Mutual Submission: Fruitful Relationships

It’s been bugging me for a while and even in writing what I’ve written about it, the itch hasn’t been sorted.

I am referring to the issue of mutual submission. I started it in general when considering it as the key response in how we can work together. Putting flesh on those bones I looked at the first place to see that happen, namely in marriage.

I’m convinced that God didn’t design relationships between man and woman without including key ingredients of all human interactions in them.  The family is supposed to be the first port of call for the values that the children will witness as those to carry on as they enter adulthood.

That’s why it’s important for children to see mutual submission primarily from their parents in their relations with each other. That’s a great learning ground for what should be the practice in the Christian community.

It’s with this regard that I end this brief look at mutual submission. Sometimes it comes across that being part of the Family of God is something that is used on nominal grounds without any real weight to it. Yet if we take it seriously and our first relationships beyond the physical family are those with brothers and sisters in Christ, this has a formative and transformative effect on how we engage in all of life.

This is practically lived out in terms of those mutually submissive relationships in gestures such as time spent with each other,, timely phone calls and text messages in the busy periods of life. These interactions act as the opportunity for transactions that serves the other people enabling them to stay on track with God.

When I lived in Stoke-on-Trent there were times when I was surrounded by four key brothers in different parts of my life. One was a work colleague, another was my line manager, another was someone who knew about my social life and the other was a brother with senior church responsibilities.  In these four relationships room was given to be vulnerable.  We got to know each other very well and so found out how best we could support each other.

It wasn’t unusual from time to time that we’d spend some time in a pub and use that as an opportunity not just support each other, but also see how we could engage and interact with some of the regulars to build relationships with them and also give them insight into our own relationships.  It wasn’t done with the ‘agenda’ of showing how superior we were and how desperately depraved they were. It was with the desire to share the love that we shared that allowed us to see each other as more important than ourselves.

Not just in the pub but on a number of other social occasions it was the strength of our love for each other that allowed us to make an impact on the lives of those in circles of influence. When people saw what it meant to see that giving love, they were interested more in why we did what we did than in  issues about church affiliation or the sort.

Mutual submission as the base for the relationships helps to expose ulterior motives.  If I want you to do something for me just out of selfish reasons, that becomes more than apparent when we’ve already based out dealings on a different foundation. That level of transparency and honesty makes for fruitful relationships because to sustain them requires a great reliance on God to stay open.  We need to stay honest and open, because the more you get to know a person the greater the risk of distrust, the greater the risk of being let down, and when the barriers go up, any act towards the others is no longer about mutual submission. It’s no longer with the desire to genuinely love the other with all who we are.  There are reservations and reluctant sentiments.  The Spirit of God enables to go through the forgiveness that is often necessary and the clearing up of barriers to be brothers and sisters God calls us to be.

As I said, even writing this allows me to realise it is the tip of the iceberg of how critical and encompassing the principle of mutual submission is to the key relationships in our lives.  Maybe at some other juncture as further experience and walk with God informs and shapes my walk, I can share what else has happened and what greater depths there are to know of who Christ is through these types of relationships.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden