Where You Go I Will Follow

About a month ago we had a weekend of marriage teaching and ministry with a lot of the married and some engaged couples from our church family. It was a fantastic time. We started off with a romantic meal for two followed by some teaching. Many of the couples that came to this event benefited from the fantastic teaching, with opportunity to to talk intimately with our partners.

I shared on the topic of submitting to my husband. I only spoke for about ten minutes as part of some teaching on 'Working as a team within marriage'. Since that time I have heard much feedback on how this simple teaching had a part to play in impacting some peoples lives and marriages and that it has helped to unlocked some doors for some couples. The whole weekend was fantastic but I would like to share some of what I said:-

I am able to submit to my husband Richard because I trust him. My trust is confidently placed in Richard because I know he wants me to succeed, I know he loves me, I know he wants the best for me, I know I'm important and I know he needs my help. Not only do I know all these things but Richard makes me feel all of those things. It is not always enough to know it but to feel it is important too.

Richard has learned in our marriage that if he wants to take us in a certain direction as a family, I need to feel like he's considered me and my feelings. We talk about these decision and discuss how this makes me feel and how it affects me and the family. It is important to Richard what I think.

Whenever we go through this process of talking and discussing the trust and confidence in Richard gets stronger. When there are times when I don't see it, I can submit to the decision because I know I have been considered and my opinion is important.

Early on in our marriage there was a time when I struggled with some direction that came from Richard. We hadn't talked about it, I felt like it was just the way things were going to be and that was that. Being the 'good christian wife!' I thought I submitted to this direction, but in fact whenever the topic came up, all I felt was hurt, misunderstood and I did not want to talk about it. After some short time Richard realised that I was not happy with the decision. As far as he was concerned up until that point I agreed with him. I realised I hadn't really submitted to Richard I was just going along with what he wanted. After we had spent some time talking and praying we still came to the same conclusion, but I felt understood, and that what I wanted was important, I was then able to submit fully to this direction.

Submission is not about going along with it, it's about saying I trust you and even though I don't see it I want to go where you go. The process we go through to get to this point is very important.