Building Up My Marriage: Submitting to My Husband

Ephesians 5:22-24 "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands."

I know I've taken about a month hiatus from posting on Building Up a Marriage, but with things beginning to settle down after the birth of our daughter, I think I'm ready to dig back in. Please feel free to catch up by reading posts 1 and 2 about building up a marriage. Remember in the first post of this series when I mentioned the strange looks we get when people learn of our views on submission? Well, today I'm going to try to tackle that subject.
In our culture, the word submission has become synonymous with the word subservient. But when we look at it biblically, we see that there is nothing about submission that makes us inferior, but instead that it displays imperishable beauty. God chooses women to display, in tangible terms, a key element of the Son's relationship to the Father, and the church's relationship to the Son, and to do this through biblical submission to our husbands.
1 Corinthians 11:3 says, "But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God." Now, nothing about Christ is inferior to the Father; Indeed, we can all agree that they are equal. Yet they have different roles. Time and time again, we see Jesus submit Himself to the Father's will, even to the point of death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8, Mark 14:36, Luke 22:27, John 6:38)
In Ephesians 5:22-24 we see that biblical submission in our marriage is also a picture of the wonderful relationship between Christ and the church. Just as the church submits in everything to Christ, we should submit to our husbands...in everything.
Christ's submission to the Father and the church's submission to Christ don't include lackadaisical attitudes, "door-mat" mentalities, or silent subservient positions. These examples of true biblical submission require radical action, through the attitude of love and servanthood, that makes a radical difference.
Let's get practical...What about those times when we know our husband is not making the best decision (assuming he's not sinning)? For example, I may have great, justifiable reasons for thinking...no, knowing, that our family would benefit much more from investing in a camper rather than pouring money into an old cabin in the middle of nowhere. We could visit different state and national parks, the kids could experience so much history, we could hike trails and go canoeing, we could have family worship around the campfire, pass out tracts in the campground, and the list goes on and on, convincing my heart that I am right and my husband is wrong.
So what do I do? Voice my opinion over and over, doing everything in my power to convince him that my idea is better? Or do I submit to my husband by the power of the love that God has placed in my heart for him, have a positive attitude about the fixer-upper, see it as a way to make memories with our family, an opportunity for glorifying God, try to catch my husband's vision through this? The latter option requires action. It is through this attitude that a wife can have a wonderful, loving impact on her husband and children. Because, whether we want it to or not, our attitude sets the tone for the whole family. A wife's attitude can turn a junky, old hunting cabin into a sweet family cottage, a delightful haven, full of fond memories, peaceful moments, and wondrous adventures.
But many times, I chose the first option: Convince myself of my husband's "faulty judgement," maybe convince myself that his motives are impure, and nag (or should I say "complain" since "nag" sounds sinful) him until I get my way, taking his role as the leader upon myself because "I know better than he does." So who really has the faulty judgement and impure motives: the husband with a vision or the wife who stomps her husband's vision into the dirt?
This may be a seemingly insignificant example, but in my experience it is in the small, daily encounters that I have the most difficulty submitting to my husband in love, while the "big" decisions usually require me to cling to a biblical perspective.
Oh wives, that we would see the joy that results from submitting to our husbands before we start with our constant dripping (Proverbs 27:15). Wifely submission is key to a biblically functioning marriage and becomes extra-crucial as children are added to the family. Submission (along with the other actions we'll discuss in this series) boils down to love and respect, considering our husband's desires before our own. When we have children, especially young children, who require much time and energy, it is this display of love and respect that shows our husbands where they rank in our hearts, even if our attention toward them can no longer be constantly undivided.
My self-challenge this week is to, by God's grace, be submissive to my husband in the little things, whether that's what we have for dinner, how we spend our Saturday, or what shirt he wants me to wear. I pray that I will be aware of my heart attitude and times that I'm not submitting to my husband's headship so I may quickly repent.
Submission really is a beautiful thing. I hope that through biblical submission, the Lord will use my marriage to reveal an aspect of a living Christ to a dieing world.