If you can handle all situations without any input from your wife, why are you in the situation you’re in?  We all need help; amen?  We all need wisdom and counsel, advice.  We need the Word of God constantly spoken into our lives, for the Word is profitable for instruction into righteousness.  We, as the head, we, as the overseer, don’t always get the initial revelation or wisdom from God.  Our counselors many times, around us, will speak the Word and then we are responsible for how to apply that wisdom that God just spoke to us.  What am I saying?  It’s not something where you, men, always have to be the one that got that Word.  Our children can lead us in the home; amen?  The Scripture makes it very clear; children can speak the Word or the wisdom of God.  They’re so simple, they’re without guile and so many times, even in our homes, the kids will say, “Well, doesn’t the Bible say…?”  And we’re like, “Hey, it’s more complicated than that.”  It’s more complicated than, “Thus sayeth the Lord”?  The Word is the final authority; amen?  It doesn’t matter where it comes from.  But men, you have the authority, the final authority to implement and to see that this now becomes the course for the family at that particular time. Ephesians is clear, of course.  We see here the authority, the order that God has set, that the woman’s desire is to be her husband’s lordship.  I use that term in the proper application of lordship, not the carnal methodology of lordship that can be demanding, harsh, authoritative. 

Men, hear me clearly, we rule our homes with a servant’s heart; amen?  We oversee that little flock as under‑shepherds.  It’s Jesus’ church.  What a privilege to be entrusted some of the flock of Jesus.  What a privilege to be those overseers as under‑shepherds.  And in everything that we’ve just spoken, the thing that we have to most give attention to, men, is if we’re going to make these declarations, then we ourselves had better know that we’re speaking the Word of God; amen?  We can’t be shooting from the hip.  We’re responsible to get into the presence of God and meditate upon these things day and night, and then shall our ways be made successful (amen?) and will prosper.  Our job is not a casual role.  You’re not fulfilling your role if you’re giving more time to your secular job than you are in your prayer, in your meditations for your spiritual responsibilities.  The wise man speaks of those things as the days of vanity.  We get caught up in the vanity of this world and what it counts precious.  Let me tell you what success is; it’s being able to present your children and your wife before the Lord in that last day that’s coming.  There is no greater treasure and there is no greater success than being able to say to Him, “I haven’t lost any,” praise God!  But now, remember, of those that You have given me; amen?  In other words, the fact that children or even a wife or the desertion of a husband might occur in your life, it doesn’t mean it’s your responsibility that that happened.  But of those that You have given, I’ve not been the cause.  The cause was their rebellion, their hardness of heart, their pride.