Beside Quiet Waters
By: Susan Deborah Schiller
He leads me beside quiet waters; he restores my soul. (Psalm 23) And because there really are female sociopaths in the world today, I must pause to ponder how God designed human life and put us in families. Why are there different genders and what are the roles? Is there a reason for the increase in female abusers?
I must see through Heaven's eyes, and for this I pause to ponder… and to remember who God is:
He is a gentleman.
He is confident.
He is a provider and protector.
He owns everything; there is nothing He wouldn't do for me.
He perfects all things concerning me.
He anticipates my wants and needs.
Every day He tells me and shows me how much He loves me.
I don't have to perform in order to earn His love.
He keeps all of his promises.
No one can influence His opinion of me.
He is the ultimate intimate partner.
He can't 'disown' me because I am a part of Him.
He prepares a table before me. (Selah)
He covers me and doesn't expose me.
He wrote His loving words down so that I'll never forget how He feels about me!
– Poem Author Unknown
Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They’re really doing themselves a favor—since they’re already “one” in marriage. (Ephesians, The Message Bible)
Husbands, go all out in love for your wives. Don't take advantage of them. (Colossians, The Message Bible)
With a love like this, how can a wife not return her husband's lavish affection? How can she not honor her man, submit to him, and respect him? Even if she does have a setback or two, his love will heal her heart and bring wholeness.
Her gratitude will be expressed in humility and submission to his loving leadership and strength. She will delight to give him honor and pleasure. Her smiles will grace the home with beauty and she will work hard to bring the family prosperity and peace.
She becomes the Proverbs 31 woman, not living in the shadow of her husband, but being the heart of the home – creative, entrepreneurial, and life-sustaining.
It's a call to revolution. Family is the backbone of society. Let's work together to get our backbone back, to restore the proper function of our families, beginning in the intimacy of our own homes!
It begins in the cradle, as each baby experiences the tenderness of her father, who is a mirror reflection of his heavenly Father. She watches and experiences how her father treats his wife (and all women). This daughter grows up in an atmosphere of unconditional love, support, and strengthening. She knows it's okay to fail, even to fail as much as she can, in order to learn what works. She can safely take risks, in the security of this kind of love.
She marries a man like her daddy, who continues to support her with his belief, his resources, and his full attention. The children she births bear the image of their Father in heaven and continue to work in their Father's business of nurturing and caring for their land and their people.
Should we not care for the heart of the home, even as diligently as we physically care for our hearts – the muscle that pumps nutrients and oxygen to every part of the body?
A woman is designed to receive and to reflect. A man is designed to provide and protect. A man is the woman's source. If Love is the fountain that flows into her life, like blood to the heart which is pumped to the rest of the body, it's a blessed family indeed.
If jealousy, anger, or insecurity flow down into her life, like contamination, it affects the whole family. Abusers are created. Hurt people hurt others. Men, do you feel the call to action? The call to lay down your life for your wife?
I know some women are too bruised to receive. It may mean losing everything, even as Christ went to the Cross. In reality, most men aren't willing to grow up, to be like Christ. Marriage isn't a 50/50 deal, as demonstrated by Christ. Marriage is designed by God for men to be a source of unconditional love for their wives, even when it means laying down their lives.
This isn't how we currently treat women and children, but what if we did? What if husbands acted like Christ, as in the poem printed above? I'm not saying it's a perfect cure-all for the plight of female abusers. I'm not saying men aren't legitimatly abused by women and need support just like abused women.
All I do know is that Love overcomes all evil. Sometimes love means walking away. Sometimes love confronts and holds another person accountable. And sometimes love lets the injustice be heaped on their shoulders, like an instrument of shame and torture – a Cross – and Love is crucified.
Christ showed us the Way of Love. Love is always crucified. Jesus said the Greatest Love is to lay down our lives for our friends. How much more for our families?
It's a Love Revolution, and it begins at home. My home. Your home. Until the whole earth resembles our Home in Heaven!
This is what I'm pondering today. I know I've been crucified three times. And resurrected. That's what love does… but I am a woman.
And so my family is not yet healed. Because a man still chooses NOT to lay down his life. NOT to confess his own sins, except as a general public display that has no real meaning and no real motivation to love. Only to look good.
What will heal the heart of our home? It's a bypass. The abuser must be bypassed, for only toxins flow into my heart from him. I am on bypass now… Christ is my only Source. Only He can heal my family. And he is.
This man has lost his chance. All he has is the Show. The show goes on and enough people still believe him to prevent him from repenting, for real. I'm sorry he lost his chance to love us.
I ask God to manifest His Destiny in my family line, and to change our legacy. Let the Love Revolution begin in me. And in you. In us. Let us be One in Christ. Let us be his hands and feet. Let us heal the broken and tend to those who are silently suffering, victims of religious sociopaths. Let's take each other off bypass and ask God for new hearts.
It's time to not look back. It's time to no longer miss what could have been. It's time to rise up and CROSS OVER!
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With all my love,
Sue
Copyright © 2010 to 2015 Team Family Online, All rights reserved. For reprint permission or for any private or commercial use, in any form of media, please contact Susan Schiller.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I have been thinking and meditating on Jesus as our Bridegroom…our Eternal Husband….wanting more and more for all of us to open our spirits to His Spirit……to break up the fallow ground of our lives and allow God to plant His seeds of truth…to put aside our notions of love and embrace God's own heart in the matter….that we are His Bride and our God is our champion..our King and the Lover of our Soul. For it is God who spins, like golden threads, the fascination of romance and passion…God who is ravished by His Bride and is swept away by her beauty.
Christ's love was demonstrated out in the open to onlookers and dispassionate by-standers……those who did scorn and despise the spectacle Jesus made of Himself. To hang naked between heaven and earth, to be brutalized in every conceivable way gives a husband a picture of the cost of love. What many think as degrading, what we think of as a reproach; is what Christ was willing to do to prove His love. God earned our love??? How can this be? We can not fathom this. Yet, even our own selfishness and ignorance did not hold Him back from a Cross. Jesus chose it for us. He chose to lay His life down freely without one thought for Himself. This is AMAZING love.
We who mock sacrifice could only be redeemed because of it. It is not demonstrated with only trite words and phrases. It was not a half-hearted attempt but a love that went the distance…..a Bridegroom who chose death and the grave to show the whole world a living picture of love's truest meaning. Christ's death opened the floodgates of the Father's heart to every living soul. Though we fight it, we run from it, we hide and make excuses why we have no need of so great a love……there will never be any way of escaping the awe and wonder of the God who IS love.
Jesus felt no frustration or resentment in having to give Himself to meet the needs of His bride. Oh, and her needs were great!! What was once the perfect, idyllic relationship had become the bottomless pit of sin's destruction. His bride was unworthy and stained…..marred from sin beyond recognition…. once created to reflect God's own image and likeness sin had now altered God's purpose in Creation. Oh, but the Father had another plan……God's own wife could only be rescued by love. A love so costly…that Jesus would have to exchange His life for hers….love that was violent and as strong as death itself.
So here is the messy, brutal, bloody scene of LOVE. Here is a Garden, a scourging post and a Cross. On the other side a cold, dark tomb…void and empty of life as we understand it. God was pleased by the sight He beheld. His heart overtaken with His Son's obedience and His heart. God was so taken aback at the depth of worship of ONE sinless Son would offer Him. God could not hold back His Spirit and Breath from His Son's lifeless body. God MUST make good for all of eternity and offer that eternity to men. God cut off death from having the final word…God stopped evil dead in its tracks. The Father resurrected Jesus!!!!…..not because of death…but because Christ had proven LOVE. God's claim for the hearts of men was validated and sealed. Jesus established forever what the highest pinnacle of what love would look like. Christ BECAME love. The Father MUST make LOVE a living testament to His SON. The Father MUST give Christ a reward…
God gave Christ a BRIDE…
Let sons of God everywhere be enthralled as their own Christ…let love be the greatest desire and delight of our hearts, forever. There is a way a man can show his wife adoration that is scorned by lesser men. There is a love that says, I will be undignified if I must… to pursue and apprehend the heart of his true love!
Go and LOVE likewise…..let God bring your pride to nothing and humble you. Show outrageous acts of kindness and love. Say and DO those things that lesser men would balk at. Let God expose your passivity and instead light the fire again of passionate love. It took Christ a Cross…it will take you far less than this. Christ led the way and gave you that supreme example. Cry aloud until God fans into flame the embers of your heart. God will ignite, FIRST your love for Christ and from that renewed relationship God will show you the way back home to the heart of your wife, the heart of a BRIDE.
Wow, Kimberly! My whole body is goosebumps as I read your words and see Christ in the Light of this terrible crucible of Love! Your comment is worthy of a whole post – I love you dear sister!
I love how you are consumed by His love and your husband, Josh, is so totally on fire… wrecked for any less… wrecked for returning to the ways of old… just wrecked for life as “normal” and business as usual!
Your love is rescuing souls from the deepest pits! You shine us up, make us white again, through the blood of Jesus… and thru your testimony. We overcome the world through the blood of Jesus and the word of our testimony.
I thank you, Kimberly, for your SHINING, GLOWING words of love. You grace women all over the world with your words of life and love. I know a little of the price you pay… for you have been crucified, yourself.
I love you and thank you and bless you!
my pastor is always after the men in our church to take care of their wives; he himself is the best example. God honors men when they do that. I strongly believe that when when we have strong marriages, we have strong families and strong countries as well!
You have an extraordinary family and church, Olga!
Olga, It is easy to 'say' be strong, and take care…
the real test is until…
Because, until a man faces these, and discovers that he can neither perform, nor provide.
Because, until a man reaches the end of himself.
Because, until a man receives love from His bridegroom.
Because, until a man know Jehovah Jireh, as Abraham did.
Because, until a man realizes his strength, his only strength is from the Lord.
Because, he is unable (not unwilling) to love his wife as Christ loved the church.*
That which a good husband wants to do, and he is willing to do, he cannot.
(Romans 7:18-19)
But, thanks be to God there is a way!
And, a husband can go that way, when he knows, that he knows, that he knows (through experiential, manifest, Father God love): "I can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens me." Phil. 4:13.
*……. and gave Himself up for her.
AMEN! Linda, you have God's heart and your words are anointed! You have a MESSAGE TO PREACH, sister!!!
One of the things that strikes me about Jesus statement of, "no greater love…lay down his life…" is that doesn't just mean be willing to die, but rather, lay down your own life. Put our lives aside for others…for our wives.
Love the message of your post! There are so many broken families, especially those without a father or husband in them. Yet a strong family is so important!
Yes! 'Family is the backbone of society.' When we look at our world today and are tempted to point fingers to the government, society or even the elite wealthy, we must acknowledge the power parents hold by the way we raise our children. 'WE' are the government and society and through the power of choice given to each of us by the Almighty we can make changes! Excellent article!
It’s amazing what happens when we “get it” – that we really do have so much more power and authority than we realize, as individual and families. I do have so much hope for the future, and every time I read one of your articles at http://MissingSecrettoparenting.com I am inspired to keep believing…. I really believe, as you do, that family is the key to making everything else hold together in society. Thanks so much, Denny 🙂
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