Latest / High Level Wife Podcast with Chelsey Holm / Submission Begins with God, Not Your Husband

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Submission Begins with God, Not Your Husband · High Level Wife Podcast with Chelsey Holm

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the High Level Wife Podcast.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I am Chelsea Holm, your hostess, and here we do marriage God's way.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think submission is one of the most misunderstood words in Christianity, right?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: The world hears weakness, oppression, silence, inferiority, like that doormat mentality, right?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the saddest part of this is many Christians hear the same thing.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I go to battle day after day after day, preaching surrender and submission.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it is it is received or rejected with a lot of anger and bitterness.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but but what if we've misunderstood it because we've started with marriage instead of God?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Submission doesn't begin with your husband, submission begins with the Lord.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So today we're talking about submission begins long before your husband.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's about trusting God before following a man.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Every Christian is called to submit before wives, before husbands, before marriage.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Every believer is called to submit.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: James 4, 7 says, submit yourselves, therefore, to God.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 13, submit to governing authorities.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 13, submit to spiritual leaders.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Children submit, church members submit, even Jesus submitted.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Submission isn't uniquely female.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Submission is fundamentally Christian.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you what, if you want to know what is biblical doctrine, look at what the world rejects the most and the loudest and the hardest.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus modeled submission for us in Philippians 2.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: It tells us that though he was equal with God, he humbled himself, right?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't consider himself equal.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: He humbled himself, he became obedient even to death on a cross.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Submission never diminished Jesus.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: It displayed his glory.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And oh man, a submissive wife within marriage displays the glory of Jesus in a way that the world cannot understand.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And neither can your husband.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it's why it creates the space for God to do in him what you cannot do.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if submission wasn't beneath Christ, why do we assume that it's beneath us?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Submission is trust.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the definition I want you to remember that submission is trusting God's order, even when your flesh wants control.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's saying, God, I believe your design is better than mine.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Your ways are higher than mine.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to lean on my own understanding.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to acknowledge you, God.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to trust in you in all my ways.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Submission feels offensive.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because our flesh hates surrender.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Ever since Genesis 3, humanity has wanted autonomy.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know better.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I define good and evil.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'll lead.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'll decide.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Ain't no man gonna tell me what to do.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Submission confronts our greatest idol, which is self.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But then in marriage, we finally go to Ephesians 5.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And notice something though.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Paul doesn't begin with wives.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't begin with husbands.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: He begins with Christ.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Everything in marriage flows from Christ.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's wives, and then it's husbands.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the order matters.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Marriage is a picture, not merely a relationship.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Submission isn't not silence or not abuse or not passivity, not lacking wisdom, not having no voice, not becoming less, not enabling sin, not pretending everything is okay.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Submission is trust, honor, and order.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's strength under God's authority.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: It is the very definition of meekness.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom from carrying what God never assigned.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's choosing God's design over your feelings.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I might add, over your navigational belief systems.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Being able to have the courage to acknowledge them, address them, disrupt them, and rewrite them.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: But wives resist it.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Fear, past wounds, distrust, control, pride, culture, bad examples, abuse of scripture.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have I have experienced firsthand through other wives how scripture has been weaponized against them.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen it in the church.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I understand the realities of these things.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: But we often reject God's design because sinful people distorted it.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard it said that, you know, if you have a bad experience at a gym, you just don't go back to that gym, but you don't like write off all gyms forever, like you just find a different one, right?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but in church, we we have a bad experience in church and we we write off Jesus Himself as if we don't understand that sinful people are running that church and distorting the truth, right?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: But abuse of truth doesn't make truth abusive.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Can we say that again?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Abuse of truth doesn't make truth abusive.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of immediately changing behavior, ask yourself, do I trust God's character?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is your practical heart check.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, do I believe his commands are for my flourishing?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Where am I resisting God's order?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Am I trying to protect myself instead of trusting him?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is my resistance rooted in scripture or in fear?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So the next couple X episodes, I want to set him up here because we're gonna be getting incredibly practical.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get really practical on what does biblical submission actually look like on a Tuesday afternoon when your husband forgets, or when you disagree, or when you're frustrated, or when he's not leading perfectly like you think he should.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because submission isn't theoretical, it's lived daily.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: You'll never joyfully submit to God's design until you trust God's heart.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because submission has never been about losing your voice, it's about surrendering your life to the one who gave it to you.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was just reading in Psalms this morning, where David is like, You created me.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't create myself, right?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like you made us, we did not make ourselves.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But how often do we live our lives as if we created ourselves?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm seeing story after story.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I saw a story of a man who was like, I didn't consent to be born, and so he doesn't want to be a part of society.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen people undergo euthanasia to take their life early because they think that it they own it and they control.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: They don't.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: God is the one who formed us, God is the one who knows all of our days, even before the foundation of the world.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So let me just go back and I want to land with some hard truths here.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Submission is not first about following your husband, it's about trusting your God.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Every act of biblical submission is first an act of worship.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: The issue has never been whether God's commands are difficult.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: The issue is whether we believe the designer, capital D designer, knows how his design flourishes.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So next we're going to be diving into really what submission looks like, um, specifically with Ephesians 5, and how before husbands and wives are addressed, all of us as believers are addressed to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then he moves into these other relationships.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to understand that when a wife walks in God's design, he creates an environment where trust, respect, and oneness can grow.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's why wives are addressed first after we're all addressed as believers in Christ.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: But then Paul immediately raises the standard for husbands even higher.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: He talks about sacrificial love that looks like Christ laying down his life for the church.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's from this heart of obedience before outcome.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: With that, with that, I don't know.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Are you still with me here on this?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know submission.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: People don't like to talk about it, right?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: But submission is not the starting point of marriage.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Christ lordship is.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Submission is simply one expression of a life already surrendered to him.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, remember, biblical submission isn't theoretical, it's lived.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, I will see you on the next episode.