Welcome back to Aspastor John. This summer Pastor John is out of the studio preaching in Belfast in Scotland before returning to the States for a 40-day writing leave to finish up a book on Providence on the sovereignty of God a book he started last summer and hopes to finish this summer I cannot wait to see it and all of it the travel the book writing in this very podcast is all made possible by you we are supported by the prayers and the funding of God's people so thank you for generously

investing in this important and eternal work so with Pastor John busy we're diving into our archive of 1500 episodes and this summer we're pulling out some of your favorites about once every 50 episodes we release one that touches a nerve and touches the 300,000 play mark these are the elite episodes in our six and a half year history we only have about 30 of them and here's one of them

Kelly writes in to ask about spiritual leadership in the home she writes this hello pastor John my husband and I are still in the beginning stages of our marriage both of us were raised in a Christian home unfortunately both of us had fathers who failed to lead the family spiritually our mothers did that job

now I desire my husband to lead our home spiritually but we both don't know what that looks like does he lead in prayer with me daily does he read the word with me daily

what did this look like for you Pastor John well my first thought is I wonder why Kelly wrote to us instead of her husband I hope it's because they agreed they both wanted to ask and they agreed it was just simpler for her to write in that's fine

I hope it's not because he's dragging his feet and she's having to pull him along

so my first suggestion is that she go get her husband right now turn this off go get him and listen to this together rather than

her becoming the mediator here and and turning it into something he may not like

um let's put one past scripture at least in front of us so that the assumption isn't taken for granted

Ephesians 5 21 submit to one another husbands and wives out of reverence for Christ

wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church

his body and is himself its savior now as the church submits to Christ so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands husbands

love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

so the picture we have is that in loving each other and serving each other and submitting to each other's needs and longings in a kind of

loving and humble

mutuality the wife takes her cues from the church as the church is called to follow Christ as its leader

and the husband takes his cues from Christ as the head of the church who gave himself up for her

one of the reasons this whole issue of headship and submission in marriage matters

is that God intended for marriage to represent the covenant love between Christ and his bride the church

that's what we are trying to flesh out when we're working on this matter of headship and submission

there are differences and there are similarities between the relationship between a wife and the

husband on the one hand and the relationship between Christ and the church on the other

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