Wives submit?

 The prayer Nathan Lino prayed over all of us at Pastor Wellness the first session was powerful. 

It was anointed. 

I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

He prayed, “Someone in this room is committing adultery. Someone here has a disease.” 

He prayed a long powerful prayer that ministered to those who had an ear to hear. 

Pastor Nathan and his wife Nichole Lino shared about their life with 4 older children, church planting before it was cool (I can relate to both) & the hardships in ministry as a pastor and pastor’s wife. 

The first verse he shared was out of Ephesians 5:22-24 “Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, Himself the Savior of his body. As the church submits to Christ so let wives submit to their husbands in everything.”

You could have heard a pin drop. 

This verse even makes pastors wives uncomfortable. 

I remember the first time the Lord taught me this lesson. 

John was a youth pastor at Mt. Yonah Baptist Church and we were about to get married. 

It was the day of our wedding shower given by Mt. Yonah Baptist. 

I was staying in the dorm at Truett McConnell University because we weren’t married yet and I had been working as a youth intern in my hometown an hour and a half away at Briarwood Baptist Church. 

I had packed 2 church outfits (like most women). I planned to wear the pretty flowy white sleeveless dress that fell a little bit past my knees. It wasn’t spaghetti strap because my dad didn’t allow that. It came up to my neck. I thought it was very modest. 

The night before church John and I were on the phone & he asked me what I was planning to wear. I told him the white dress. He may have mentioned how pretty he thought I looked in that dress. But then he asked me if I would wear the other outfit instead. It was a peach collared button down shirt and white dress pants. I didn’t feel as pretty in that outfit. I knew I had a choice. He wasn’t making me do anything I remember standing in the dorm room and making a decision I chose to submit to him. 

Submission is strength.

I got dressed in the pants suit and went to church. I was sitting on the front left pew and Pastor Chris was preaching. The verse he preached on was the same one that Pastor Nathan shared out of Ephesians 5. As I had my Bible laid open in my lap, I was following along reading the verse, and the two words that jumped off the page to me were, “in everything” 

Wives submit your husbands in everything. 

If you want to be like Jesus, it looks like submitting to your husband.

Jesus showed us the example as he submitted to the Will of the father.

We have the choice and we have the free will. We don’t have to follow God or submit to him, but I sure do want to. 

I don’t have to follow my husband or submit to him, but I sure do want to (most of the time).

I have followed him from Georgia to Kentucky back to Georgia to Kentucky (when we did not agree on some things) and I have followed him to West Virginia and then back to Georgia. Does it mean you will always agree with your husband‘s decisions? No, but God will only hold the wife responsible for how she followed her husband. 

Pastor Nathan Lino shared with the Ministry leaders that “God did not invent marriage to bless you, but to adore the Gospel, to visibly authenticate and prove the gospel is true.” This is why Titus 2:5 talks about when women are not obedient to their biblical role it blasphemes the word of God. 

Pastor Nathan Lino shared that “the purpose of marriage is to be a picture of the gospel. It’s not just for companionship, friendship, sex, and fun. The great commission is at stake.” 

Not my will, but thine be done.

We must get our eyes off of ourselves and what we want and fix our eyes on Jesus.