— Brother Phil Enlow: Isn’t it interesting, and I think significant, that after He deals with me as an individual, after He deals with me in this broad sense, now we’re gonna come down to where the rubber really meets the road? Because, as I say, it’s so easy to be one thing in here and another thing at home. And God wants us to be real there.
And I’ll tell you, if we have homes where Christ is at home, the presence of God is able to dwell there because we’re honoring Him and walking in the path that He has set out for us, man, we come in here, we’re not gonna have to work anything up! We’re gonna bring it with us. We’re gonna bring His presence with us.
But oh, I’ll tell you, the condition of a home is so critical to everything that God is seeking to do. It’s such a barometer. Let’s put it that way. It really tells us where we’re at, and that’s a sobering thing, isn’t it? It’s pretty sobering when you think about it.
And so, the first thing you look at it on this one level. Okay, there is an order. There is a divine order. The husband is the head of the home. Now, you take human nature and look at that principle and pretty soon it’s pretty easy for dad to be the boss and to make that a purely self-centered thing. I’m the boss, you’ve got to do what I say. Look what it says in the Bible. You’re disobeying God if you disobey me.
What kind of a spirit is that? Oh, my God! Think about Jesus and His nature. Did He come to be served? He didn’t, did He? He said it in so many words. I didn’t come to be served, I came to serve. I came to give my, “…life as a ransom for many.” (NLT). I came for the benefit of those to whom I was sent.
Look it over in the Ephesians passage in chapter 5. See, Paul has gone through this exact, same progression of, here’s the foundation, here’s the kind of person you ought to be, you need to relate to one another this way and now let’s get to the real crux of the matter.
Verse 21, “And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.”
That sounds pretty rough if you’d think in terms of human nature and a husband ruled by human nature. Boy! But now what does that mean for the guys? “For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.” Boy that sounds like a whole lot tougher deal to me than the other!
But here’s the thing. If you’re a man, and you’re called to be married, God has the equipment you need to be a godly husband, to be the leader of your home without being a dictator, to be a giver, a server without being self-centered, and making everybody in your household your servant and making everybody miserable when they don’t serve you.
God wants a people…and the thing is, if you look at this from the natural, people are born into broken situations. They come out of dysfunctional families, trying to form their own family and it’s a royal mess!
The devil has attacked the family because he understands! This is the fundamental relationship in the unfolding of God’s pattern, God’s purpose! Yes, the assembly! But it gets right down into the home. If you get the home in the order that God has laid out, it’s not a set of laws and rules for us to follow, it is a prescription for how God wants to relate Himself to us and share His presence with us!
And I’ll tell you, you have a man who’s committed to serving God and saying, oh God, work this in me. I have no power to be what You’re describing here. It’s just not in me. But the thing is, I don’t care what background you’ve come out of, there is a God who is able to take you from where you’re at, just as you are now, and lead you to a place where you can be what He’s designed you to be. Do you believe that?
( congregational response ).
Are you willing? Do you want God to fit you to be what He’s describing here? “…Love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy…” It’s not about Him, is it? “…To make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.
“In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself.” Boy, what a mystery He’s unfolding here about how Christ sees us! You could certainly say on one level, yeah, Christ is the boss! He tells us what to do. But is He anything like a human boss? Not in the slightest! Everything is about pouring Himself into us so that we can be everything we were meant to be.
And that is the role of a godly husband. God help us! Just saying the words, I feel so utterly unable because I am, in myself! But I know that God wants to begin to set the order of a home with a man who gets this and says, God, make me what You want me to be in my home! Not just in church when I smile and say, hi, to everybody and then go home and I’m grumpy, and everybody has to walk on eggs around me.
Oh, God! Do what’s needed to make me what You want me to be, so that the atmosphere of my home is one where You are at home! I don’t bring devils because of my attitudes. I need You to come!
You know, you have a place like that, and you’ve got half the battle, because I’ll tell you, you ladies, God has fitted you with certain abilities, with qualities that don’t exist in the man. We’re different. It’s only together that we are in the image of God! It’s not like, I’m in the image of God and she’s just something else. We share His attributes. God apportions some of the attributes to me, and some to my wife. And they’re special.
And it’s not a matter of one being better than another or more worthy or something. It’s all these value systems that we bring to it from our brokenness. God sees us together! In fact, one of the words that came to my mind as I was thinking about all of this that God is looking for is a simple word, respect.
I mean love, yes! Obviously love where my main interest is in their welfare, and you get two people that feel that way about each other and man you’ve got something where needs are gonna be met. But how about simple respect? Husbands, do you respect your wife? Do you value her? Does she know that you value her, that you respect her? Do we show that? It gets quiet, doesn’t it? Am I telling you the truth?
( congregational response ).
Yeah! You know, you have a passage that I’ll just refer to and you can go read it, but it’s over in 1 Peter chapter 3 where Peter’s dealing with a situation where there’s a godly wife and she’s married to somebody that doesn’t know the Lord. How is she supposed to handle that one? Well, she’s supposed to live as a godly, submissive wife, showing forth by her very way of life that she belongs to Him, where…He can actually…the Lord could actually get in the home through her and make Himself known to the husband.
Now, if she takes his ungodliness as an excuse to get mad and react on a human level, what good is that? But here is an opportunity for the Lord to absolutely open a door of mercy to that ungodly husband. Whether it happens or not, that’s her place.
But even then, it talks about husbands to dwell with your wife according to knowledge…different translations. Show her, gentleness and respect. “…So your prayers will not be hindered.” (NLT). There is a…and he uses the word partnership, in one of the translations. You’re partners together.
And we need to see ourselves, not like this, or one way up here and one down here, being a slave of some sort. We need to see ourselves as partners together in the Kingdom of God. And I’ll tell you, you get that relationship going the way it’s meant to be, and you’ve got a foundation for something. If it isn’t, there are needs.
You know, you bring the kids into it. I’ll refer to something that I’ve referred to a number of times over the years, but those of you who are in the homeschool community will particularly remember a message that was…a recorded message that was being passed around a lot, a number of years ago. And I believe it was recorded at one of the conferences.
And it was called, “The Curse of the Standard Bearers,” and it was talking about raising children. And, so often the pattern, and no doubt it’s been learned from previous generations, which you see this problem goes back.
You can’t…kids, you can’t look at your parents and say, oh, I see all these things wrong with them. What about previous generations? They were kids and they went through a whole lot of stuff, and they weren’t necessarily prepared by their parents to be what all they ought to be.
That’s why we need to put up with one another, and recognize that we all have faults, and be very tolerant and forgiving. See, all those qualities he talks about…man, it’s not just that they need to work on the level of the Body of Christ in a general…in the assembly sense, but man do they need to work in the house! Because every one of us has things that we need to be forgiven for and tolerated as God works on us. God’s still working on me…to make me all He wants me to be.
Anyway…okay, I’m trying to remember where I was now. Oh yeah! “The Curse of the Standard Bearers.” A standard bearer is somebody who just makes up rules. These are the rules and the guidelines for how we expect our children to behave in our home. And they’re basically just “rules to live by.” In the first place, if you approach any human being based upon rules and laws, what do you get?
( congregational response ).
Rebellion! Read Romans 7 and you discover how effective Paul, trying to serve God, even knowing what the Law said and wanting to do it, let alone being…not wanting. He wanted to do it. It’s the ideal situation. I want to be what You want me to be. I know what the Law says, but something is wrong here. I’ve got something that automatically just kicks into gear. You tell me to do something, and I say, no! My nature rises right up.
And the worst thing is, if you raise kids with nothing but rules to live by, and you don’t live by them…how does that work? Kids aren’t stupid. And so, you’ve got a real problem. And the answer that was proposed in that message was we don’t need “standard bearers,” we need “image bearers.”
I’ll tell you, you want to be godly parents in this world? Ask God to change you and to conform you to His image. It’s gonna take a lot of renewing of your mind. It’s gonna take a whole lot of changes that have to happen for you to be actually modeling the life of Christ, so you are bringing His presence into the home.
And now you have a situation where kids see an example and they want…it’s attractive to them. They want to be like them. How many of you girls want to be married to a husband one day that’s like your dad? That’s how much you love him and respect him and think about him.
How many of you guys, you want, one day, a wife that’s just like your mom? She is just so special, and you’ve been spoiled. You just want one that’s like her. You see in her the qualities that make a godly wife.
We need to be asking God, oh, God, we need Your presence in our home. Are we image bearers or are we just standard bearers? I think we’ve got the essence of what the Lord desires for us in the home. We don’t need to be in a situation where we have to walk on eggs around one another, where people feel afraid, feel all kinds of negative things that just mean the devil’s at home there. We need the Lord to be in our home.
( congregational amens ).
And every member of…every member of that household needs to be looking to the Lord saying God, I want to be what You want me to be.
( congregational amens ).
Young people, do you really want to grow up and know the Lord? This is the time in your life when His plan for you has more to do with your character than what you want. And many times that means submitting to imperfect parents, and just humbling yourself and saying, Lord, I’m in Your hands. And I’ll tell you, there’s a God who pays attention to that kind of a person.
And husbands and wives, I believe God longs to have healthier homes where His presence reigns. God wants to be so real in our homes where people want to be there because they feel emotionally safe and fed and peaceable and respected in their various roles and they’re willing to fill those roles, willing to do it God’s way. I’ll tell you, God’s blessing dwells there in a special in a special way. Praise the Lord!
