. We have to say, God, I want your vision. I want your purpose and your will to be established in my house. And then the Lord will say, okay, well, here are some things that you need to do.

The Holy Spirit will bring these to your attention and we immediately will have a difficult choice to be saying, you know, I really would not rather do that. a difficult choice to be saying, you know, I really would not rather do that. And that choice won't come in a moment where God calls out to us and says, change your ways. And we say, no, we just defiantly say no. But there will come a time pretty soon after we pray those types of prayers that something will be brought to us, typically by our wife, and we will have a choice to modify our behavior, to show that we are earnest about pursuing the Lord in this goal of servant leadership. Jesus, show me what to do here. Holy Spirit, lead me in the way I should go. Or we can go to our default status quo behavior, and we won't see the kind of transformation that we want.

So husbands, take the initiative here. Take the initiative to read these verses carefully, to think through the other connections to scripture about what this means in your home, and ask the Holy Spirit to search your heart. Ask the Holy Spirit earnestly to say, Holy Spirit to search your heart. Ask the Holy Spirit earnestly to say, God, I need to change. I want this for my home. I want my home to be a secure place, a place where your Holy Spirit lives, a place where there is peace, a place where there is order, a place where there is love. And I know that if I am to be the biblical head of household that I'm called to be, it is my primary responsibility to bring my house into that state. And the way I'll do that is by following the guidance of Holy Spirit of digging into the

scriptures here. Now, understand this and understand this from scripture that the wife is a reflection of her husband in the way that Jesus is spoken of as wanting to present his bride to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands, if we're in a situation where there's something wayward in our house, that is our responsibility, not to be domineering, but to understand the principles of scripture, to communicate effectively, and to show servant leadership that is deserving of being followed. Jesus is worthy of our adoration.

He is worthy of our obedience. He's worthy of being followed. His perfect love has given us more than we could ever ask for in terms of a justification for him deserving our obedience and our loyalty and our fealty and our following him. Most of us, myself included, are in a position to say that I have not lived up to that standard in the case of my marriage, but it is incumbent upon me to endeavor to move in that direction and to depend on the Holy Spirit, on the power of the word of God to transform me from image to image and glory to glory.

So husbands, can we all take a step in that direction, in the direction of servant leadership in the next conversation that we have? We will be given a choice. You will absolutely be given a choice and the Holy Spirit, I pray, will open your eyes to it. You can go one way or the other. One way leads to a greater establishment of servant leadership, a greater establishment of the foundation of your home built upon Jesus, and the other way leads to places that are not that. And we should stay away from those places. We're only going to be able to do

it by the power of God and by the leading of the Holy Spirit. So let's open our eyes, open our ears. Let's study the word and let's allow the Lord to teach us what it means to be in this position of servant leadership. God, you have ordained a role for the husband, you've ordained a role for the wife, and you have constructed something that is perfect when it is aligned with your word, with your principles. We declare, God, that you are holy and righteous and true, and Holy Spirit, we welcome you and we invite you to be a fruitful part of these conversations. Lord, help us to figure out what this means and

what it looks like in our own lives. We have had so many examples of bad relationships or bad teaching on this or a bad reflection from the culture. Lord, we want it to be you. We want it to be your vision and not our own. We want it to be your purpose and your will and not our own. So don't let us design something out of our own strength, out of our own creativity, out of our own mind. Let it be your word that is informing how we act. And Holy Spirit, we need you every day on this. We need you in every conversation and every thought that we have.

Help us, Holy Spirit, to take captive negative thoughts that would occur to us about our spouses. Help us to be servant leaders. Lord, you have to show us what that means in every situation because we all have different propensities, different foibles, different easily besetting sins. Lord, show us where there is a problem in our homes and give us the patience and the wherewithal and the wisdom and the discernment to deal with it. Jesus, show us where there is a problem in our homes and give us the patience and the wherewithal and the wisdom and the discernment to deal with it. Jesus, show us your love in this. And I pray that we would look back upon this conversation this time a year from now, two years from now, even two weeks from now and say, God, thank you for helping me with this.

I feel like we're making progress. And then as that happens, Lord, help us to not be satisfied. Help us to want even more. You always have more for us. You never run out of things to provide for us. Your giftings never fail. Your mercy never fails. Your love never fails. Lord, help us to want more and more from you and more and more in our own relationships. Lord, as we see the fruit of your Holy Spirit, the fruit of the godliness that you will bring into our houses, help us to become more thirsty for it. Help us to become more dependent on it, Lord. Help us to empty ourselves so that you can fill us in our homes and our relationships. God, only you can do this and you receive the glory for it. It is not in our own

strength or in our own power that we can accomplish this, but you, Lord, can accomplish anything. Help speak into the person's mind right now who thinks that this is impossible and remind them that you are the God of the impossible. You raise the dead. You create out of nothing. There is nothing impossible for you, Lord. So speak a word of encouragement to that person, Lord, who thinks it's too far gone. It's impossible. I'll never be in that position. My wife will never be in that position.

Maybe they're even believing lies about you, Lord. They say, God doesn't want me in that position or something like this, or I don't deserve to be in that position. God, break all of these lies now in Jesus' name. And I pray that your Holy Spirit would bring healing and restoration and soundness of mind. Lord, speak your word over them that they are called, that they are called by you by name. Holy Spirit, call them by name and speak into them the blessings that you have for their

life. Tell them about the scriptures. Tell them about Job who was restored. Tell them about all the injury that was suffered by men and women of God only to see the Lord redeem the time, the Lord to provide miraculous blessing, the Lord to transform to the uttermost and give them a vision of eternity that we are all aiming for, consistent with the joy that was set before Jesus at the cross. God, heal and bring about restoration in the lives of all of those listening today.

Lord, let this be a watershed moment in the lives of many households. Let this be a turning point. Let your will be established and speak these words of encouragement over them that you are the Lord and you will bless and you will redeem and it delights you to do so. Lord, so many are in a situation where they feel like they are not deserving or because of misapprehensions about your character. They believe that you are looking upon them with an evil eye. Lord, show them that you are not, that you are looking upon them with

love, with an aching heart that wants to see them brought into greater relationship with you. Show them your outstretched arms. Show them your power, Holy Spirit. Show them your tenderness. Show up right now in their rooms, in their hearts, Lord, in their minds with power and presence that is love and that abounds and that isn't just fleeting, but that sticks. Give us something to aim for. Bless our marriages. Bless our decision-making. Bless our communication. Give us abilities that we never even imagined that we could have, Lord, through the power of your Holy Spirit. We love you, Jesus. We worship you. We praise you. We thank you for the victory that you have won through the power of your word. Let mighty victories be won in our households, in our relationships, in our

marriages. And Lord, let us resemble you through your power and through your might as we endeavor to serve our wives and to serve your kingdom. In Jesus' name, amen.