When a Wife Should NOT Submit

A short trip around the Christian blogosphere will reward one with various opinions on when a wife should and shouldn't be willing to submit to her husband. Is she supposed to be a mindless doormat with no opinion? Sometimes the counsel is good, and sometimes not so much. I base my assessment of good or bad counsel on how much Christ is kept at the center. I often see women banding together with other women to take a stand against all this submission talk. It's more rare to see this banding together to be more than bellyaching. Rarely is any of the talk related to Christ's glory. It too often seems to be about maintaining personal comfort by hook or crook.

That's why this account never gets old to me. I just got my new Voice of the Martyrs magazine today. I devour every one I get. And I'm continually reminded of an amazing wife, a leader in every sense of the word. Pray to God for more wives like her!

I encourage you to read the entire story of the amazing Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand here. I will zoom in on the section that I find very inspiring for women and men:

"In 1945 Romanian Communists seized power and a million 'invited' Russian troops poured into the country. Pastor Wurmbrand ministered to his oppressed countrymen and engaged in bold evangelism to the Russian soldiers. In the same year, Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand attended the Congress of Cults organised by the Romanian Communist government. Many religious leaders came forward to praise Communism and to swear loyalty to the new regime. Sabina said, "Richard, stand up and wash away this shame from the face of Christ." Richard warned, "If I do so, you lose your husband." She replied, "I don't wish to have a coward as a husband." Thus Richard declared to the 4,000 delegates, whose speeches were broadcast to the whole nation, that their duty is to glorify God and Christ alone. Between 1945 and 1947, Richard distributed one million Gospels to Russian troops, the books often disguised as Communist propaganda. Richard also smuggled Gospels into Russia."

That's no doormat! There is an example of womanly strength that I rarely read about on the blogs. What does a Christ-centered wife do when her heavenly Husband is slandered? She calls on her earthly husband to go and die! What does a Christ-centered wife do when her earthly husband questions her sincerity? She doesn't give an inch. Do it or you're a coward, and I'd be embarrassed to be your wife. Wow! That is heavenly-mindedness to the max.

Feminism has inundated our culture with sissified men who only know how to be selfish. It has achieved the opposite of what it set out to do. Feminism demanded that men treat women the same way they'd treat other men, and men obliged. The more responsibility women wanted to heap on themselves, the more men let them. Now it's difficult to get a man to even work for a living, much less die for a conviction.

We need thousands of Sabina Wurmbrands to finally stand up to their sissy husbands and say, "Husband, stand up and wash away this shame from the face of Christ." She can't care that she might lose her husband. She can't care what such a call might cost her. She can't care that her husband might take her seriously and the comfort of their household be destroyed. She can't take this stand so she can get the upper hand in her marriage. She must take this stand because her heavenly Husband is being dishonored every minute of every day somewhere. She must stir her husband up to battle, and get him off the Playstation and away from full days of football and footlongs. Every time an issue of Voice of the Martyrs hits the streets, and every time the persecuted church around the world gets a voice, you can think back to one second of one day in a giant rally against Christ, when a young woman shoved her husband from his seat and forced mere flesh to be a hero. Sabina Wurmbrands of the world - unite. Women should not submit to their husbands' desires to waste their lives.