BUILDING OUR HOUSES

PROVERBS 14:1, "EVERY WISE WOMAN BUILDETH HER
 HOUSE: BUT THE FOOLISH PLUCKETH IT DOWN WITH
 HER HANDS."

Everywhere we look today, marriages are breaking up. Even people we love are going the route of separation and divorce, some young and some married for many years. My heart breaks for these couples, because I look back at my life and realize if it were not for the Word of God, there go I.

Proverbs 14:1, says, “Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.” If we compare our home life to a house made of bricks, then we can easily see what the Lord meant by these words. For years, I was plucking down my house, brick by brick, because I did not allow the Bible, the Word of God, and what it says about marriage and especially to women, to be the foundation of my marriage. One day I found my marriage crumbling, just like a house with a faulty foundation.

Precious “daughters” in the lord and young women everywhere, may I share with you what the Lord has taught me and tells us in his Word about building our houses? The Word of God gives us the wisdom and the power that we need to do this. If your marriage is crumbling, the Word of God can enable you to build it up again, brick by brick into a house so strong that the storms of life will not be able to shake it!

For any reader who does not have the “firm foundation” of knowing what her final authority is, may I take a moment to give a brief explanation of what I have found to be true about the Bible, God’s Holy Word? For how can we begin building our houses without a firm foundation beneath them? “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”, Psalms 11:3.

This “firm foundation” has to be the true Word of God. The question then is, which Bible is the true one?

In a study of the history of the Bible we learn that the King James Bible is the only “version” in English today brought down to us from the “Textus Receptus" or “Received Text". All of the other “versions” have been brought through deceitful religions and dubious people and all of those versions pervert verses about Christ and His deity, thus becoming what many call “perversions". The King James Bible is the only one that totally deifies the Lord Jesus Christ. That is just one of many changes in those other “versions”. Proverbs 30:5-6 tells us that every word of God is pure. In Psalms 12:6-7, we find that “The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” Not only did God write pure words, words that we can believe to be the absolute truth, but he is able to preserve them and give them to us in a pure form for our modern lives. We conclude that God’s words are out there for us to obtain, and He wants us to have them, read them, and believe them! We can trust that His words mean exactly what they say to whom they say it. God has given us his perfect Word, the King James Bible!

The wise woman of Proverbs 14:1 is one who gets her wisdom from this true and perfect Word of God. She believes exactly what it says to her! Therefore, having established a firm foundation, let’s build our house upon it brick by brick!

BRICK #1: LOVING OUR HUSBANDS

I believe the most important brick to start with in building our houses is to learn to scripturally love our husbands. Titus, chapter 2, says, “the aged women...teach the young women...to love their husbands...”

Within this passage is a simple, but timely truth. Here, the Bible tells older women to teach the young women to love their husbands. Why would they need to be “taught” to love them? Surely they already love their husbands! However, a look at the high divorce rate of today proves otherwise.

Many marriages today are based on a blissful, romantic feeling that society equates with love. This feeling is usually associated with fleshly desire or it could be the product of unrealistic dreams tucked away in one's mind. This kind of love, based on feelings, is fleeting, though, as most newly marrieds soon learn, and easily fades as the responsibilities and problems of life become all too prominent in the marriage. After the initial "honeymoon phase" of marriage is over, many people wonder why they ever married in the first place. They often feel as though they no longer love the other person.

There are several meanings of the word "love" throughout the scriptures. The highest or greatest form of love is translated "charity" in ICorinthians 13. This is the love that Christ had for the church when he laid down his life and willingly died for us (Romans 5:6-8). He shed his own blood to pay the penalty for our sins! (ICor. 15:3-4, and Rom. 5:9) Christ gave himself for our good without any regard to his own well-being. This love was something Christ did, an action not governed by feelings. Throughout ICor.13:1-13, we get a blueprint of what "agape" (love), translated "charity", really means. “Charity suffereth long”; Christ suffered long for us. “Charity seeketh not her own”; Christ did not seek his own well-being. “Charity beareth all things, ...endureth all things”; Christ endured the suffering of the cross for us. “Charity never faileth”; Christ’s love for us did not fail! He did not quit until he had given his very life for us! The King James Bible correctly uses charity and we can see clearly what agape love is - the same kind of love Christ portrayed on the cross.

So how does the Lord want us to apply the concept of this sacrificial kind of love and charity to our marriages? Ephesians 5:25 says, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it". The truth is easy to see in this verse for husbands, but what does this mean to wives? We must learn to love our husbands in this same way. Titus, ch. 2 tells us so. We must lay down our lives for them, lay down our own desires, our own needs, our own fulfillment, our own selfishness, and sometimes our own ideas of what is best.

Quite often couples in the Bible married for reasons other than love. We look at women in times past and cannot understand how they could possibly have had good marriages, many of which were previously arranged. In those times, people often learned to love one another long after the marriage. Husbands and wives gave of themselves in loving actions and they learned to love one another. This is why even today some older couples, who have practiced this, will say that they love one another more now, after a long marriage, than they did in the beginning of their marriage. When we see that the Bible's meaning of love is not the same as what we are usually led to believe, we can go on in our marriages to bring about the kind of loving relationship that God would have us to have.

This kind of love that is produced by loving actions is the real, lasting kind of love. This comes through sacrificing of oneself. A sacrificing wife's attitude will be one of service toward her husband. Ephesians 5:24 says, "Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing". ICor. 11:9 says, “Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.” This higher, truer form of love becomes a choice of the will. It is a commitment. We choose to love our husbands and thus do the acts of love, contrary to how we feel. A woman truly can be taught to love her husband, to freely give of herself to him, to lay down her will, her life for him. However, this does not come easily. Sometimes it is hard to change habits, thought processes, actions and reactions, but dear reader, persevere! The Lord will honor his word and will bring a deep abiding love back into your marriage.

In conclusion, young women, give the Lord a chance to work in your marriage. If you feel as though you no longer love your husband, start putting into action what you know the Lord would have you to do. If he no longer loves you , then do the same. If you just want to fortify your marriage, so that you never have to face these challenges, then put these truths into practice. Proverbs 31:12 says "she will do him good and not evil all the days of her life". (It does not say, “until she no longer loves him”!) Start doing the actions of love, build your house upon the foundation of the scriptures and watch the Lord put love back into your marriage.

There are many more “bricks” in the Word of God that I believe are crucial to building our houses scripturally. Any person can find these in the Bible, but if the Lord wills, I will soon share what I will call bricks #2 and #3.

I hope and pray you will study for yourselves what God has to say about marriages in His Holy Word.

Happy studying!

Mary Atwood
Grace Bible Church
Chattanooga, Tn