Steadfast – Recipe for a Healthy Home

Steadfast: Living for Christ in a Wayward World

Part 8 – Recipe for a Healthy Home

Colossians 3:18-21

18 Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.

20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.

Colossians 3:18-21

Four Ingredients for a Healthy Home

1. Wife to her husband.

18 Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Colossians 3:18

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7.

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Ephesians 5:21.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Ephesians 5:22-24

• A wife is to submit to man (her husband), not to man.
• A wife is to willingly submit to her husband in personal to Christ.
• A wife is to submit to her husband as the does to Christ.

Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, 1 Peter 3:1

36 “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Mark 14:36. Even Jesus modeled submission.

2. Husband his wife.

19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Colossians 3:19

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Ephesians 5:25

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. Ephesians 5:25-27

28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— Ephesians 5:28-29

Marriage is not 50-50… It is !

What can we do to help assure we are submitting and loving each other in the way the Bible teaches?

• Focus on your spouse’s rather than their .

• rather than .

• for your spouse instead of about them.

• Put your spouse of yourself!

3. Children their parents.

20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Colossians 3:20

12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. Exodus 20:12.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— 3 “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” Ephesians 6:1-3

18 Discipline your children, for in that there is hope;

    do not be a willing party to their death. Proverbs 19:18

Children don’t need parents to be their … they need parents to parent them… parents provide clear and .

4. Parents their children.

21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged. Colossians 3:21

Practically speaking, we never want to be so overbearing to our children that they think: “I’ll never get it right; or, All he does is criticize me; or, He’ll never love me.”