How Much Are You Worth?
Opening Prayer
Lord God, as I read Your Word today, may I learn more of Your great wisdom for daily living.
Read Ephesians 5:21-33
[21] Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. [22] Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. [23] For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. [24] Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. [25] Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her [26] to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, [27] and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. [28] In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. [29] After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church- [30] for we are members of his body. [31] “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” [32] This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church. [33] However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of International Bible Society.
Reflect
Why or how are we to "submit to one another"?There is an island in Indonesia where a man who wishes to marry must pay his bride’s family a gift of cows, up to five for a really first-class wife. I read the story of a man who paid five cows for a very unexceptional woman, much to his neighbors’ amusement. But he replied that she was worth it to him, and that, knowing five cows had been paid for her, she would be able to hold her head high and act like a five-cow woman. God has given not mere cows but himself (25), and that sacrificial act has enabled the church to be the bride she should be; holy and radiant (26,27). Christ cares for the church (29) and loves her as himself; indeed, they are united just like a husband and wife (31). The church has yet to live up to the picture Paul paints, but knowing that we are valued makes it possible for us, as individuals and together as the bride of Christ, to live in confidence and allow God to work his changing power in us (27). Knowing our value to God also means we are free to submit to each other (21), as well as to God.
Apply
Reflect on your incalculable value to God. Then ask if there’s a situation in which you need to submit to others.
Closing prayer
Loving Lord, I bask in the glow of Your great love and pray for the freedom to live it out in all my relationships.
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