You Might Have the Wrong Heart Posture in Obedience if....

How you obey the Father today, informs how you submit within your own marriage. You will not flourish in marriage God's way until you learn obedience from the right heart posture to God first. 

Chelsey dives into Israel's obedience to the Lord in the book of Numbers and how this overflowed from their fear of the Lord. This same heart posture is the key to submitting within your own marriage. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to the High Level Wife Podcast. I'm Chelsea Holm, and we do Marriage Godsway here. And today I'm going to talk about a word that I used to cringe when I said it or heard it. And that word is obedience. To me, obedience as a child meant just doing what I was told, but completely missing the point that it was about my heart in the first place. And this is a conversation Zach and I have had in regards to our kids, and especially as they get older, right? Moving into a little bit older years, teenage years, and it really is about the heart posture, right? It's always about the heart posture. We're studying Hosea, and today during Hosea, we were reverted back to a passage in Deuteronomy where it talks about, you know, God says, like, I don't want your sacrifices, I want your heart. And it always comes back to heart posture when we talk about obedience, because otherwise, if we focus on obedience from the perspective of just externally just doing what we're told or what we know is right or whatever, but we do it with the wrong heart posture, then we're just like the Pharisees, you know, we're just banging gongs and clashing cymbals. And we have to look at obedience in the sense of why do we obey? And who do we obey? And where do we go to find that out? Well, we go right to God's word. And the reason I'm talking about this today is I've been reading through Numbers, as you know, and at the end of chapter nine in Numbers, it says, whether it was two days or a month or a longer time, that the cloud continued over the tabernacle, abiding there, the people of Israel remained in camp and did not set out. But when it lifted, they set out. At the command of the Lord, they camped, and at the command of the Lord they set out. They kept the charge of the Lord at the command of the Lord by Moses. And I'm I'm bringing this passage to your attention because it has so much to do with obedience. What were they doing? They were being obedient to the Lord, they were being obedient to follow the Lord, to do the commands that the Lord had shared through Moses to the people. Now, I bring this up because our obedience, if we're not obeying the Lord first and foremost, then we cannot show up in our marriage with the right heart posture, right? Because submission, right, submission is our obedience to our husbands under the authority that they've been given by the Lord, right? And it's not an obedience as to God as just doing what we're told, right? Because then we get into all kinds of false doctrines of husbands as the head through domination and completely miss the heart of marriage. So we always have to go back to this heart posture, right? And this chapter, chapter nine, comes after the Lord had given them all of these instructions, and this is the point where they're actually doing what the Lord has commanded. They're following the Lord, right? Because uh right before this, actually at the beginning of the uh was it the beginning of the chapter, it was asking who could keep Passover, right? If if someone was unclean, and so they they went to Moses and said, Can we do this? Right, and Moses said, wait that I might hear what the Lord will command concerning you. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying and gave them instruction that everyone was to keep the Passover, right? And I bring that up because they were in this time frame of their story, of their history, of actually doing what the Lord has commanded. And it's only because it's coming from that fear of the Lord, right? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We see that in Proverbs, and so this ties into marriage in the sense of it always comes back to this heart posture. The only way that we are able to submit to one another is out of reverence for Christ. And so the only way that we are able to submit, aka obey in the sense of positional authority through marriage that God designed us for. The only way we're able to do that is if we first and foremost have learned how to be obedient to the Lord. The first is what have we been commanded, right? But it has to start with that awe, that reverence for Christ. And we can't do this on our own volition and our own understanding. We just can't. We saw the instance in uh earlier in Numbers, right? Is it in Numbers or is it in Leviticus? I can't remember at this point, but where um Aaron's sons brought their own strange fire and it consumed them because the Lord had not commanded them to do that, right? And that kind of ties into that awe and fear and reverence for the Lord. And so I bring all of this up because it ties into high-level wife in the right order of God's design for marriage, the biblical order of how we live within marriage and move on mission to build God's kingdom. God has to come first. So, my question to you today is have you learned how to obey God? How are you getting commands from the Lord? I'll give you the answer to that one. The first one is through his word, the second one is through time with him, asking him questions, right? Modeling what the Israelites did when they didn't know if they, if they were unclean, if they could, if they could honor the Passover or keep the Passover, right? What did they do? They asked, right? We don't we don't have a Moses that we have to go through, right? Jesus tore the veil, so we can go directly to God. But asking God questions of what is it that you have for me? How are you leading me? Asking him those questions. And the third is to be surrounded by people who speak life into you, who build you up, who are part of the body of Christ, right, who have hearts aligned with the Father, who will hold you accountable to the word, right? Will use God's word for teaching, rebuking, and or reproving and correcting, right? And also lifting up. But those are the three ways that we we hear from the Lord. The first is in his word. The second, ask him questions. So that means that's assuming you're spending time in prayer and in solitude with God. And the third is you surround yourself with those who speak life into you who are also doing those same things because you're not going to be able to have the marriage where you are flourishing if you continue to live outside of God's design. And God's design is for us to walk in fellowship with him, and everything else flows from there. So you won't have the fellowship in your marriage without or aside from or apart from, first and foremost, intimacy and fellowship with the Father. And so when we think of obedience, again, back to that question, how well do you obey the Lord? How quick are you to obey the Lord? And if the answer is you don't know, or of course I obey the Lord, but there's not actually any fruit, any evidence of that, then I would challenge you that you are leaning on your own understanding, and that's probably overflowing into your marriage, not probably is overflowing into your marriage in the sense of control, trying to control your husband, trying to control outcomes, trying to control the path ahead, rather than essentially tearing all that down and starting at what does it look like for me to love the Lord God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all of these things will be added to me. Do you see how your marriage actually isn't the problem? Your marriage is simply the thermostat that is revealing where you're at in your walk with the Lord. It's a reflection of your fellowship and intimacy with the Father. And so if you want your marriage to move in the same direction with your spouse and to actually be flourishing, it's not about what you're doing or not doing in marriage, it's about what you're doing or not doing with the Lord, and it really goes back to that heart posture of obedience first and foremost to the Lord, and everything else flows from that. So sit with these questions and really ask the Holy Spirit to ask the hard prayers, pray the hard prayers of search me, know me, break me, right? It was interesting on Sunday at church. Uh one of the pastors was praying over the offering time, and there was nothing wrong with what he prayed, but he was praying that God would increase our blessings. And I actually almost immediately was simultaneously praying, God, increase our pressing, right? He's praying, there's nothing wrong with increase our blessing, but I was praying, God, increase the pressing, press me more so that you can bless me more, so that whatever the blessing is that you have for me, I will be able to steward it well. Because pressing reveals, brings to the surface whatever was within. And it's the fastest way to see what's actually inside, what's actually in our heart posture, what's in our heart that's flowing outward. So may your prayer be, God press me rather than God bless me, and instead be God press me, so that whatever it is that you want to bless me, I will be ready to steward and steward well for your glory and the building of your kingdom. I'll see you on the next episode.