Wisest of Women

Do you ever have those moments when you're just trucking along in your daily grind of motherhood and the Holy Spirit heavily presses truth in your heart and mind? I had one of those moments yesterday. It happened while I was in the middle of the glorious task of loading/unloading the dishwasher. Sounds fun, right?!

I was listening to a podcast titled, "Is There a Hero in Your Husband?" from a past "Focus On the Family" radio broadcast. Dr. Juli Slattery was speaking on marriage and specifically hit on the subject of submission.

Here I should pause briefly to confess that the whole submission thing is tough for a girl like myself. Type-A personalities such as mine pretty much run in the opposite direction when this subject is approached. I'm a major control freak who enjoys being in charge. So why would God give me these desires and traits if I'm not supposed to be the boss? Does He think that women are too weak and incapable of leading? Isn't "submission" sorta like slavery??

Absolutely not. Quite the opposite actually.

And that's where one small verse from the Bible jumped out and gave me a swift kick in the rear:

The wisest of women builds her house,

but folly with her own hands tears it down.
Proverbs 14:1

Wow... Submission has nothing to do with the negative connotation that we so often hear it associated with. Submission is about P O W E R, not weakness.

Do you see in the verse above just how much power is in a woman's hands? From this verse, we can actually see that a woman may have more power in a marriage than a husband does. Submission is all about recognizing that we do have intense power... power that has potential to destroy our husband and our home.

In Ephesians 5:22, God directs us to submission so that He can teach us how to use that power for good and not destruction. He specifically calls to the wives and says, "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord." When we as women refuse to obey this command, taking matters into our own controlling hands, those very hands have potential to tear our house down.

The "wisest of women builds her house..." and she begins with submission.

Guess good things can come from doing dishes after all. ; )