Ephesians 5 RESPECT

I am deviating from my usual devotional today for this message in Ephesians I think everyone needs to hear.

Ephesians 5 NLT
Relationships: Wives and Husbands 
21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of His body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. 25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. 27 He did this to present her to Himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of His body. 31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. 

Wives must respect her husband. That's God's command. Even if your husband is behaving disrespectful, you must treat him with respect.  Even if he is acting like a child, you must treat him with respect. Even if he is unloving toward you, you must treat him with respect. Even if you do not agree with him, treat him with respect and honor him. Don't worry if he is doing his part, what God commands him to do, love you. You worry about your part, treat your husband with respect. If you patiently and lovingly treat him with respect, he will treat you with love. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen. It takes time to change a pattern, it takes time to change a heart but it will change. How do I know? I saw it in my own marriage. No, my marriage isn't perfect but it is still together after 32 + years and we are closer then ever before because we have Christ in our life and above all, we honor and love Christ and apply his commands to our life. 

That's what being a Christian is. That's what it means to have Jesus in your heart, Jesus in your life, Jesus as your master. You follow Jesus and His teachings even when it's hard, even when you don't feel like it, even when your husband isn't being loving. You follow the word of God even when your angry. 

Does that mean you never sin? No. But I think as a Christian, we are less controlled by outside influences and more controlled by the Holy Spirit to do what is honoring to God. 

Submitting is so misunderstood by the world. We may say it in our wedding vows but do we mean it? Yet we submit to someone every day. But submit to our spouse? Do what that means? NO WAY! We submit to our boss and we submit to traffic laws but submit to our spouse? Yet they are suppose to be the closest person to us in this world. If we submit to our husband in respect and they submit to us in love, it's a mutual submission, not a dictatorship. Verse 21 says "And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Submit it one another, not Lord over, not husbands be a dictatorship, submit. 

It's all about love and respect. Wives, respect your husbands, husbands love your wives and stop the foolishness!

1 Corinthians 13 NLT 
Love Is the Greatest 
1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. 

Blessings, Cecilia