If you'd like to watch, click on Pastor Squatch Musings!

Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Ephesians 5:21–25, ESV

Ah, marriage. This is one of those verses, this section of scripture, I know in our world today is so unpopular because we do not have a full understanding of what the gift of marriage truly is. We don't like this idea of submission. As we are called, all of us, husbands and wives, children, and everyone else, we all submit to some authority. We are ultimately to submit ourselves under the authority of our Lord and our Savior, Jesus Christ, as we are called to be his light and his witnesses to the world. Our Lord uses the imagery of marriage so often to explain this reality that as the people of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are married. to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and we are called to a level of submission under Him and His authority. And in the truest sense, a marriage should reflect this wonderful, beautiful union, as two come together as one, as wives submit to their husbands and husbands lift up and raise up their wives, as love is shown through that marriage, and children are let and are raised to see what it means to be respected and adored by God. Our daughters see how they should be treated. by how their fathers treat their mothers and how they should treat their husbands, but it also shows them what they should expect. Sons are shown by their fathers' treatment of their mothers and the love and care that is shown in how they are called to love their wives. and show their wonderful attributes and the gift that they are. Marriage is the greatest gift given to us by God. It is the one union in which partnership is fully, fully known. And it is the place in which our Lord desires for us to live and to know his peace. As we live our lives to reflect His glory, as we show our wives the love of our Lord, and our wives lift us up as husbands. Husbands, love your wives. Wives, respect your husbands. Trust in Christ, know the love that our Lord has for you, and live in His peace.

Let us pray. I thank you, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, your dear Son, that you have kept me this night from all harm and danger, and I ask you to protect me this day also from sin and every evil, that in all I do today, I may please you. For into your hands, I commend myself, my body and soul, and all that is mine. Let your holy angel watch over me, that the wicked foe have no power over me. Amen.