The Role of Women in Marriage - Part 1

I took a long drive through the national forest a couple of weeks ago. I love these quiet drives because I enjoy talking to God in the car. He and I have the best conversations in the car. It was beautiful. There were lots of yellow and purple wildflowers. My mom would tell you, I'm crazy about wildflowers and love to pick them. I made few stops along the way and ended up with a beautiful bunch of flowers.

As I was driving and praying to God my heart was overwhelmed with the burden to pray for marriages. When I say overwhelmed I mean it. I have not cried before the Lord like that in a long time. I had to pull over. My heart is aching over the condition that Christian marriages are in. We have let the worlds standards and ideas about marriage enter into the church and it is destroying our marriages.

Ladies, the world has sold us a bill of goods about our role in marriage. If we continue to embrace it we will see more and more marriages fail. I know that there are two people in a marriage. I know that both either make or break a marriage. But the purpose of this blog is to teach women, so I'm going to focus on our role in marriage for the next couple of blogs.

In II Kings 17:9-15 it states. "The Israelites secretly did things against the LORD their God that were not right. From watchtower to fortified city they built themselves high places in all their towns. They set up sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree. At every high place they burned incense, as the nations whom the LORD had driven out before them had done. They did wicked things that provoked the LORD to anger. They worshiped idols, though the LORD had said, "You shall not do this." The LORD warned Israel and Judah through all his prophets and seers: "Turn from your evil ways. Observe my commands and decrees, in accordance with the entire Law that I commanded your fathers to obey and that I delivered to you through my servants the prophets."

But they would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their fathers, who did not trust in the LORD their God. They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their fathers and the warnings he had given them. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless. They imitated the nations around them although the LORD had ordered them, "Do not do as they do," and they did the things the LORD had forbidden them to do."

What are high places? High places were usually natural (e.g. hills and mountains) but sometimes man-made (e.g. towers) places where people worshiped or made sacrifices. The Canaanite "high places" were notorious for pagan worship where various heathenistic idols, altars or buildings were located, and where some of the most wicked and horrendous behavior imaginable went on. As such, when the Israelites entered the Promised Land they were commanded by God not only to have nothing to do with high places, but to destroy them because they would be corrupted by their presence - a command that was largely disobeyed, to their regret.

The world (and many in the church) worship the feminist movement and has made it a "high place". We have been told that our role as a woman and wife is the same as our husbands. That our husband is not the head of the household. That woman can have it all and do not need a man to have a family. These are "altars of lies" and our marriages are being sacrificed on these altars.

You can be upset with what I'm telling you, but the Word of God is the Word of God. "They imitated the nations around them although the LORD had ordered them, "Do not do as they do," and they did the things the LORD had forbidden them to do." We have imitated what the world has told us about being a wife and look what is happening. We are to be different. We are to want to be the wife that God has command us to be, not what the world says we should be.

The next blog will look closer at what the LORD says is our role in marriage. I promise it will not hurt.