28/05/2024
A HUSBAND CANNOT COUNTERMAND ANY OF THE LORD'S COMMANDMENTS.
Smith Wigglesworth, a man mightily used of God said, "Under God, all I am in my entire ministry I owe to my dear wife." He went on to tell that when he was a plumber in England growing prosperous from plumbing the old mansions and houses there, he sometimes worked seven days a week. He said he grew cold in spirit, and really just backslid.
Now when you backslide and get out of fellowship with God, you're not so interested in the things of God. And when someone else is, it brings conviction on you.
"You go to church too much," he told his wife. "You're not to go any more. I know enough about the Bible to know the man is the head of the wife. You're to obey me. And I say, 'Don't go to church,' so you're not going."
She smiled sweetly and said, "Now, Smith, you're the head of this house, and you're my husband. Whatever you say in the house goes. And you know as well as I do that I do not neglect you, the children, or the house in any way. But you are not my lord. Jesus is my Lord. And the Bible tells us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. The Bible tells me to go to church, and I'm going."
"Well," he related, "I'd fume and fuss and practically cuss. And finally one day I told her, 'If you go tonight — I'll lock you out.' But she went right along — and I locked her out. She didn't have a key and couldn't get in. The next morning I came downstairs, opened the back door, and there she was, all bundled up in her coat, leaning up against the door. She'd been there all night. When I opened the door, she almost fell into the kitchen. But she bounded up, smiled, and said, 'Well, dear, how are you this morning?'
"She was so kind and sweet, but I'd have felt better if she'd chewed on me a little. She didn't, though. She just asked, 'What would you like for breakfast?' And she fixed my favorite breakfast.
" 'AH right, all right,' I said, 'I'm wrong. I missed it.' She had just loved me back to God. But at the same time, she stood her ground. If she had quit church and followed me, we'd have both been in trouble."
I've seen that happen. In the 12 years I pastored I've heard women say, "My husband doesn't want me to come to church. He wants me to go here and do such-and-such. I thought maybe I might win him." And I saw those women backslide right with their husbands. Some did get back into fellowship with God eventually, but I don't remember a one whose husband got saved.
- Kenneth E Hagin ( The Woman Question)
- JESUS SAVES TV