The more I read the book Created to be His Help Meet, the Bible and prayed; the more I realized that I had incredible power over my husband. That's right ladies; I have immense power and learned that it's my responsibility to use that power wisely. The Biblical principal of sowing and reaping that I discussed last week was starting to make more sense to me.
In the Bible, God gives wives three basic commands on how they are to treat their husband. I'm going to start with reverence. Okay, I know you think I am crazy, and that I've lost my mind, but hang in there with me!
Ephesians 5:33 (KJV) says," Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband." Since My Journey is about me and what I can do to better understand and obey what God desires from me as a wife, I am only dealing with the parts of the scripture that is instruction to me as a wife. God promises that if I do my part, He'll do the rest!
Some versions of the Bible list the word respect instead of reverence; however the King James is translated more accurately from the Greek. Respect is an important component of reverence, but reverence means much more. The definition (from Merriam-Webster online) of reverence is as follows: Honor or respect felt or shown; deference, especially: profound adoring awed respect.
Now, to really understand this definition of reverence, it was important that I understood each word of the definition, so I've listed them below (from same source):
- Honor: to regard or treat (someone) with admiration and respect
- Respect: to consider worthy of high regard; esteem
- Deference: affected or ingratiating regard for another's wishes
- Profound: Difficult to fathom or understand
- Adoring: to regard with loving admiration and devotion
- Awed: amazed and astonished (synonyms)
- Respect: to consider worthy of high regard: Esteem
After looking up other words, I came up with my own definition. To reverence my husband means I must treat him as someone that I admire and value; consider his wishes before my own; and even though I may not understand him sometimes, show him loving admiration and devotion, and treat him as someone who has amazing worth to me.
Furthermore, the Bible does not say that I should only treat my husband with reverence once he's pleased me and proven that he deserves it. It says that I'm just supposed to do it!
I have to admit, this seemed like a daunting task. But over the next several months, God would show me that this is how he designed men. Men were born with a basic "need" to be reverenced, respected and honored by their wife. And soon I would start to understand this great act of faith.
I began to reap what I sowed. As Debi Pearl says in Created to be His Help Meet, "The more I show my husband reverence, the more he treasures me and treats me like his queen." I have come to realize that the feminist are missing the boat, they will never know what it's like to be cherished and treated like a queen by their husband.
I'll tell you more about what I'm learning about these "best kept secrets" next week in My Journey.
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Created to be His Help Meet
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