0:00:00 – Speaker 1
nextTalk, sponsored by nextTalk.org, contains content of a mature nature. Parental guidance is advised. Welcome to nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim Every Saturday at 10 am on AM630, the word. Mandy is the author of Talk and Kim is the director of nextTalk, a non-profit organization helping parents’ cyber parent through open communication. Follow us on Facebook, instagram and Twitter, find our free video series and subscribe to our weekly podcast at nextTalk.org. Are you ready for the nextTalk?
0:00:38 – Speaker 2
Today we’re kicking off week two of our brand new marriage series. Today, our topic is submission and flaws. This is Mandy, and Kim is not with us today. I have my husband in the studio, matt.
0:00:52 – Speaker 3
Yes, I’m back again.
0:00:54 – Speaker 2
He’s back again. He has kind of been teasing me a little because the marriage shows were our top rated shows and so we’re having the husband’s back. Last week, kim and Charles kicked off our marriage series, our brand new series, with talking about sex, and I hope you enjoyed it. Today, matt and I are going to talk about submission and flaws.
0:01:15 – Speaker 3
Looking forward to it.
0:01:17 – Speaker 2
You know I want to talk about submission because I wrote about this in my book in my marriage chapter. Submission is something that I struggled with a lot when we first started dating. Do you remember that, honey?
0:01:30 – Speaker 3
I do remember very much. Yes, I remember that.
0:01:34 – Speaker 2
Um, I grew up in a divorced home. My mom was very strong, very independent woman who raised me, and I think that I grew up very strong and independent myself.
0:01:47 – Speaker 3
Not a bad thing.
0:01:48 – Speaker 2
Not a bad thing, um, but I, you know, never wanted a man, never really wanted to get married, never needed a man. That was kind of my goal in life, right when you met me.
0:01:59 – Speaker 3
Um, you described it that way. I would not.
0:02:01 – Speaker 2
Okay, how would you describe it?
0:02:03 – Speaker 3
I’m not going to touch that.
0:02:04 – Speaker 2
No because you’re afraid what?
0:02:06 – Speaker 3
No, no, we’re within, you’re within punching distance, oh my gosh, he’s awful.
0:02:13 – Speaker 2
Um, you know, Matt and I met in a grocery store one day and he came through my checkout line. We were both in college and he bought a Snickers and some crazy magazine people magazine or something and the rest is history.
0:02:27 – Speaker 3
And what was it? It was a hot rod magazine. I was talking, I could read people.
0:02:33 – Speaker 2
I knew it was some sort of crazy magazine, um so a magazine and candy bar.
0:02:38 – Speaker 3
And then Matt, really she said it was a checkout line in the grocery store and that’s true, because I was checking her out for about 45 minutes before I went through the line.
0:02:50 – Speaker 2
Matt was different. When I met him and we started dating Um, he was sweet and nice. Um, I think I just had been dating the wrong guys because they weren’t like Matt. Um, I’ll never forget the first time he tried to open the car door for me and I told him no, I had a lot of sass and I said I’m not a delicate flower that needs to be taken care of. Like, I’m a strong, independent woman. I don’t need you to open my door. Do you remember that on that day?
0:03:21 – Speaker 3
Yeah, I remember that, um, I don’t know at the time if it really had an impact on me. I mean, I had enough of an impact that I remembered it, but, um, I didn’t. I kind of I felt like that really wasn’t you.
0:03:36 – Speaker 2
Really, can you never really told me that, oh, I hadn’t. No, I told you that.
0:03:41 – Speaker 3
No, I had enough with many of the other comments and behaviors that you had, you know, demonstrated at the time. It was out of line, it was out of norm, it was an anomaly type behavior. So I thought this is this is interesting and, uh, kind of left it at that.
0:04:00 – Speaker 2
Well, I’m thankful you didn’t give up on me and my sass and my attitude. You know, if you don’t know my story, I kind of walked away from the church when I was a young girl because I believe the world’s lie that women were supposed to be weaker, the weaker partner in a marriage, and that didn’t really line up with my beliefs of being a strong, independent woman and how I’d been raised by this great single mom. Um, and if you’re not familiar with the Bible verse that I’m talking about, that the world has kind of manipulated us into thinking it’s something that it’s not. It’s Ephesians 5, 22 and 24.
Let me read that for you Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is head of the church, his body, of which he is the savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands. In everything I will tell you. As a young child, the world, young teenager, I guess the world told me that is the whole story. Wives submit, and in my mind I was like God is sexist. I’m done, I kind of believe that lie.
0:05:13 – Speaker 3
Yeah, I could see that. I mean reading scripture out of context, reading anything out of context, hearing anything out of context, watching any video just to snip it of it. You could certainly find yourself being led one way or the other without reading it to the end.
0:05:36 – Speaker 2
Right. I think that is where, when I met Matt and I got to know him and there were lots of things in my past that I was not proud of that I had to tell him about and be completely honest about. And I’ll never forget that night when I told you really the bad stuff and you said, you know God still loves you. Like it’s okay, we all mess up. I think that was a turning point for me because I saw something in you that was different than everyone else See, any, even Christians that I had met. A lot of other Christians. When they had found out about my mistakes, they would judge me or say you know, you need to turn from that immediately, which absolutely I needed to turn from all that. But I had already done that, I had already figured out that wasn’t the way to go, and so for you to like respond with grace really changed me.
And that is when I started thinking, okay, I need to do a little bit more digging into this Bible, this whole Bible thing. And that’s when I started reading to the end. And, like Matt said, you know you have to keep reading until the end. And so the world was telling me Ephesians 5, 22 to 24 wives submit to your husbands. And then that was it, and I was drawing my own conclusions and writing God off. Here’s the thing Ephesians 5, 25 to 29 is the rest of the story and I want to read that to you. You want to read that, matt.
0:07:02 – Speaker 3
Sure, husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church, he gave up his life for her. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies, for a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body, but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church.
0:07:23 – Speaker 2
Yikes, you know how did I miss that?
0:07:26 – Speaker 3
Can I just say actually love you more than I do my own body, because I’ve gained about 40 pounds since we moved to San Antonio 12 years ago.
0:07:37 – Speaker 2
Matt does a really great job of putting my knees before his knees. He’s great at that, and I think that’s what this verse is really saying here, and I actually missed it because God is actually calling husbands to a even higher standard than wives are called to submit to their husbands. I mean, you are called to die for me, you are called to love me as your own.
0:07:59 – Speaker 3
Yeah, look, I don’t know who. All is listening. Women are, men are the mix. But if you’re a lady out there and your husband is telling you that you need to submit to him and do what he says, I think you should just kindly ask him to read the rest of the story.
0:08:17 – Speaker 2
Yeah, I well, and I think that Satan manipulates us into believing that control. I mean, that’s what I thought. He’s a husband supposed to control her wife or tell her what to do, or give her orders. You know, bark out orders. That was what the world sold me on biblical marriage and that’s so far from the truth.
And you know, when I first met Matt and we walked through this process and I saw his heart and I knew it was genuine, that’s when I dug in the word for myself and I found it and I was like, oh my gosh, I’ve been wrong all these years, like God is not the problem, I am.
And then submission became, you know, when I really realized submission wasn’t about control or abuse. It made me look at submission totally different, like it’s beautiful. When I was able to actually see, oh my gosh, god’s word has the answer and I was able to submit to God like I’m going to trust you, god, because I see what you’re saying here, this could work for a marriage. And then I was able to trust God more. And then it made me realize I can trust Matt more because Matt submitted to God and he has this godly heart. I think when submission is working the way it’s supposed to, the husband is submitted fully to God, you know, and seeking God’s will. And then that is when the husband is not going to be controlling or barking out orders, right, I mean.
0:09:44 – Speaker 3
Yeah, you know, what I think is interesting is that it’s just simply not easy to submit to others, no matter who you are a woman or man, or or whatever.
0:09:53 – Speaker 2
With your boss, with your anything.
0:09:55 – Speaker 3
Yeah, honestly, it’s, even if you think about it, very difficult to submit to God and give God the full control. I know, personally I like to try to take things back from God, even though I say that I submit to him. I like to try to take back control of my job, of traffic, of whatever the case, and so just submission in and of itself is is a difficult thing.
0:10:22 – Speaker 2
It is, you know, but when submission works the way it’s supposed to, when we’re humble enough to actually submit, it is beautiful and I love how the Bible tells us over and over again that we are submit to one another, that we are both submit to God, man and woman. Here’s some more verses for you. James 4-7 says submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
0:10:46 – Speaker 3
Yeah. And then the Ephesians 5-21 says submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
0:10:53 – Speaker 2
Yeah, and you know back to that 5-22 that we read earlier wives submit to your husbands. But then we followed it up.
0:11:02 – Speaker 3
Can I just say real quick, as a husband and you’re reading this from, obviously, the Bible, the inherent word of God wives submit to your husbands. That’s a little terrifying as a husband, just to be honest with you, because that is an enormous responsibility to be, if you want to call it, the head of the household. That’s a very honorable designation, but with it comes great responsibility. And so if your husbands are men, if you’re listening, if your wife is submitting to you, I hope you’re submitting to God, because if you’re submitting to you and you’re trying to do this on your own man, it’s tough.
0:11:49 – Speaker 2
You’re going to lead them astray. You’re going to lead your family astray.
0:11:53 – Speaker 3
It’s too much responsibility for any man’s shoulder.
0:11:56 – Speaker 2
Well, and no man is perfect, no man is perfect and there are going to be times there have been times in our marriage when your flesh comes out, you know, and you walk away. And that’s where the double accountability comes in the equal accountability that we have and the communication that we’ve established in our home where I can go to you and be like okay, you know, I feel like you’re a little upset about this issue.
0:12:21 – Speaker 3
Look, we’re on the same page here. Neither Mandy nor I are greater than each other, but we do know that God is greater than both of us.
0:12:31 – Speaker 2
Yeah, and I think that’s what that idea. We have to remember that we’re both flawed.
0:12:39 – Speaker 3
I don’t point out your flaws nearly as much as you point out my flaws.
0:12:42 – Speaker 2
Okay, do you want to fight right here? No, I’m going to start right now. You know it’s back.
0:12:47 – Speaker 3
I’m thinking about what we’re doing for lunch here this morning. Oh my gosh, I’m going to my happy place.
0:12:52 – Speaker 2
If you’re just now tuning in, this is nextTalk Radio at 10 am on AM 630,. The word nextTalk Radio is listener supported. Everything we do at our nonprofit to keep kids safe online is accomplished through donations To support our organization and help us to strengthen families. Please go to nextTalk.org and click on Give. This is Mandy, if you’re just now tuning in. Today I’m in the studio with my husband, matt.
0:13:21 – Speaker 3
Hello.
0:13:22 – Speaker 2
Kim is not here with us today. We are on week two of our marriage series. If you missed week one with Kim and Charles, you need to go back and listen to it.
0:13:31 – Speaker 3
Yeah, I just want to take a real quick moment to say this Kim and Charles are amazing people. They really are amazing.
0:13:38 – Speaker 2
They’re amazing and they did a sex show y’all and you got to listen to it. It’s a great show. So on our podcast you can find it under Marriage Talk and it’ll be number one because it’s the one week, it’s the first week of our new series. Matt and I are here and we are talking about submission, because submission was something that I hated and I so many times I have said God, why did you have to use that word? I hate that word, submission because I just feel like it means weak, and it so doesn’t mean weak. It actually means strong, because you’re able to submit to God, you’re able to listen to him. It means wise, wise people realize that they’re not perfect and they need help and they’re willing to submit. Recently, matt and I were doing a speaking event together.
0:14:31 – Speaker 3
Which I do not like to do.
0:14:32 – Speaker 2
He does not like to do, but he is really great at it and I appreciate that he. It’s so funny because when I first asked him to do the first radio show a couple months ago, he told me no several times. Don’t be the husband of no, by the way.
0:14:50 – Speaker 3
That’s an inside joke.
0:14:52 – Speaker 2
Because there is a wife of no, so we have.
0:14:56 – Speaker 3
He’s the one W-O-N, the wife of no.
0:14:58 – Speaker 2
And he’s the Han, the husband of no H-O-N. We kind of joke with each other about that because we say no to each other a lot and that’s our little inside joke. So now you know that.
0:15:10 – Speaker 3
I’m just going to comment about this One of my favorite pastors ever, robert Emmett from Community Bible Church. Oh my gosh, he said one time, and this stuck with me. So, robert, if you’re listening, I really appreciate this comment you said you know, wives, it’s a lot quicker for you to just have sex with your husbands than to fight about not having sex. It’s just quicker, just bada, boom, bada, bing. It’s like five minutes. So, robert, I thank you.
0:15:40 – Speaker 2
The wisdom of Robert. Okay, we’re reverting back to Kim and Charles show last week about sex. Yeah, but the wife of no is kind of an inside joke and we do joke about that and there’s never a husband of no when it comes to that.
But when it comes to doing a radio show, when I first asked you to do the radio show, you said no, yeah, several times in several weeks. And y’all, I have to learn, as the wife, not to nag him. And I knew when he said no, I knew I had to back away. And I did. I backed away and I prayed about it and I was like Lord, if you want Matt to do a radio show with me and be a guest on our show, I need you to just speak that into his heart. And if it’s not meant to be, then we won’t do it. And I had to let go of that and you know we’re talking about submission. I had to submit that to God Because nagging if I would have chosen the other route and just nag, nag, nag it would have created a fight in our marriage.
0:16:31 – Speaker 3
I think we talked about that on that first radio show.
0:16:34 – Speaker 2
We did about nagging.
0:16:36 – Speaker 3
Just man, it’s horrible.
0:16:38 – Speaker 2
Yeah, the dripping faucet versus in proverbs Look those up, ladies it’s a. You know, a nagging life is a is annoying, as a as a dripping faucet. I actually, when we built our house, I wrote that right behind my bathroom sink and I think about that verse often, because a lot of times at night when I’m brushing my teeth and I’m trying to convince Matt to do something, or like the radio show or a speaking event or something, I will literally think about the words on that stud right behind my sink, like I cannot nag him into this.
0:17:08 – Speaker 3
Did you say the stud behind the sink? Oh, the stud in the wall.
0:17:12 – Speaker 2
Sorry, you knew what I was talking about. But that was a good one. Good pun there, good job hon. That wasn’t in our notes, but you know, we can’t really nag them into what we want them to do. And what was so cool about that? When I first asked him to speak and I backed away from it and just started praying and I thought I can’t convince him to do anything. He came to me one night, several weeks later, and he said I will do the radio show. And I said okay. And he said I’m not doing it for you. And I looked at him and I said okay and he said I’m doing it for nextTalk. Do you remember that?
0:17:49 – Speaker 3
I really don’t, I don’t remember that you were being sassy.
0:17:53 – Speaker 2
Oh, that’s unlikely, anyway. So that’s what I’m talking about. Like I saw my husband in those kind of situations. He’s stepping out of his comfort zone and he’s submitting to God and I see that, like I see him going to these events, I see him coming on the radio show things that he doesn’t want to do, he’s not comfortable with, it’s not his thing. I mean, he’s a business guy. He wants to just go do business stuff and go get hot rods. Right, that’s what you want to do, right, am I wrong? Let’s move on. But when I see him submitting to God in that way, it’s way easier for me to listen to him, to seek his advice, to submit to him as the head of the household, because I see him submitting to God. And that’s what I want to encourage you husbands to do. Let your wives see you struggle with things and think I don’t want to do this, but I’m submitting to God. I’m going to do it.
Back to our point. We were at a speaking event because you got me sidetracked. You said I don’t want to, I don’t like to do speaking events. We were at a speaking event recently and Matt was doing a great job and he said something that was not on our outline and it was so wonderful when he said it. He said we come from a place where we are both flawed and we parent from that place and we’re spouses from that place and we both recognize that we need to work on ourselves, and I thought that was so wonderful because that really plays into this whole submission thing.
0:19:21 – Speaker 3
Yeah, sure does.
0:19:22 – Speaker 2
Because if you thought you were perfect, you would be this controller. You would bark out orders, right, you wouldn’t be humbling.
0:19:30 – Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think, if I felt as if I was better once again, it goes back to that relative comparison If I felt like I was better than you on some scale, for which God is judging me, and I’m more or less in this case if I felt I was less broken, then I would be able to tell you exactly what we need to do. Yeah, and once again, there’s the I part. I reject myself instead of seeking God’s word and God’s direction for our life.
0:20:05 – Speaker 2
Yeah, and I think that’s so great. You know Romans 3.23, we all know that verse, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We all need, we all are flawed, and I loved that when you said it, because we never really put it into words. But that’s how Matt leads our family. He comes from a place when he doesn’t know what to do. He’ll say I don’t know what to do.
0:20:30 – Speaker 3
And I’m not going to lie, it’s not easy, it’s not really not easy, but I really feel like it’s best to kind of bear my soul there and to not create some fictional perception of me having all the knowledge. I want all the knowledge, but I mean, I don’t have it and I’m not God. But I do know how to look for God and how to ask for God’s direction, and that’s what I want to teach our children. And the great thing is that Mandy is equal in my mind to myself and that we both have this focus on seeking God’s will for our lives. We don’t know, I mean, as much as you might think you know what’s going to happen tomorrow. You really don’t, yeah.
0:21:20 – Speaker 2
And let’s talk about, like when we have a big decision to make and you’re on one side, you have a totally different idea than I do. We’re kind of on different pages. You know, I know every family kind of cheeses to handle this differently for us, you know, we don’t make a big decision unless we’re both on the same page. I mean, would you say that?
0:21:38 – Speaker 3
I mean Well, it took us two years to decide whether or not we were going to buy a pool. Yeah, for our house which was a little crazy.
0:21:45 – Speaker 2
Two years and 800 spreadsheets later. Right, yeah, but I think the idea is that we come together and we really pray about it and allow God to move us so that we’re on the same page.
0:22:02 – Speaker 3
Yeah, and this is not just a parenting thing, I mean, I think it has a huge impact on our children when they see that we’re real. And a great example of that is recently our daughter, who’s in eighth grade, was struggling with a particular problem concept in algebra. And so, you know, I figured I could help her, and so we sat down and reviewed it and, honestly, without I remember when they used to bring home books, and so there are no books anymore. So I was like, where’s your book? And she said, what do you mean? So anyway, I was already in a deficit situation there, but so I talked to her and she, I could tell she was just very upset because she wasn’t getting the concept, even though she’s kid is brilliant and so was my son, they’re just unbelievably smart.
But I shared with her that I, unfortunately, during my college, getting my undergraduate degree, I had had some problems with algebra, two different semesters and finally, after the third semester, or what I call the third attempt, I finally was able, it was able to make sense, and so that went a long way with her and I didn’t stand there and act like I had it all figured out. I really was like, ok, I’m your dad and I love you, but there’s some things that in the past my past I had some hard times with, and I just want you to understand that, no matter what you do, I’m going to love you. Now let’s sit down and try to figure this out.
0:23:32 – Speaker 2
What I loved about it was she was pretty stressed out. I mean there was she’s in eighth grade. I mean you can imagine she’s a teen girl. She is a perfectionist, a lot like me. She wants to get straight A’s and she does get straight A’s and she was terrified that she was. This assignment was going to cause her to have a B, because this is a high school class that she’s taking on her permanent high school transcript. And that’s immediately where she went and y’all Matt scooped her up like a baby. It was the sweetest thing and he looked at her in the eye and he said if you get a B in this class, it’s OK, like it’s a B. That is amazing that you could get a B in a high school class in eighth grade. And then he went on to tell her about, you know, his college and she was cracking up. And what was so funny is the next day she got home from school, she jumped in the car and she’s like I told my teacher that my dad failed algebra and college.
0:24:28 – Speaker 3
Yeah that’s great. So I fully expect that whenever all her friends come over, they’re going to look at me as the algebra moron. But you know whatever.
0:24:37 – Speaker 2
But there it is. You were humble enough to allow your kid to see your flaws.
0:24:44 – Speaker 3
It’s not about me, it’s not about you, it’s not about me, it’s not about Mandy, it’s not about it, it’s just not.
0:24:53 – Speaker 2
And when we humble ourselves and we submit to that that we are flawed, that’s when we can do amazing things. For our wrap up segment today, let’s remember one God’s definition of submission in a marriage is beautiful. The husband has the bigger responsibility love and care for his wife as he does himself Lay down his life for her. Two God’s definition of submission works when the husband is fully submitted to God in his word. Three husband and wife are both flawed. Neither are perfect. Both submit equally to God.
0:25:32 – Speaker 1
Thanks for joining us on nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim every Saturday at 10 am on AM 630, the Word. You are not alone trying to figure out how to parent in this digital world. We are here with practical solutions to help you. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Find our free video series and podcast at nextTalk.org. Are you ready for the nextTalk?
Transcribed by https://podium.page