You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. I Peter 2:5
On this journey of faith in God, of being made more and more into the image of Christ – we have come a long way already.
- We have seen the depths of our own sinfulness.
- We have repented to God and to our husbands for our sin.
- We have trusted Jesus’ blood to cleanse our sin and wash us white as snow.
- We have allowed God to shine the blazing, holy light of His Word into the darkest corners of our soul to remove all the gangrene, cancer, filth and rot – every trace of it, and to make us more like Jesus.
- We have learned to begin to die to self – to lay down our will, our plans, our dreams, our possessions, our money, our health, our lives, our wisdom, our rights, our sinfulness, our future and nail it all to the cross to be buried with Christ.
- We have embraced joyful obedience to God, even when we must sacrifice of ourselves in order to obey Him.
- We have made Jesus LORD of all. We joyfully submit ourselves 100% to Him. We pick up all that Jesus is, all that He has, His holiness, His dreams, His plans, His possessions, His spiritual wealth, His desires, His wisdom and we begin to seek His glory alone. Nothing really matters but Him now.
- Then we invite Him to flood our souls with His springs of Living Water.
- We thirst for Him. We desire Him more than ANYTHING or ANYONE. We tear down every idol that we had made out to be more precious to us than Jesus. And we accept that only HE is worthy of our praise, our worship, our devotion, our service, our gratitude and our sacrifice. We acknowledge that HE is our reward and our prize.
- We commit to living a life of continual prayer
- We feast on His Word every day and can’t wait to see what He has to show us and teach us today!
- We begin to experience His Spirit producing sweet fruit in our lives by His power alone – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control begin growing in our lives on a daily basis. We become completely addicted to Jesus and His presence and power in our lives. We will do ANYTHING He asks us to do. We want only to please Him and bring a smile to His face. We love Him MUCH because we have been forgiven MUCH.
- We begin to extend His power, love, mercy, grace, forgiveness to others. His Spirit in us wells up to overflowing and pours into the lives of those around us, blessing them and drenching them in His love.
- He changes our desires to begin to match His own. We truly want nothing but His total will.
From Nina Roesner in The Respect Dare:
“The more time you spend with God, the more you take on His character and His thoughts about what matters. True selflessness is a reflection of God’s character and comes only as a result of time spent with Him.”
Now, we as godly wives, filled with His Spirit, have the power to:
- respond without sin even when our husbands sin against us
- look at our husbands with new eyes – with the deep love of God for their souls – without any bitterness or resentment
- bless our husbands when they curse us
- repay evil with good
- be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry
- want to understand our husbands before jumping to conclusions
- assume the best instead of the worst
- find all of our acceptance, love, strength, courage, purpose, identity and hope in Christ alone – so that we can be unshaken no matter what our husbands do or do not do. We may hurt when they sin against us. But we will be ok as long as we have Christ. That is our highest desire.
- respond with patience and kindness when our husbands are exhausted, frustrated, upset and stressed.
- be still and listen to His voice for prompting about what exactly to do and say
- meditate on God’s Word and take every thought captive for Christ
- focus on the good in our husbands and filter our thoughts through Philippians 4:8
- trust God’s sovereignty instead of giving in to fear – so we can trust Him to lead us through our husbands if our husbands are not asking us to sin.
DARE 37:
Jesus said in John 14,
15 “If you love me, obey my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, who will never leave you. 17 He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world at large cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you do, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. 18 No, I will not abandon you as orphans — I will come to you. 19 In just a little while the world will not see me again, but you will. For I will live again, and you will, too. 20 When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Those who obey my commandments are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them, and I will love them. And I will reveal myself to each one of them.”
Part of loving God is obeying Him.
- Read Deuteronomy 28 about the blessings of obeying God vs the consequences for disobedience.
- Ask God to help you understand that there are blessings when you obey Him in your marriage and consequences when you disobey and that God asks us to do things that are best for us.
SHARE:
What are you learning?
Where are you struggling?
What things does God want you to obey Him about that you need to work on?