TEW: Ch. 4 & 5

Because I did not join in the discussion last week for the reading group looking at The Excellent Wife, I’ll briefly mention my impressions following both chapters 4 and 5 today. I’m still recovering from whatever this bug is that has left me so tired this week, so I do intend to be brief (obviously a relative term looking at the length of this post), but I don’t want to neglect it altogether, because this is a very practical, very helpful book. Please join the discussion at Leslie's here.

The main thing I took away from chapter 4 and the discussion about a wife’s understanding of relationships is that our fallen human nature tends to be very self-centered. This is something I am growing increasingly aware of and wanting to deal with in my own life. Peace very wisely counsels us that it is very important to be in God’s Word daily. I want to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s conviction as I read His Word, and I want to be more able to recognize when I am following the tendency to live for myself when I really need and want to be living for God’s glory. I do not want to only be a hearer/reader of the Word, but I want what I read to impact how I live. It isn’t good to be content with how much I think I know if I’m not practicing it in how I walk. I want to be thinking more and more about what it means to be living for God’s glory and to obey Him as I walk day to day as a wife and a mom.

Moving on into chapter 5, I was very encouraged by the discussion of ‘mutual sanctification,’ and the idea that husbands and wives are to help and encourage each other grow to be more like Christ. I appreciate the practical advice Peace gives on how to take care of the log in our own eye first, especially.

I am finding as I grow older (marching ever so quickly with only a month left to say I am 36), that the tendency to Pharisee-like self-righteousness can sneak up like an insidious thought in my heart. As I examine my motives and thinking patterns, I find that I really am not liking what I’m finding. I especially look back at my young twenties and realize how naïve and wrongfully prideful I really was spiritually speaking while thinking I was wise. I really, truly wanted to be a young woman with a heart for God. But I can see, looking back, that I was really quite worldly while thinking I was in better shape than I really was. By God’s grace, I can see how He preserved me and has caused me to grow so much in my understanding and in recognizing the tendency to clean up the outer vessel while missing inner filth that needs to be addressed. And, praise His merciful grace, I know that when I look back on this season of my life I will one day see how He has grown me even more. Therefore, I want to guard against that insidious thought that I have somehow ‘got it all together’ or to have a complacent attitude toward sanctification. I still have a lot of growing to be done and a lot of things that need pruning away, so I don’t want to become spiritually lazy.

I am not sure if I’m making much sense. I guess what I am trying to say is that I do not want to gloss over the logs that still exist in my own eye. I do not want to have an inflated opinion of my goodness. I am ever and increasingly aware of just how ugly my sin is and how the only righteousness I am capable of is from submission to Christ in me, not of my own ability at all. And I am ever and increasingly aware of just how lavish and amazing and full the love of the Savior is toward me, that He would graciously reveal those things in my life that He is pruning to make me more like Him. And I am also ever and increasingly grateful that He really, truly loves me – that I am accepted in Christ, completely and wholly His. May I be found faithful. May I be a willing servant as I fulfill the calling to be the wife He has called me to be. May I be a blessing to the man He allowed me to marry. And by blessing my husband, may I be an encourager to him to grow to be all Christ means for him to be as the leader of our home. And as we walk with Christ, may we be blessings to our children.

I long to have my chief and greatest desire to be to see God glorified. I want so much to learn how to be less self-focused and more able to overflow with love for my husband and children because I am so overwhelmed with the grace and mercy and love of Christ. I love how Mrs. Peace exhorts us to make our marriage a matter of fervent, faithful prayer, to commit to a biblical course of action, to take personal responsibility for our own failures (not to be defensive but to recognize and repent when there is a sinful way exposed in our thinking and behavior), and to submit to the difficult process of mutual sanctification. She is right that we can’t just muddle along with no plan and expect to be the excellent wife. I need to purpose to do it and plan to do it, I need to take what I read in the Bible and be constantly thinking and asking how I am to apply it to my life.

One thing I’m taking to heart this week is that I am very convicted that I have not made it a habit to pray as passionately and fervently I really ought to. I am learning to set aside time to cry out to God for my marriage and my children, among other things, in a more purposeful and thoughtful way. May I be found faithful. I have more thoughts along similar lines, not totally about this book per se, but I think they will need to be for a future post once I’ve percolated on them a bit more.