Today's Devotional
May 29, 2009
Subject: Who Is Right And Who Is Wrong?
Ephesians 5:22-24 "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything."
For starters, this is the kind of devotional that will probably get me into trouble with a lot of people. Here it goes. As we discussed the Ephesians 5 passage in bible study last night related to the marital relationship, I commented on a message that Tony Evans once preached about how our concept of marriage in this country is somewhat skewed. He said that we spend all of this time dating to see if we are compatible and all of that, when the biblical model never suggests that this is the way to marry. I can't do Mr Evans justice on how he said it so I'll have to look up that message and get it to you later, but he suggested that we marry today in our culture because we think we've found the "perfect" person for us, when in reality we've only found the person that God has chosen to be perfected with us.
After I heard his message I thought about how some other cultures do marriage. Some have arranged marriages and some simply meet and marry within days. I articulated that those cultures don't have nearly the divorce rate that we have. When I explained that in bible study last night, one gentleman attending said that "those cultures treat women terribly and don't allow them many basic rights." Of course that is a generalization about these cultures, which may be true in some cases and not so true in others, but my point today is, why does our culture have to be right when it comes to the issue of how marriage happens?
Perhaps those other cultures take the Ephesians passage above more literally. Does that make them wrong? If we don't take it as literally, does it make us right?
Today, more than we know, we let culture dictate our beliefs about God and how we interpret His word to us. I think the key in the marital relationship is for everyone to be rooted in Christ; not American or Middle Eastern, or Asian brands of Christianity, but in Christ Himself. Then as the scripture says in another place, "let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind," about how they manage the marital bond that God has established. The right relationship in the end will be the one where both people grew in the Lord and that process could take a really long time. Lets not worry about whose right and who is wrong. Lets just be righteous.
Carlen
