It seems that a lot of women (myself included) have sort of a rage built up toward the idea of submitting to their husbands.  I am speaking of women inside the church – I don’t know why a woman outside the church would even consider submission to her husband.  Whenever I hear sermons preached about it, I just sort of want to scream, “I don’t want to s*%@#t to my husband!”

Anytime that I feel this expression of rage inside – it seems to be that it is because something is hitting a nerve of one of the two sides that are warring within me.  On one side is the Holy Spirit.  There are a lot of things that cause a holy rage to rise up within me – injustice, corruption, ill treatment of the helpless.  All the sorts of things that the Spirit detests.  So, I want to scream and shout and turn the world upside-down to right the wrongs that have occurred.

But, there are other things that cause me to rage as well.  Submitting to my husband.  Being selfless with my time.  Giving up control.  And these things are not at odds with the Holy Spirit, but with my flesh, my sinful nature, within me.

When I become enraged at something, it may take a minute to figure out which one of the two sides I am disturbing – but the easiest test is Scripture.  If I’m angry at something consistent with something that Scripture says the Lord gets angry at, then it’s the Holy Spirit.  If I’m angry, and the Word tells me that it’s not something that should make me angry, then it’s likely my sin.  Submission to my husband falls in this latter category.  The Bible clearly talks about submitting to one’s husband as to the Lord.  Not because I’m less of a person, not because I’m not as cool, but simply because there are differences in roles.  His role is to lead as a picture of Christ, my role is to submit as a picture of the Church.  (Believe me, I’m getting the easier part of this deal.)

And if my sin nature rears its ugly head so loudly against submitting to my husband, maybe it’s because it’s really really important.  Maybe submission doesn’t belong within the category of obscene words that we often want to relegate it to.  Maybe it belongs more in a group of four letter words like these:

Submission to my husband requires me to pray because I can’t do it on my own.

Submission to my husband allows me to more fully experience the Lord’s love for me.

Simply put, submission to my husband is making me holy.