My husband and I were both in God’s Church when we first met and then married. Being single in the Church was one thing, but marriage added a new dimension—a change from “me” to “us” and living now as a married woman, wanting to typify a Proverbs 31 wife.
Early in our marriage I decided I wanted to plant pepper plants just outside our kitchen window, but my husband told me not to do it, because the soil was poor there. But I so wanted to plant some—right there—so when he was away covering a meeting one evening (he was a news reporter for our daily paper at the time), I went out and bought six pepper plants and planted them in that very spot. He never said a word about them. They were about eight inches high when I planted them, and at the end of the growing season they were still eight inches high, with not a pepper on them.
This was the first of several such lessons in yielding my will to his, but none quite so dramatic. We would talk of these situations over the years, and this one came to be known as “peppers of disobedience.” It wasn’t really a dire lesson, thankfully, but I was beginning to get a glimmer of the meaning of Proverbs 14:1: “The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands.” Looking at it in hindsight, I could see that: 1) I disobeyed my husband, wanting my will to be done, 2) The soil really was poor there and my actions produced no fruit and 3) He was actually right and I was in the wrong.
And so began our growing together in learning the way of Christian marriage. We realized the need to communicate and we wanted our marriage to be based on the relationship of our heavenly Father with Christ. They never argue—they are always in complete agreement, with absolute harmony and love.
The concept of being married to Christ in the first resurrection is not exactly easy to grasp, but God has given us marriage as a type of the real marriage to His Son; “Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints” (Revelation 19:7–8).
There is very much in the way of preparation for the wife to make herself ready. First of all, she must truly love her husband-to-be and want the very best for him in every way—and it needs to be mutual, of course. She now needs to focus on learning what is important to her husband, respecting him, walking in this new path. This concept applies to single women as well, and even more in a way, as the Apostle Paul shows in 1 Corinthians 7:34: “The unmarried woman cares about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit.”
The Ease of Disobedience
It is not easy for women to submit to their husbands. Our very society teaches us that women are free to do what they want—even to the point of killing an unwanted child in the womb—and, when you really get right down to it, are more intelligent than men. There’s a little-known conspiracy in the nation(s) that pictures the man as the bumbling oaf, always stumbling about, never doing what is right, while the woman is the intelligent one—extremely capable in every way and in command of every situation. Just notice it: on television programs, in ads and virtually all the media. It is everywhere! And it is even being extended to little boys and girls. It is called “The Jackass Formula.”
Do not fall for it. Scripture tells us to “Let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Ephesians 5:33). God intended the man to have authority over the woman (v. 23) so there would be order and peace, and He instructed the man to “love his own wife as himself” (v. 33).
Additionally, as Satan’s society spirals downward, confusion is even being thrust upon our children regarding their gender. This appears to be a recent phenomenon, but it is moving at an extremely fast pace. If a little boy strongly feels he should have been born a girl, apparently, under certain circumstances, he could dress and act as a girl. The schools in this country are faced with increasingly difficult problems of this nature, including which bathroom should be used. Much publicity has been given of late to the sex change of former Olympic champion Bruce Jenner, now known as Caitlyn, which undoubtedly influences children who may be thinking along these lines.
Truly, Satan is attacking the family and we must be aware of the danger and stay close to God as a family.
As the years have gone by, my husband and I have moved to other homes, I have planted peppers numerous times and they have been very fruitful plants, blessed by God, I know. Now I am an “aged” woman and I ponder how possibly to teach “the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands,” as we are advised in Titus 2:4. It is not an easy thing for any of us, knowing the enemy is constantly seeking to undermine our families and our lives in any way he can; tearing us apart and leaving us bleeding and dying, while he claps his hands in delight, so to speak. The main key to success is to put God first in everything (Matthew 6:33), then, in secondary order, the family follows, with the husband as the head. King Solomon put it so well in Proverbs 3:5–6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.”
We Have Been Planted
One of my favorite scriptures, found in Ecclesiastes 3, is a marvelous example of the wisdom of Solomon and how the analogy of planting is relevant in our lives. “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted” (Ecclesiastes 3:1–2).
It is exciting to realize that we have been “planted” here on the earth, called by God and given His Holy Spirit (upon repentance, belief in Christ and baptism, of course), to be the basis—the “soil,” if you will—upon which He will “plant” a future garden of immense proportions, in the coming Kingdom and even more in the Great White Throne Judgment period. It is crucial to get this vision and keep it alive and nourished and not think that we are “just dirt.” In Psalm 128, God tells us what the results are of keeping His ways: “Blessed is every one who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways… your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, your children like olive plants all around your table… thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord” (vv. 1–4).
As wives and mothers, then, we need to support our men, encourage them, cheer them, help them in every way and thereby enable our children to greatly love and respect them. This is the normal mindset of children anyway, as their parents seem like God to them early on in their lives.
It is important not to let the world intrude into a peaceful family structure, where both husband and wife are working together to raise godly children, looking to the ultimate reality, when we will have the Great Marriage to our Savior, the wife having made herself ready, prepared to help her Husband in tomorrow’s world. Then there will be no more “peppers of disobedience” for us.