Abandoned in the Love of Submission
This post was written by Steven Winkler from a comment on The Jezebel Profile.
Lori – I am amazed at the wisdom of God in your post and your courage to share it. This is not a popular message but a critically needed one. There is an absolute crisis with troubled marriages in the Church because MOST Christian leaders are either ignorant or too afraid to embrace the truths you shared from scripture regarding the GOD ORDAINED roles for husbands and wives. Instead, the Church has adopted the world’s views in subtle ways where there is no distinction in gender roles AS GOD has designed and ordained them.
The root of that crisis is that a husband’s GOD GIVEN authority and GOD’S COMMAND to wives to submit to his authority inevitably takes a back seat to the idol of endlessly pleasing his wife in exchange for her FUTURE promise to obey her husband once “her trust is established;” i.e. “Well, I’ll submit to him when he starts laying down his life for me as Christ did for the Church.” But that day NEVER COMES because in spite of his best effort to love her IT’S NEVER ENOUGH for her to KEEP HER VOWS to abandon herself to him in the love of submission.
Many marriage counselors excuse this by exalting the need for trust OVER and ABOVE obedience to God’s word, but in doing so they have opened the door to Jezebel and even enthroned that devil over those marriages because they are exalting a woman’s need for her husband’s love and affection over and above OBEDIENCE TO GOD. It’s an extremely diabolical and cleverly designed scheme of Satan that keeps couples in endless fights and confusion because inevitably, Satan will endlessly stoke a woman’s fear by frequently getting her to relive the pain and scars of childhood hurts.
This keeps her in an endless vicious cycle of rejection, pain, and fear because without the power of the cross, she will NEVER break that cycle – NO MATTER HOW loving her husband is. Many women become miserable tyrants, not understanding that demons are actually manifesting through their emotions, wrecking and destroying the marriage. OBEDIENCE to God’s word by submitting to their husbands blocks Jezebel’s influence and opens the door to God’s redemptive power in Christ, even when her husband is not obeying God as he should in his ministry to her.
Marriage counselors who refuse to teach and hold couples accountable to what SCRIPTURE teaches and COMMANDS regarding God’s divine order and obedience to it in marriage are FALSE TEACHERS. Ignorance is no more an excuse for this than it would be if a Pastor ignored his God given responsibility to admonish his flock to obey what is CLEARLY written in Scripture on any other issue such embracing purity and abstaining from fornication, etc. A powerful, purifying shaking is coming to the Church in regards to this issue.
Husbands and wives had better get serious with God and repent for disobeying GOD’S DIVINE ORDER. There is a lovely, warm comforting ocean of love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace to those who repent with all their heart and follow God’s way. But in this shaking, there will be those who will not “endure sound doctrine” but will chase after marriage counselors who will tell them what they want to hear. This will only lead them deeper and deeper into deception. But for those who will obey, their marriages will be HEAVEN ON EARTH.
That they may teach the young women…to love their husbands…obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
Titus 2:4, 5
15 thoughts on “Abandoned in the Love of Submission”
Powerful post! So much truth here. All this correlates with the feminist movement. Men and women are born into this so unless they are renewed and washed clean by the word of God they are lost.
Marriage counselors who refuse to teach and hold couples accountable to what SCRIPTURE teaches and COMMANDS regarding God’s divine order and obedience to it in marriage are FALSE TEACHERS.
You can also substitute “marriage counselors” for “pastors;” “Bible teachers,” “elders,” etc.
The bottom line in ALL of this is that far too many (most?) who insist on calling themselves Christ Followers in fact reject large portions of Scripture, on this and other subjects crucial to leading life in accordance with His commandments. They want to keep one foot — their dominant and preferred one — firmly planted in the World.
Jesus is just somebody they keep stashed away in reserve as a sort of “first responder” whom they call upon in emergency situations when they reap the inevitable disastrous fruits of doing things the World’s way. NEVER do they truly make Jesus the center of their lives and their every decision. If they did, Christian marriage counselors would very likely be looking for other lines of work. Alas, given that the true remnant is miniscule, counselors like Ken are going to have full appointment schedules for the foreseeable future.
What is so ironic (and sad) about the common vicious cycle of refusing to obey her husband until he meets her standard of perfect love is that it will never satisfy her, no matter how much her husband does. The reason it will never satisfy her is that women don’t feel loved unless they are led. It is precisely the man’s leadership and authority over her that allows her to feel his love most directly. When she refuses to submit and tells her husband to follow her emotions in order to get approval from her, she is doing exactly the opposite of what will make her feel loved. Then she blames her lack of satisfaction on her husband when it’s really her own fault. She can’t feel loved until she rests under her husband’s leadership and follows him. This is the way she was made. Being led makes her feel loved.
This is the reason it is so backwards to claim that a husband’s leadership just means being a servant. The claim is that husbands lead by serving, which means doing whatever their wives want and letting her call the shots and then calling that leadership. That never works. It’s just the opposite. A husband serves by leading. Leadership – real leadership of making the goals and asking her to follow him – is a service she needs him to provide so that she can feel secure and loved. He serves her by leading her. These claims of leading by serving invert the God-given roles and make both husband and wife dissatisfied because they are not living according to their design.
So true and so important! I am always afraid that I might make the same mistake my mother made. No, I don’t think her mistake was marrying my father. Her mistake was leaving him and tearing the family apart. I’m trying not to let this silly worry – and I know deep down that it is silly, because I do know I never want to hurt anyone the way Mom hurt Papa and us kids – cloud my courtship too much, but it is there. I don’t want to rush into an engagement with someone I barely know. I want to know I can trust him, before I agree to spend the rest of my life with him and submit to his authority. Once I am married, whether it ends up being this young man or someone else, I don’t want to leave any excuses, loopholes or justifications open for myself to go back on my promise. I want my children to grow up in a safe, secure family, never doubting my commitment to their father. Prayers for wisdom and guidance through this time would be greatly appreciated!
Amen spot on!
In a lot of cases, this is correct. If the problem is the wife not following the husband’s lead, going to a counselor will probably not help. He just needs to step up and lead and call his wife to follow. Counselors almost never tell the wife to follow her husband, and thus almost never help in this area. However, there are cases where a counselor may be able to help. If couples are having a hard time communicating or understanding one another’s concerns or if they easily fall into the same cycle of poor behavior where they react badly to one another, sometimes having a counselor can help them learn to understand one another better and avoid harmful patterns of behavior. Not all counselling is bad. It’s not a cure all for marriage, but it can be helpful in some cases (if you have a good counselor).
So many counselors are worldly so that’s a great question. When we were newlyweds my husband and I went to a marriage seminar by Joe Beam. It was fantastic. He also started a ministry for help with troubled marriages. It has a 70% success rate of getting couples back together, even after divorce. The issue is getting the couple there.
Lindsey, I think you phrased that so well.
Spot on Steven!
“This keeps her in an endless vicious cycle of rejection, pain, and fear because without the power of the cross, she will NEVER break that cycle – NO MATTER HOW loving her husband is.”
I see this play out over and over again. One young man has been in counseling over two years trying to have a true marriage and have regular intimacy. But the Christian counselor cannot bring himself to finally say to the wife, “Your husband has done everything realistically possible to try and meet your needs, now you need to decide if you are going to obey God and trust him or not.”
And of course this should have been brought up in the first session, but it took a good long back seat to her needs, primarily because their is a built in bias that if a wife is not responding properly to a husband it is because he needs to learn how to love her better… more… meet her needs.
Erika,
I believe I understand your concerns. I have been married for 38 years and I too come from a home where my mother chose divorce instead of the hard work of keeping our family together. It leaves scars on us that others do not understand.
The issue that I dealt with for a long time was trust. Those of us from divorced homes have such difficulty with trusting and this can manifest itself in questioning ourselves, questioning our husband, and at times questioning God. I know many people have problems with trust, but I believe ours tends to come from a “I will not let he, she, etc. hurt me the way I was hurt from my parent’s divorce.” The problem with this thinking is that it tends to set us up to expect perfection from ourselves and others. There is no perfect man. We don’t want to run into the issue of expecting to find a perfect mate so that we can have a perfect family because then we can be very controlling of our husband and children.
You are so right to take your time waiting and trusting the Lord to bring the right man across your path. For me, learning to trust God completely has helped me tremendously. Trusting God grew out of some very difficult times in my life but as he provided for me, I learned to trust. I know you will make the right decision on who to marry if you continue to learn to trust God to bring the right one to you – not the PERFECT one. Trust is an issue you will work on throughout your lifetime but it gets easier as long as you work on submitting to God’s will.
As far as your comment on excuses, loopholes or justifications opening yourself to go back on your promise, I think I would continue to pray on letting this idea go. You will get mad at your husband and I think Satan and our own sin nature will call into question our marriage. I learned to flee from this type of thinking early on because all it does is open the door to Satan to keep us questioning. If God has brought this man to you, there is no need to open the door to questioning. Commitment to my husband in the hard times has helped me on this issue.
I too worried about my children being raised in a safe, secure family where they never doubted my commitment to their father. Guess what? They are now adults and they tell me that they always felt safe and that I loved their father. You too can break the cycle of divorce. It’s not easy for us children of divorce, but God knows your heart and he will always lead you in the right direction!! Praying for you today Erika.
I think it honestly comes down to the fortitude/resilience of the wife. I know one friend who for her entire marriage, has never experienced sexual satisfaction, has never had a break from doing chores or raising children/grandchildren (even when her husband is retired and spends his days working on hobbies), has never been told she looks nice or complimented on her homemaking abilities, and has always followed her husbands poor money decisions without complaint, etc. However, she finds joy in singing at church and in the fact that she helped her daughters find wise husbands who do cherish them. I’m pretty sure her husband thinks everything is fine and dandy and does not know that his wife is trusting in God that her suffering and loneliness will be rewarded in heaven.
Meanwhile, I have a friend in a similar situation, who simply divorced her husband. She now really doesn’t even consider herself a Christian, and is with a man is very affectionate and a great leader (in fact, she is submissive to him! who would have thought). This friend decided to throw out belief in God rather than accept that suffering in marriage was part of the plan to get to heaven.
Just two anecdotes . .. not saying these are all marriages, but just that in my circle it seems the more resilient wives are able to deal with “unloving” husbands and remain married and submissive, while sadly the wives who are not resilient and would rather give up are the ones who do divorce.
My husband left out of our home over 4 years ago June. Due to some differences in our church over a couple of my children. I disagreed and left our church. My husband not to long after left our home because I would not honor that decision. Do you go along for the sake of ☮️? We have been separated ever since.
Yes, you follow your husband where he wants to go.
Your husband comes before your kids. Not sure what the exact situation is but following your husband in general comes first.
Every TV show, movie, magazine, and book in our society is now pushing women to Satan.
Most women aren’t strong enough to resist the “call of the crowd”. If they see their women friends and women on TV turn to hate, insanity, and evil, especially when it is presented with style and flair, then yes, they will succumb.
Until we change our society to wrest it away from the Witchery that it currently promotes, then evil will continue to find a foothold in even yes, the hearts of our loved ones and children.
I hope you do a blog post someday, Lori, on modern-day witches. Perhaps this is too dark for your blog, that is your decision! Bless you!