WOMEN,
AND THEIR HUSBANDS
THE STORY is told of two women who escaped from prison. They were running, and of course, when the guards discovered that they had escaped, they went after them with dogs to follow their scent and to track them down. The two women heard the barking in the distance and knew the guards and dogs were closing in. Panicking and needing to do something, the first lady decided to climb a tree and hide. The second lady decided to follow her lead and she climbed a tree located about fifty feet away.
The dogs arrived and picked up the scent at the first tree. They began to jump up on the tree and bark loudly. The first lady up the tree was of course panicking because she had been located, but ingeniously, she began to make cooing sounds: “Coo, coo, coo.” The prison guard jerked the dog back from the tree and said, “Come on, let’s go, it’s nothing but a dumb bird up there.” She had deflected the dog.
When the guards and the dogs arrived at the second tree, they picked up the scent of the second woman. Now, the second woman heard what the first woman had done. So she began to think, “What sound can I make to throw off the scent of the dogs?” She thought for a minute as the dogs jumped on the tree and then it hit her. She said, “Moo, moo, moo.” Cows don’t live in trees.
When you’re confused on your role, you wind up making the wrong noise, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. A lot of women are making a lot of noise complaining about their husbands and complaining about what’s wrong with their man, when they have forsaken and neglected their biblical roles. They are mooing when they ought to be cooing.1038
[Marriage; Marriage, Unhappiness in; Submission, of Wives to Their Husbands]
Eph. 5:22–24; 1 Peter 3:7
SO LET’S say you’ve got a parked car in front of you. You are trying to go somewhere. You are at a stoplight, and the car in front of you is stuck, not going anywhere. You have somewhere to go so you are getting ticked off at this parked car. You are so irritated that you may start fussing, and cussing, and complaining, and winding your window down, and doing all this kind of stuff, because this car is parked in front of you, and it’s getting on your nerves. Now, having gone through all that, you still won’t be able to get that car to move. You know what that car needs? That car needs somebody to come and assist it with its movement. I think the biblical word for this is “helpmate.”
Guess what the job of a helpmate is … to help. Far too many of our ladies today, instead of being helpmates, are hurt mates, because they do what everyone else is doing to their man, putting him down, criticizing him, complaining about him, or emasculating him. The very thing many ladies are after, they are themselves destroying.1039
[Criticizing, Danger of; Marriage]
Prov. 21:9; 1 Tim. 5:13
ONE day a woman was trying to get her mule to move, but the mule was stubborn. She went inside the farmhouse and got a bat. She picked up the bat, and BANG! hit the mule upside the head. The mule fell over and seeing stars he jumped back up, and started moving. The woman’s daughter asked, “Mom, why did you hit the mule over the head with the bat?” Her mother said, “Because you got to do something to get his attention.”
Men are often mule-headed and stubborn. But God has given every woman a baseball bat, one many women are unwilling to use, and it is called respect. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.1040
[Marriage; Submission, of Wives to Their Husbands]
Prov. 21:19; Rom. 13:7; 1 Peter 3:1–2
IN A courtroom, in the event you get upset at the proceedings, you could blurt out, scream, yell, or fuss in defense of yourself. Even if you are right, and the person on the other side is wrong, the judge will say, “You are out of order.” In fact, if you continue ranting and raving, the judge will hold you in contempt of court, because you have dishonored the courtroom.
There are many women today living in contempt of God’s court, by their refusal to surrender to God’s divine order. That order is clear—for a wife to respect her husband. The issue is not whether he is right or not. It is an issue of respecting him as head.1041
[Marriage; Submission, of Wives to Their Husbands]
1 Cor. 11:3