In the Same Way, part 4

This is why the subject of submission relates to pride and humility. To refuse to follow God’s plan for your life, is to assume you have more self-worth than Jesus did. God will resist you on that. However, if you will just humble yourself, God will give you grace to carry you through and He will ultimately bless you for it.   



He Will Lift You Up

1 Peter 5:6 “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time.” The positive side of submission is what the end of this verse says, He will “lift us up in due time.” 

There is always a benefit to obedience, and in this case, it is God lifting us over and above our situation. The issue is “in due time.” Many times, obedience is boring. Obedience is not special; it does not gain much attention. It is merely doing what we should be doing. What if God’s definition of “due time” is our entire life? I’m not saying it is, but what if it was? Can you live the rest of your life in submission to God, without things going the way you think they should?
 

I have a friend who traveled in ministry as an evangelist. This is what he once told me about trusting God, especially as he got started in ministry, though at some level he dealt with it the entire time he traveled as an evangelist.

“When I first began to travel with my prayer conferences, I had the same concerns any man would have. I wondered about getting enough conferences to make a living. I was concerned about my wife and our future. It wasn’t that I was just doing conferences for the sake of having something to do. I was responding to what I believe God called me to but that entailed faith. The idea that Jesus kept entrusting Himself to the one who judges justly, is what kept me on that path. I can’t tell you how many times – as I looked at my situation with not nearly enough conferences booked to make a living – that I had to reaffirm that I had entrusted myself to Him. 

I remember sitting in church one night at a Sunday night service. The preaching had already taken place. We had already come around the altar to pray and I was back in my pew, just enjoying the presence of God. Suddenly, I saw a blue light come down from above and it surrounded me, and I heard the Lord say to me, “If you do not grow weary, you will reap in due season.” It was straight out of Galatians 6: “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” Galatians 6:9 KJV
 

It was as if God was telling me that not much is going to happen right away; but if I would not grow weary – meaning if I would just keep praying and entrusting myself to Him - I would eventually reap the benefits of that.” 

Friends, have you ever noticed how we enter into the battle between pride and humility as soon as God tells us to just keep on keeping on? Pride wants to say, “Don’t just sit there; do something!” Humility says, “If this is what God has for me, then this is what I will do.” Contentment with the Will of God, reaps big benefits, in due season. 
 

1 Peter 3:7 “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.” “In the same way” that Jesus entrusted Himself to His Father. “In the same way” that a woman is to submit to her husband. And “in the same way” that a young man is to submit to his elders, a husband is to be considerate of his wife and treat her with respect. In each case we submit to our head.
 

Submission is not just a wife issue. A husband has to be in just as much submission as the wife, but to a different Head. If a husband does not treat his wife with respect and be considerate of her, that is the same as not being submitted to Christ.

Jesus is the example here. He loved His bride (the church) to the point of dying for her. “Husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church,” the book of Ephesians says to us. Just think, ladies, your submission to your husband will give you the marriage you want, and your husband’s submission to Jesus will result in you being treated with respect. It’s all about the women.

Continued tomorrow