Right Order: The Foundation of a Flourishing Marriage

God is a God of order, and when our lives drift out of His design, we often experience unnecessary overwhelm, frustration, resentment, and exhaustion.

In this episode, we're talking about what right order actually looks like in everyday life. From putting God first to stewarding yourself well, prioritizing your marriage, and leading your home with intentionality, you'll discover that right order isn't about perfection—it's about alignment.

Because when your priorities are aligned with God's design, peace becomes the overflow instead of something you're constantly chasing.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the High Level Wife podcast. I'm Chelsea Holm, your hostess, and here we do Marriage God's Way. We're continuing our series on the Martha modern day wife, right? And today we're going to be talking about right order. It's the foundation of a flourishing marriage, meaning God first, everything else flows from there. So as I said, we talked about Martha, we talked about counterfeit peace, we talked about release versus peace. We talked about abiding in the vine. So what does that actually look like on a Tuesday afternoon with kids, laundry, work meals in real life? It looks like right order. This is the foundation of high-level wife and high-level husband because it is the foundation of life walking with the Lord. Right order isn't about perfection, it's about priority. It's about putting first what God says is first, which is Him. So let's define right order because God is a God of order. Creation has order, the family has order, the church has order. Our lives flourish when they're aligned with his design. Disorder always creates unnecessary burden. The order is God first, then you and your relationship with him. Then that includes stewarding your own temple, which means physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Then after that, it's your marriage and then your children and then your work ministry and everything else. Because what happens when that order gets flipped? So what happens if kids are first? Well, guess what? Your marriage suffers. Your husband gets the leftovers, intimacy fades, and resentment begins to grow. What happens if it's work first? Well, your family gets what's left, there's constant striving, and your identity becomes performance. What about if it's self-first? This is the way our world loves to do it with self-care and self-this and self-that. Well, comfort becomes the goal. Feelings become the authority, flesh begins leading instead of the spirit. What about if your husband's first instead of God? He becomes an idol, and your peace depends on him instead of Christ. And this is where a lot of wives find themselves, either with kids first or with their husband in their ideal marriage first. And your husband can't bear that burden. Only Christ can. Martha's disorder wasn't the issue of her serving, it's that she served from anxiety instead of abiding. She put many things ahead of the one thing necessary. The issue wasn't activity, it was priority. And I'm recording this offline, but there's literally a horse, giant horsefly, if you've ever seen a horsefly buzzing around me. So anyway, okay, let's go back to what I was saying. Um, so the issue wasn't activity with her, it was priority, right? And and so often we think that our priorities are what we say or what we think it to be. But our priorities and what they actually are is revealed in what gets our best time and energy, what gets our first. Because right order produces peace, it produces margin and clarity and patience, presence, intimacy, better decisions, less resentment, and less striving. So some questions to ask yourself. What's getting my first attention every morning? And I understand if you have little kids, I've been there, right? Your baby gets up crying, right? But what if instead you got up a few minutes earlier? Or if you got up and you know, while nursing that sweet baby or changing that diaper, on your way walking to that crib or whatever it may be, you're praying, you're talking to the Lord, right? While you're nursing, you're sitting with him, you know, you've got your Bible open and you're reading rather than scrolling on the phone. Right? We can get creative. And as I always say, my favorite verse for those years of chaos was God gently leads those with young. He does. And continuing on, asking yourself the question of what gets my best energy? What's discipling my mind? What do I think about most? What do I protect most fiercely? What gets squeezed out first when life gets busy? If it's time with the Lord, that is telling you something. Okay, so let's walk through some practical examples. For the young mom, I gave you some. This is these these are gonna be practical examples for anybody. Get a real alarm clock and keep your phone out of the bedroom and open your Bible before social media, before you touch your phone. Start the day with a simple prayer, Lord, your mercies are new every morning. I love your ways, your laws are good, your precepts are perfect. This is your day. Thank you. Right? Ask the Lord before asking Google. We have been conditioned to go to Google with every single question we have or to Chad GPT. Don't do that. Go to the Lord first with your questions and sit with him in solitude. Ask him a question. God, teach me how to do this. Invest in your marriage before the kids consume every evening, right? Um, Tommy and Diane, for the last five years, every single night they've gone on a walk and their kids go with them, but their kids either walk behind them or way out in front of them and are not allowed to interrupt them because they're having time together. Protect your margin, right? When learn to say no. This is huge, right? Because what happens is if you say yes to everything, you may be saying yes to good things, but what you're actually doing is you're saying no to better things. Protect that margin, sabbath, practice it, observe it, use it as a time to slow down and connect with the father, and slow down and connect with one another. Right in the old testament, not observing the Sabbath was punishable by death. Okay, so we don't live under the old law, the old testament law, the old covenant. However, that should give us insight onto how important it is, right? Not for it to become legalistic, but for it to be refreshment for us in submission to the Lord. Eat, sleep, move your body as stewardship, not vanity. Right? Rather than working out for an aesthetic, work out to be strong and take care of the temple as if you're thinking about it like a church building that you were called to janitor and take care of, right? To like make it not look like a trash hole, right? Think about the way that you feed and fuel your body and the way that you move your body as that. Build your day around your priorities instead of squeezing God into what's left. Because the truth is, whether it's energy, time, or resources, if you save the most important things for last, they will always get squeezed out because the enemy will make sure of it, and so will your flesh. I want to make an important clarification here again, because right order is not about legalism, it's not about earning God's love. You've already received the free gift of salvation, but the Bible is not opposed to striving, it's opposed to earning. So it's not about checking those boxes, it's alignment. And alignment brings freedom every time. And this isn't about alignment with a way of doing things, it's about alignment with the father's heart first and foremost. And it's that it's that desire to be with him first and foremost. That's what it is. So let's come back to John 15 because you can't abide if everything else always comes first. And abiding isn't another task, right? I'm like, when you put it that way, it sounds ridiculous, right? Like, oh, did I abide with the Lord today? Wait, excuse me, what? Right? I put a question out, a poll. I do a weekly poll inside high level wife. Um, and this week it was, you know, if Jesus were knocking at your door right now, what would be your response? And I put a list of options of like, hey, give me five minutes, or oh, it's a mess in here, come back later, or whatever, right? But every single woman's response was the same that they would weep and they would embrace him and welcome him in. And so my point to each and every one of them was Jesus is knocking at our door every day. But how often in what we actually do and think and say, are we telling him to wait a minute? How often are we saying, come back later? I don't have time right now, or let me finish this. We need to have this urgency for abiding because it's not another task, it's the foundation every other task grows from. Fruit grows naturally when the roots are planted in the right place. But if your roots are planted in social media and the woes of this world, yeah, of course you're gonna live in anxiety and worry all the time, right? The news doesn't travel fast when it's good, it travels based on. Sorry, I'm doing it again. There's another horse slide. It travel bad news sells, right? So we don't want that to be our foundation or where our roots are. Here's the uncomfortable truth. Most of us already know God's order. The problem usually isn't ignorance here, it's surrender. And that's what we're gonna be talking about next, because you cannot ask God to bless what you refuse to bring under his authority. We love Jesus as Savior, but we fail time and time again in the way that we actually live our daily lives to submit to him as Lord. Right order isn't restricted, it's where freedom begins. God isn't asking for the left orders of your day, he's asking to be the foundation of it, right? He's not asking you to live perfectly, he's asking you to desire him more than anything else in this world because he desires you more than anything else in this world. When God is first, everything else finally has a place. It's amazing, and I've seen it firsthand in my life, I've experienced it firsthand, and I've also witnessed it for the wives and the husbands inside high level husband and high level wife that when God is first, everything else finally has a place and it falls into order. The issue isn't that you have too much to do, the issue is what you're building your life on. And with that, I will see you on the next episode.