Attitude Of Submission

0:00Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voice over for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God's Government called your daily bread, taken from Christ's teaching of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today's focus discussion will be on attitude of submission, families, meaningful marriages

1:02which are so essential to society and its preservation, listen which are so essential to real fulfillment in life are only possible where you have unselfish attitudes, where personal desires are constantly sacrificed for others. And if that is not happening, there cannot be meaningful relationships. You cannot have the collision of two independently selfish individuals and build a relationship. It is a battle of people struggling to humble themselves. That's essential. That's the key to all relationships, to be spirit-filled, to be speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, to be saying thanks and to be submissive, just those four things. That is the foundation, that is where you have to start this whole thing. You have people who walk in the spirit fulfilling the word of God in obedience to the truth, where you have people with a song in their heart and a song on their lips, where you have people who say thanks for everything that comes into their life, and where you have people who

2:06are eager, in fact they are in a hurry to take every occasion to humble themselves and submit themselves to those around them, you have meaningful relationships. That's how you build relationships. People will ask me, what's the key to your marriage or what's the key to your family? How is it that your family is so close or you are close to your wife and you have such a wonderful relationship? And I can just go back to this. There is no magic, there is no formula, there is no gimmicks. It's not a question of how many times did we do this or how many times did we do that or who was in charge of this or what kind of processes or methods did we use. It's simply a question and it has to start in my heart, am I committed to obedience to the spirit of God, am I committed to the controlling influences of the word of God, am I going to live out a Christian life, because that has to be there, am I filled with joy and happiness or am I ugly and cantankerous and unkind and ungracious, or is my heart so

3:09filled with joy that it touches everybody around me and it makes me attractive and makes everything that I believe and love attractive to them. Am I thankful for everything in life, every difficulty, every misunderstanding, every mistreatment that occurs in my life and family and marriage, am I going to be thankful for that and accept all of that with joy in my heart, am I going to submit myself to them, am I going to get into their life and do what pleases them? Those are the kind of issues that we have to have addressed. And if we don't start there, the rest is just hopeless. Now if you look at that and look at our society, you can see that there is just no way, no way. You have people consumed with iniquity, they are not interested in the word of God, consumed

4:09with doing whatever their driving lust tells them to do, fulfilling their own desires all over the place, infidelity, sexual perversion, whatever it might be. You have people who have basically no joy or very little of it, and occasionally find it in a bottle or because they get a raise at work or because they are going on a fishing trip or because they had some great experience somewhere, but generally their hearts aren't filled with overwhelming joy bursting out all the time. I don't read our society like that, it's a very depressed society, they are never thankful, they never have enough, and they aren't willing to submit anything to anybody else, they want to run their own agenda, there is just no chance, and you add on top of that the ideological lies, the fortresses of human speculation that are being erected against the word of God as Paul describes it in 2 Corinthians 10, these ideologies that have to do with humanism and sexual freedom and lesbianism and homosexuality and all the things

5:13that destroy a family, the ideology that you don't need to get married, you can just have sex till you are tired of sex and then you can go find somebody you are not tired of and have some more of it. The idea that you can impregnate women all over the place and just leave them with children in every direction, and that's fine, that's fine, that's wonderful, we accept that. All of those ideologies compounded with this personal selfishness leave nothing but disaster, absolute disaster. Now this whole idea of submission, I want to address a little further. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 11, and we'll get into this a little more when we talk about husbands. Somebody at this point might misunderstand and say, well wait a minute, if everybody is submitting, then nobody is in charge, and I just want to defer to that query for a moment. God has designed authority into a family, and in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 3, Paul says, I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head

6:17of the woman, and God is the head of Christ. We aren't saying that there is no authority in the family, there is. There is authority at the father level, and there is authority over children at the parent level, we understand that. We are not talking about the responsibility of leadership. We are not talking about the responsibility of caring and protecting, which is what that authority is. We are not talking about the authority of teaching them and raising them and nurturing them in the Lord when it comes to children. What we are talking about here is this kind of mutual submission that says, although I may be your leader and your protector and your provider, your longings and your heart desires and your needs, compel me more than my own. That's what creates the balance that is necessary.

7:19I am not abdicating my responsibility as a husband to lead, to preserve, to protect care for my wife. I am not abdicating my responsibility as father to provide for my children, to protect my children, to give them direction and leadership and discipline and build self-control into them. But I do that, I do that with the passion of my heart, being the recognition that this best serves their needs. And whatever other needs they would have, I would eagerly desire to meet to the sacrifice of my own if my heart is right and I'm speaking that as anyone would. And the perfect picture of that right there in verse 3 is that Christ is the head of every man and God is the head of Christ. Is God superior to Christ? No. Is God of a different essence than Christ? No. Are God and Christ one? Yes. It simply means that in the economy of redemption, Christ submitted himself to the purposes and plan and power of the Father and ever since he was equal and yet submissive.

8:20And the Father was completely sensitive to the heart of the Son. Christ totally and willingly submitted to the needs of man, submitted himself to the purposes of the Father, came and committed really what was the greatest act of unselfish love ever, dying on the cross to satisfy the Father, and to satisfy us. He was Lord over man kind, he was the sovereign who submitted, he was the king who became a servant, he was the rich man who became poor, he was the sinless one who bore sin, he was the author of life who accepted death, he was God dying for man, that's the heart attitude. There is no question that he's the head of man and yet has the servant of man. The picture there in verse 3 is a marvelous one, he was equal with God and yet he submitted with God. He was over man and yet he submitted to man and to the need of man. He stooped to meet man at the deepest point of his need. On both counts we see the illustration of the submissiveness of Jesus to the Father's

9:21will, to the need of man. Even through great anguish and drops of blood he said, not my will, but mine be done. Remember that the scripture says, be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love, in honour preferring one another, that's the idea, that's the idea. Before we can talk about the role of the wife or the role of the husband or the role of the parents or the role of the children, we have to talk about the role of everybody, with Christ you have equality with God and yet submission. And in all of our relationships there will be spiritual equality, there will be spiritual authority and there will still be a spirit of submission. In Galatians just to kind of wrap this thought up, in Galatians 326 it's important to note this, you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were immersed

10:24into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. Now, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor freemen, and then this, there is neither male nor female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. When it comes to the spiritual we are all one, my wife is a believer, my children are believers, we are all one in Christ, none of us is superior spiritually to one another and we are all equal on the spiritual level, and yet three is authority in that family given to the father and given to the parents, that does not preclude spiritual equality, it's simply a duty, it's simply a role, it's simply an assignment, for the wisest care of that unit which God has ordained. We have the same thing in the church, we are all one in Christ. There is neither male nor female, bond nor slave, Jew nor Greek in the church, whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are an employee or an employer, or whether you are rich or poor, or whatever culture you might have come from, we are all one in Christ,

11:28and yet, although we are all equal spiritually, 1 Timothy 5, 17 says the elders that rule well are worthy of double honor, and 1 Thessalonians 5, 12 and 13 says we beseech you brethren, know those who labor among you who are over you in the Lord. Acts 20 verse 28, it tells the elders to take the oversight over the flock. 1 Peter 5, you are shepherds over the flock. Hebrews chapter 13, the elders live a life of faith and the people are called to follow that. The people are told that those elders are over them in the Lord and have to give an account to God. Spiritual equality, but differing responsibilities, but even in those responsibilities, we operate with an attitude of submission. I suppose to bring it into a very vivid illustration just because it's so obvious tonight.

12:32Here I stand in a position of authority by virtue of teaching you the word of God. You sit in a position of submission. Somebody might conclude that I am sort of a demagogue. I am some kind of an autocrat who stands up here and all of you just sit there and do what you do, and there is some kind of disparity between us spiritually. That's not true. We are spiritual equals. I simply have a responsibility and a duty that gives me this task. Not only that, I have to render this task with a greater concern for you than for me. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of attitude of submission. Until next time, remember to keep the faith. Stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddess government.com. Goodbye. And may your faith always lead you away.