I am a Christian. Thus, I have been called by God to submit to my husband. However, as a woman raised in the 21st century, and due to my naive understanding of the term submission, the idea of doing such a thing appalled me for many years. Submission to me was weakness and chauvinism. That being said, I trust God. I know that His commands are for my best interest even if I cannot understand why. Just as a parent provides their children with wisdom and instruction to help them avoid pain later in life, God, through His teachings in the Bible, does the same. A child who does not recognize the value of their parents instruction ventures out blindly and encounters heartache, difficulty, and strife. Similarly, a child of God who does not recognize the value of His instruction ventures out blindly and encounters heartache, difficulty, and strife. I firmly believe that God's wisdom laid out in the Bible points me in the direction of happiness. When I rebel against it, I struggle. When I live out His instruction, I flourish. Which is why I could not understand why He would command me to give up my identity, freedom, and opinions! Clearly that would make me horribly unhappy. I decided to take Romans 12:2 to heart and: "be transformed by the renewing of my mind by testing to discern what is the will of God." So I researched. What did submission ACTUALLY mean, because surely the term has become twisted into something different than God's command.
Here is what I found.
Submission is trust. The same trust I have for God, I put into my husband. I do this because 1) God has called my husband to be the head of my home and thus has divinely equipped him to manage the role of leader in our marriage. So I put my trust in my husband because I trust in God. And 2) Because my husband loves me. He wants to see me succeed. He wants to see me happy. Oftentimes I lose sight of that and feel like I have to fight for myself, but in reality, he doesn't desire to make me miserable. He wants to have a happy marriage just as much as I do. When I trust that he has my best interest at heart and follow his lead, our relationship blossoms and deepens in intimacy.
I could write a book on this topic, but for now, I will leave with this.
Submission as I understand it is trust.
- Jo
