Let me say that we are going to be talking in four different areas. We are going to talk about loving our husbands by submitting to his leadership. We're going to talk about loving our husbands by showing him respect. We're going to talk about loving our husbands by making our marriage sexually exciting. We are going to talk about loving our husbands by being a companion and help me. And we're going to talk about loving our husbands by making our home a refuge. And some of these things you are already doing, I know, but what we're going to talk about is how to do even more and how to rejoice in what God has led us to do up to this point. So let this be a source of encouragement to you and something where you can allow the Holy Spirit to give you a couple of things to take home and apply. Don't feel overwhelmed. You know, listen, we'll share a lot of scripture. I'm going to be giving you some handouts and you've got your handout that the church provided. So listen and take some of these things home and evaluate what God wants you to do. Talk about it with your husbands. The husbands are learning totally different things. They're talking about how to love and take care of you. But what we are doing is by splitting up like this, we are able to cover more ground, and we're really able to focus on what we need to focus on. So that I'm not sitting there listening, you know, your husband needs to listen to you, and I'm going. Instead of thinking about what I need to do. Okay? So that's our plan. So we are here at Trinity Bible Church in Cypress, Texas, and we're going to be talking about these aspects of marriage from a wife's point of view. Some of you have been given a little paper heart like this. While you are figuring out who has these, I'd like the rest of you to turn to Matthew 19, verses five and six. Matthew 19 verses five and six. John touched on this verse, but I want to talk about it for a minute before we get started or as we get started. Matthew 19 verses five and six. And Jesus said, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God is joined together, let no man separate. We need to remember that when we got married, that little 30 minute ceremony, our lives turned around completely and two people became one person. in terms of our goals, our values, our use of time, all different areas of our lives. When one of my daughters got married, she said, you know, mom, it's different learning how to think as one. And I said, well, of course it is, because you didn't have to do that before. You could pretty much decide on your own schedule and what you wanted to do and eat when you wanted to eat. and you weren't having to think of another person, but now you are. And it's different for both of you. Well, those people who have a heart, hold your heart up for a minute. Okay? These are two hearts that have become one through the miracle of Elmer's glue. Okay? So what I want you to do is tear these hearts apart. Just pull them apart. It's okay. I know everything in you is saying, oh, I don't want to wreck up this cute little heart, but go on and wreck it up. That's the point. Okay. Can you tell I'm an elementary school teacher? Lots of hands on. Okay. This is what mine looks like. Did you see how these two pieces that were joined into one, when you pull them apart, they've each got pieces of the other with them, don't they? So once we are joined together, because God says that two become one, you can't pull those two apart without causing damage to each one. So when we are not uh, living in a biblical marriage and not loving our husbands in the way God wants us to love them. We are damaging each other. We are hurting each other. Whether you feel like, um, Whether you're feeling it, you are creating damage and scars that are going to last for a lifetime and they will affect your children. Our children see what's going on in our relationship. When John and I had our children were young, we decided that we would have our disagreements in private and would work through whatever the conflict was in private so that we could talk freely with each other. But we always made up in front of the kids. We always come out and say, well, Daddy and Mommy had a disagreement, but now we've talked it through and we've forgiven each other and we love each other and give each other a big kiss in front of the kids. You could almost feel them going, because they can hear and they can see. So we need to remember that the two have become one, and the only way you can separate them is to cause great distress. Okay? So we don't want to do that. We want to learn how to function as one. The first area we're going to talk about is loving our husbands by submitting to his leadership. And let's look at, I think someone has Ephesians 5, 22 through 24. Okay. Yes, please. Okay. This is pretty clear, isn't it? When it says, submit to your husbands, or some translations say, be subject to your husbands. The Greek word here is hupotasso, which is used 40 different times in the Greek New Testament. It was a common military term meaning to rank under. So submission means exactly what it says. It means living under the authority of. It has nothing to do with worth. It has nothing to do with value or ability. It has to do with God's plan for order in the home. It's the same word that's used in First Corinthians 1527, for he has put all things in subjection under his feet to describe Christ reigning after his resurrection. So it does mean living in submission. We are to live under the authority of their husbands. This is God's plan for order in the family. It has nothing to do with value or worth. I said that. There are many places in scripture where God describes his great love for his people, all people, both men and women. This does not mean that we cannot have input, valuable input, or that we cannot make decisions on our own. It means that we freely submit ourselves to be under the authority of our husbands. We support them completely in their decisions when they are made. It means that we will not fight or rebel or argue or manipulate in order to get our own way. And when we do this for our husbands, we are giving him a gift. We are giving him a gift, an expression of our love. We are doing it in obedience to God and trusting him to work through our husband's leadership to accomplish his purposes for our family. Because at the end of Ephesians 5.22, it says, wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. So submission begins with our attitude towards God. If I am submitted to God as my authority, then I can trust that he is going to work through my husband to do the right thing for our family. And even when he makes a mistake, ultimately God is going to accomplish what he wants through him. And I have seen so many situations in our relationship where I thought the decision that was being made was not the way I would do it. And God knew what he was doing. Either John had insight that I didn't have, or it was just God's plan. I remember one time, when we were involved in planting a church. So we were having church meetings in our house. It was primarily adults and small children and we had teenagers. So John spoke with one of the local pastors and made arrangements for our children to be able to be involved in that church's youth group so that they could be around their peers. Um, so they did, they were involved in the, they went to church at our house in the morning and then they went in the Sunday evening and on Wednesday nights to the youth group at this other church and they thrived. It was really good, but it was tearing me apart because I hated not going to church altogether all the time. And so, um, but at the same time, God had called us to do this home church. So I prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and two years on down the road, Um, our home church had been successful, but it was primarily graduate students. And as they graduated, they all ended up getting jobs and dispersing to different cities around the US. So what had been our church basically lost most of its congregants and we were free to, um, find another church. And we ended up going to this church with our kids. And John even ended up being on staff for a period of time at that church. So God knew what he was doing. It was according to his time and not mine. We still keep in touch with some of the young couples who were in that home group and they are all thriving in their different environments. It was like the dispersion. They are all over the U S now. So You know, if I had dug in my heels and put a stop to that or been grudging or whatever else in my heart, I was doing it sometimes, it would have really messed up God's plan. It was much better to follow along and let him accomplish what he wanted to accomplish according to his timing. Okay? So that's my little testimony. And there've been many, many more times when I've experienced the same kind of thing. Okay, Colossians 3 18. Okay, that's basically the same idea, isn't it? That this is what God says will work is do it. So if we trust God with our lives, we have to trust him with our relationships. And that's God's plan for order. Okay, first Peter 3, 1, and 2. In the same way you all should be submissive to your own husbands, so that even if any of them are disobedient to the Lord, they may be one with that Lord by the favor of their wives. They say, if there is chastity, let there be chastity. This answers the question, well, what if my husband is not willing to do what he should do? He's not doing his part. And the answer according to scripture is we still do what's right. And God says that they may be one without a word by the behavior of their wives. Now see, this goes totally against the way my mind works because my mind says, well, if he only understood what the right way is, then he would want to do it. So I just need to keep explaining until he finally comes around and then everything will be great because he'll be doing what I know is the right thing to do in the first place. But what this says, is that he is a disobedient husband, and this is talking about being disobedient to the word. So some people feel like this has to do with an unbelieving husband. Some people feel like this just has to do with a husband who is not obedient to God's work in his life. But it says they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives. So what this says, my tendency is to think that my speech is the most powerful way of communicating to my husband. But according to this verse, It's as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. It's my behavior towards him without a word. Okay? Very interesting point of view. Very interesting. 1 Peter 3, 5, and 6. I think somebody has that. For this is the way of the Holy One of the past, who put that hope in God, who stood before himself, they submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah who obeyed Abraham, and called him her Lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right. Do not keep away." Okay, well, we know that Sarah didn't always get it right, did she? Because she gave, instead of waiting for God's plan for a son, she gave her handmaid to her husband to have a child by her. And we know that Abraham didn't always get it right because he wanted to introduce Sarah as his sister in order to keep from getting in trouble with the king. And even before that, he immediately took her away from her family because of God's leaving. So neither of them always chose initially the easiest way, but they ultimately followed God with their lives. And that is what's remembered in scripture. It says that Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. And it says that she wasn't frightened by any fear. It says she was submissive to her husband. So she is commended for those actions. So it doesn't mean that we have to get it perfect all the time, but if we are trying to do what we feel like God has planned for us to do, God is going to give us the grace to do that. And then that is going to be what our, um, what goes down in history as our response to our husband is we can end on a positive note, a strong note, And she was a strong woman. She was no shrinking violet. So we're talking about submission. We're talking about relating to our husbands and recognizing that God has established order in the home and we are to live in subject to them. Just as someone in the military lives in subjection to their commander in the same sense of order. That's what we are allowing God to do in our homes. Okay. I had a woman in another country come up to me once and she was asking about, she was asking, she was saying that she was frustrated because her husband wouldn't lead the family spiritually. And she was really concerned that he wasn't doing anything spiritually with her or with the children. He just wasn't doing any kind of leadership in the family. So we talked a little bit more and I found out that she was a very successful businesswoman. She had started and operated several different companies. and was very successful. And this is in a third world country where it's not difficult. It's not easy for anybody, much less a woman to do that. But she had done it. Her husband had lost his job and was kind of floundering between jobs a little bit. And so I asked her, well, does he have any ideas for employment or things that he could do in terms of a business? And she said, yeah, but they're not very good ideas. You know, they really won't work. in the, in the way our situation is set up. And I said, well, why don't you try this? The next time he shares an idea with you, tell him how good that is. Agree with him and see if you can't implement it and then just see what results from doing that. So that, that happened. He came to her with an idea for, for doing a kind of a car hire thing, because a lot of people in that country don't have their own cars, so they hire drivers to take them places. So that was his idea, and she helped him set it up. And he ended up doing very well with it. But even more than that, he started taking an interest in her and in their children. His confidence had just been totally beaten down. And she loved him. She did not intend to do that. She really intended to be helpful. But our husbands are so fragile, especially in terms of what they feel our opinion of them is. That one way we can build them up and encourage them is by demonstrating that we think they are capable of leadership in the home. Whether it's spiritual, whether it's any kind of decision making. Something else I didn't share that I meant to is on this first Peter three verse where it says in the same way, you wives be submissive to your own husband so that any of them, if any of, even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be one without a word by the behavior of their wives as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. The first three force, first four words in that verse in the same way, if you look at, that's referring back to the verse that's right before 1 Peter 3, verse 1. The verse that's at the end of 1 Peter 2, when I saw this, it really changed my perspective on this. Okay, first Peter, in the same way, that means that in the same way is something that happened right before this chapter started. And if you look up at the end of chapter two, it's talking about Christ suffering on the cross. In verse 23, it says, and while being reviled, he did not revile in return. While suffering, he uttered no threats, but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously. And he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. For by his wounds you were healed." And up above that in 21, it says, for you have been called for this purpose since Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example for you to follow in his steps. So 1 Peter 3, 1, where it says, in the same way you wives be submissive to your own husbands, is referring to Christ being willing to submit to death on the cross for us, even though he didn't deserve it. So as Jesus had submitted to the plan God had for his life, God wants us to submit to the plan he has for ours. And that's it, okay? Let's take a short break.