Submission vs. Obedience

As a wife one of our duties to our husband is submission. However in today's society many of us women come from families where we are not taught to how to be submissive nor are we told that in marriage we would need to submit to our husbands. 

Prior to getting married I had not read up on marriage and wifely duties. However I now realize that I never took the time to truly understand how to act upon what I thought I knew. It is one thing to know and acknowledge these things is something completely different to put them into action. Prior to getting married I had a very general knowledge of relationships. Now the longer I am married the more I add to this knowledge.

{Now may I remind you I am yet still in the learning stages of putting into action these things. As I learn and better acquaint myself I will inform you here.} 

First off I start (doing this today to see a better me and to have a better marriage) by defining the terms submit and submission. Then I define obey and obedience. Now I do this to see what are the difference in the terms and why do people interchange them as such.

To submit is to yield or surrender oneself to the will and authority of another. Now to yield is to produce or provide. To surrender is to relinquish possession or control. Those alone are two different words which are used as the same word. 

Submission is the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will and authority of another person. Accepting is to consent to receive or agree to undertake. Yielding is complying with the requests or desires of others.

To obey is to comply with the command, direction,or request of another. To comply is to act in accordance with a wish or command. 

Obedience is compliance with someone's wishes or orders or acknowledgement of their authority.

Compliance is the action of complying with a wish or command.

Now I've read and reread these definitions and I always notice that they are listed as synonyms of each others. Now granted they are similar words they are not the same. To submit is to yield to another's authority. To obey is to comply with a command. 

Something I've noticed is that submission will lead to obedience however obedience will not always lead to submission. See you can obey without submitting because to truly submit requires mutual respect. However when you truly submit to one you can do so and in doing so you will accede to their wishes (otherwise known as obey).

As a woman this submit word is like a lemon, very bitter. To submit to a man is to have faith that is man has your best interest at heart. And furthermore, the bible requires this of us as wives. So as a wife I am to submit to my husband and in turn he is to love me as he would love himself. 

This is where many go wrong. There are some husbands who will not fully submit to God and STILL expect their wife to fully submit to them. As a wife bent on pleasing God she  will fully submit when she knows that her husband has fully submitted to God. Because if he is fully submitted to God she can rest easy knowing that it is actually God steering them and their marriage.

So I implore men and women to first submit to God. Once you have submitted to Him submitting to someone who is in submission to Him will be easier because you will feel safe in the knowledge that God is the lead of their life. Men before you tell a woman to submit to you, you need to be in submission to God. What woman wants a man leading them who doesn't know where he is going in the first place?!  That's like the blind leading the deaf. 

Ladies to submit is NOT saying that you are weak or less than. Because to be honest, men and women fill 2 different roles. Men are the head and guess what? God will always deal with him first. He is to be the provider and protector. He is to cherish and love you. No matter what happens. Women are the nurturer thus our softer demeanor (generally). We are the caretaker of home and children. Now that is not to say our husbands will not help around the house, because they should fill in where there is a void. and vice versa.

I have personally learned from this "exercise" by knowing that I need to FULLY submit to God and maybe in seeing that I am in submission to God, my spouse may acknowledge this in his submission to God and thus we will submit to each other with me deferring to his authority in our marriage. I am recognizing that in my submission to Christ, I can start off obeying my husband which can grow to full blown submission. {Many of us have to take steps versus leaps; walking before running}

I hope this has been of some help!
God bless :)