How to Stop Treating Your Husband as Your Last Ministry Getting Your Leftovers

When was the last time you had that desire for your husband as an overflow from that desire for God, your Father, your Creator, your Maker? The maker of everything? 

Where you heart is, there also is your treasure. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to the High Level Wives Podcast. I'm Chelsea Holm, your hostess, and we do Marriage God's way here. Wives, I want you to hear me on this that your first ministry, your first ministry is to your husband. When you are following the right order, your first ministry is to your husband and then to your children. So as a reminder, if or if this is the first time that you're listening to this podcast, the right order is God first, then you, because you have to steward what God has given you, and then your husband, then your kids, then your work and everything else. And that is the order. And there are so many wrong orders. Pretty typically for men, it will be work first, and for wives it'll be kids first. But any order that is not the right order of God, you, your spouse, your kids, work, and everything else, is straight up the wrong order. This is this is black and white. God is a God of order, and trying to live your life out of order is always going to go awry and not build life. It will actually tear your house down over time. And so, wives, it's so easy for us to minister to everyone else in the ever-loving world and completely neglect our husbands. This happens a lot of times when our kids are born, right? For the first time, we have to take care of someone other than ourselves that is completely reliant on us. And it's so easy to get everything out of order because you can keep the right order while still caring for a completely reliant child, right? Because you don't care for your husband in the same way. I've you've heard me say this before, or maybe this is the first time you're hearing it, that you know, anyone can do anything for your husband. Like someone else can wash his clothes, someone else can get his groceries, someone else can take care of the house, someone else can cart the kids around. Someone can do anything else except walk in oneness with him, to desire him, to seek after him, which is an overflow and must be an overflow from the right order of God first. Otherwise, he then becomes the idol, or the marriage becomes the idol, right? Because where your heart is, there your treasure is also. Our treasure above anything else should be the Lord and seeking his will and his kingdom, aligning our hearts in the right heart posture with his heart, so that the things that grieve his heart grieve our heart, the things that bring joy and delight to his heart bring joy and delight to our heart, to have the love he has for his children, all of them, and his desire is that none should perish. Right? When was the last time you had that desire for your husband as an overflow from that desire for God, your father, your creator, your maker, the maker of everything, right? So your husband is your first ministry, and not in the ministry in the in the way of you would typically think of it of like service, right? We I think we tend to wrongly equate ministry and service as the same thing. Um and let me explain because when we serve someone, right, we we are doing something for them, or we are attending to their needs, or we're meeting a need for them, or we're um doing something that they can't do, right? Um, and so when we look at that kind of ministry in church, hopefully we're pairing it with our spiritual gifts, but when it comes to marriage, what happens is we try to pair it with our love language and our spouse's love language. But you've heard me talk about this before that that just plays into this dynamic of keeping score, and that's not helpful for anybody, right? Because then we're constantly evaluating is my love tank full? Have I filled your love tank? And it's like we're missing the whole picture because we have shifted focus to one another rather than allowing our focus on the Lord to overflow onto one another with intentional ministry, right? What did Jesus do at the Last Supper? He washed his disciples' feet, right? He was physically washing their feet, which which was an external and observable act of selflessness and love, right? But it is actually an internal reflection of humility, of his love for them, that he, even he, the son of the only God, who was the word and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, who didn't consider himself as uh or did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped, but instead he humbled himself, taking the form of a man and being born a baby, came to this world to suffer and die for us and pay for our sins, to carry out the will of the Father. Okay? That is sacrificial love. That is what it means to minister to one another, to look to the interest of others. But it's not just about the physical observable, right? It's not just about the metrics that we think, right? It's about what actually is going to help and support them, but more importantly, what is going to care for their heart that says, I see you, I hear you, and I desire you.

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So that's different, obviously. That's different within marriage because I don't desire another person as I do my spouse. That is my spouse, and my spouse desires me. I am my beloved, and his desire is for me. Right? And so when we think of ministering to our husbands, it's very specific, unique. It's the one and the only. We have friends, we have family, we have siblings, we have co-workers, we have children, right? We have bosses, we have fellow employees, we have all of these other relational dynamics, but you have only one spouse. One, you have one spouse. Nobody else is going to walk in that position and that role but your spouse, and the same for you to your husband or your wife. Right? And so we need to understand that that is our first ministry. When we don't know what to do, when we don't know what the will of God is, we need to go to his word to do what he's already commanded us to do. Therefore, submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ. And right after that, wives are called to submit to their husbands. The only way we do that is out of reverence for Christ. And then husbands are called to love their wives, to wash them in the word, to present them as holy and blameless. Okay, this all flows from our reverence and submissions first and foremost to Christ. But this is our unique ministry within marriage. Two become one. There is no other relationship, no other relational dynamic like it. Okay, because it is a reflection, it is an earthly embodiment of the three-in-one trinity. Three in one, the same, and yet three separate. It should be outside of our understanding because we are limited in our understanding, because we tend to focus on what we can see right in front of us or what we think and what we can we can orchestrate and figure out in our own little brains, but we are limited. And so this reverence for Christ and this submission to one another out of reverence for Christ, this flows from this right view of God, right? This this right view then of ourselves that he loved us so much. He sent his only son to die for us, as whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. That gives us a right view of ourselves. To give us this gift of salvation, not by works, so that none may boast. By the grace of God, it's a gift, right? And then God allows us to have the right view of others, that none should perish. None. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. God's heart is that none should perish. So when I have a right view of God and I recognize who He is and who I am in Him, how I am loved, how I have been forgiven of my sins, mercy and awe and reverence, awe and reverence for God and mercy to others because of the mercy that I have received. So, yes, your husband is your first ministry. We should be on a mission to outminister and out-pursue and out-desire one another, and that it's not contingent upon our flesh, not at all. Following Christ requires that we deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow him. Do we think that marriage is exempt from that? Do we think that we can build a marriage God's way exempt from the fact that we are called to deny our flesh, to crucify our passions and worldly desires? Not at all. We would make a fool and a mockery of the gospel itself if we think that the gospel is applied to everything else and every other relational dynamic but our marriage. That would be to deny the full gospel. So, my question to you is are you denying the gospel in your lack of application of it and surrender to the Holy Spirit, applying it to your life within your marriage? Brown zero, your first ministry. And this ministry flows from that right order of God first, you stewarding yourself and what God has given you in submission to the spirit, so that it all overflows onto your husband, and you are able to minister to him in the spirit, by the spirit, through the spirit, rather than your flesh. This changes everything because it changes you. Your marriage will not change until you are changed. Now, I want to say that again. Your marriage will not change until you are changed. I didn't say until you change yourself, I didn't say until your husband changes. I said until you are changed, implying that there is an external force being applied to you and an internal enablement working through you. That, my friends, is abiding in the Father and the Holy Spirit doing what you could never do, and God transforming and healing what you could never do. So your marriage will not change until you are changed, and that is through full surrender to the Holy Spirit and God at work in you, of the gospel applied to you. And watch what happens. That is what creates space for your husband for the Holy Spirit to do the same thing in and through him, in his timing, in his way, that is so far beyond your understanding. Once you learn this, control will become laughable to you. You will laugh thinking about the fact that you thought that you were going to change your husband. Laughable for the fact that you thought you were going to try to fix your marriage. It becomes laughable, and praise God for the mercy he's showing us for snatching us out of that fleshly dysfunction within marriage, not his way, and pulling us back into his design both for marriage and for us in our function as wives and as husbands, and how he made us and created us and the good works he set for us to walk in. Then it become marriage becomes about mission, his mission, and our sub-mission to our husbands and ministry to him. I hope this episode challenged you off your face. I don't know what that means, but challenged you to the full extent. I hope that the the heart response is to recognize that you need to confess and repent so that you can walk in this freedom, my friend, this life abundant, this overflow, that you can lay down trying and pick up being changed by the only one who is able, the only God who has all majesty, power, dominion, and authority forever and ever. Amen and amen. I will see you on the next episode.