Even if some do not: Study #4

Well it's been way too long between study #3 and this study, #4, to call this a blog post series. Much has been on my heart, but I continue to want to come back to this study. The living out of it is my primary challenge and calling, yet I do enjoy when I get to write down some of what the Lord is teaching me through my failings and victories.

I was just wanting to come in here and do a sit down study on quietness and submission as a continuation of the #3 study about a sojourning wife's adorning, but the need to finish painting my bathroom took priority. So instead, I turned to one of my favorite Bible teachers, Jon Courson, at the Searchlight website and just outta curiosity looked to see if he had a teaching there on 1 Peter 3:1-6. And he did! So I loaded it up (it's an old one from 1995 but very applicable now as God's word always is) and listened while I painted. Boy was I blessed, challenged, convicted and encouraged!

Quickly, a couple things he mentions in the teaching concerning quietness and submission and adorning (this will be study #4 from me, just sharing what really spoke to me from this teaching), and then I'd encourage you to go listen to the full teaching yourself, and if you have the right programs and such on your computer and the time I'd encourage you to watch the video version of it. Here are the link to the teaching and a couple a quick points he made:

1. The Link: 1 Peter 3:1-6 by Jon Courson from 5-15-96


2. Submission:
   

   Jon Courson shares that the example from which we can more fully understand what this submission looks like in a wife's life as it relates to her husband is
   Sarah, according what the Spirit wrote through Peter. He shares the
   example from the Old Testament where Sarah called Abraham "lord" as Peter
   refers to in 1 Peter 3. It's in Genesis 18 where Sarah laughs at the
   prophecy from the three "men" who are visiting with Abraham while she's eaves dropping in the tent about her conceiving and bearing a son. In verse 12, after getting busted about laughing she says, "After I have grown old, shall I
   have pleasure, my lord being old also?" Pastor Jon shares how in this example a woman can learn that just because she may think that what her husband wants to do, or the direction he's taking is ridiculous, even laughable, she can honor her husband, and bring blessing to her family through reverencing
   him as the "lord" of her home.

3. Adorning:

The word in this text is cosmos and it means to be ordered. Like the
universe, the cosmos, are in order. The order of a "sojourning wife's"
(that's my term not pastor Jon's) life is to primarily be her inner person not
her outer appearance. Pastor Jon shares that Peter isn't saying in this
passage that a woman shouldn't fix her hair or do her makeup or wear clothes,
he's saying that a woman shouldn't make those things her "cosmos", her
world. Her world should not revolve around what she's wearing or how she's
looking. He goes on to say, "The priority of a woman, according to
the Bible...very simple, the priority of her life, is to be standing by her man, and to be focusing on her inner person."

1. Quietness:
   

   "Wives, here's what your to work on. Not your...spring wardrobe...it should be not high on the list... God says... here is what you are to work on. The fashionable woman in the eyes of the Lord, is cultivating a meek and a quiet spirit. That's what's in style for eternity. The older I get the more I don't listen to people who talk a lot. I value the counsel, I listen carefully to people who are not always talking endlessly and have opinions about everyone and everything. Women. Your husbands won't tell you this. But I will. Here's how to weary your man. Chatter. Talk incessantly. Share your opinions and your thoughts and your ideas and the latest gossip and the tidbits and why your mad at this and why you don't agree with that and what this person's doing and what that neighbor said and just keep on chattering. You'll drive him crazy! Now God says gals that you are to be cultivating diligently a meek and a quiet spirit. You may say, 'That's not the way I am!' And I will say, 'God didn't save you to keep you the way that you are. He saved you to remake you into the image of His Son. To make you a godly woman!" (from Jon
   Courson's teaching)