The other side of submission

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Ephesians 5:24-25:

"Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her."

It's interesting when we, women, sometimes complain about having to submit, we have movements that oppose submission to the husband yet, in summary, the above Bible verse sounds like this to me: 

Wife: submit to him; Husband: die for her.

Those tasked to die do not always complain as much as those tasked to submit!

Die to your desires that He who died might live in you 

(1 Peter 2:24 paraphrase): 

As Christians, we are tasked not to act upon our mundane desires or feelings, but to live and act like Jesus indeed lives within us. For example, when you are very angry at someone and you feel like giving them a piece of your mind, you are not to act upon that feeling. Rather, as a Christian, you are to act in a way that Christ would, which means having (lots of) patience, paying good for evil and at the least, rebuking in love.

This is such a difficult thing to do_ at least for me! It is hard for me to repay evil with good most times, to remain believing in God a hundred percent when things get tough. It is difficult for me to die to the [evil] things I sometimes want so that Christ, the perfect, holy, almighty one, may be alive in me. So, if it is this hard for me to die to myself for the sake of Jesus Christ who died for me, then how much harder should it be for me to die to myself for the sake of a fellow human being?

Christ gave up himself for us, for our betterment. He didn't have himself in mind, but us, our redemption. Even when he prayed that the cup be taken away from him if possible, he still went ahead and bore the cross, just because it was necessary for you and I. 

This is what every husband is tasked with, endeavoring to look out for the well-being/betterment of his wife and family at large, in everything, before looking out for himself.

The husband is the head of the wife, as well as the leader of this beautiful thing called family. Christ is the head of the husband. I love to picture a family as a country, with the father as the president, the wife as the vice president and the children as the citizens. 

I don't really know what being president of a country is like, but I know what being a school prefect or a president of a students' club, is like. It is not easy at all. It so happens that the vice president can have the excuse of being caught up in other engagements during a crisis but the president can't. The president always has to show up: As long as he is needed, he shows up; he shows up whether he has a fever or not, he has to show up even when he is in a bad mood; he shows up and to think, to devise solutions, to make decisions, and stuff like that.

The president of any country, entity or club usually takes the beatings, he covers the rest of the team from all the condemnations, insults and stones thrown at the particular entity he's heading. 

I am really trying my best to depict how difficult the role of selflessness that the husband is tasked with can mean to be.

That said, submission, in its intended design, is not difficult. It is not the curse-word that many countries, organizations and/or people have made it. Submission is not hard under a husband who is also striving to become better at selflessness each day. So it's high time we gave the other side of submission (which, in this case is selflessness) more attention. It's high time we instilled in our young boys the values of selflessness; it's time we opened up huge discussions about the same, because we can't make the equation stable by trying to emphasize submission alone. In fact, when we focus on selflessness, submission will eventually balance.

Why do I say "we" here?

I say we, yes, both men and women, because indeed selflessness is hard, but then we, the females, are the ones that usually hold the males (our sons) in our motherly hands of tenderness, especially in the most fundamental years of their lives. Meaning that it is our responsibility as women to show our sons the way they should go, because you sometimes find ladies complaining about how selfish their husbands are, yet they're raising their sons in the same way. It should therefore start with us training up our sons in the way we would want our spouses to treat us.

The same way we let them play with you-tools, toy-cars and toy-guns from a tender age is the same way we ought to let them learn the values of selflessness. 

I say "we", because it is the men who guide other men in the way that "real men," that "kingdom-men" ought to lead others not only in family but also in career and in political spaces.

I say "we", because we all need to join in prayer for our men. We pray that God raises a generation of kingdom-minded men, who treasure kingdom values.

When the other side of submission (selfless leadership) is in effect, submission is not as much a problem.

What a wonderful Wednesday that the Lord has made.

Thank you for sharing your time with me again; please don't forget to share your views in the comment section below.

Thank you!