Don't step out from under God's umbrella

A book I have just finished reading again after many years is “You Can Be The Wife Of A Happy Husband” by Darian B Cooper. In one of her chapters she tells of God’s Umbrella of protection through His Divine Order.In a world where we see the havoc that comes from stepping out of the umbrella of God’s protection, it would serve us well to reassess just what the Divine Order of God’s Protection is. Darian has illustrated the Divine Order in the diagram above.

The illustration is self-explanatory really. In my own life, I have found that when this order wasn’t followed, my life would be out of kilter. I remember the times when I was working outside of the home, that trying to keep the home going as normal, mother my children and be available to my husband at all times produced stress in me that often would end up in illness. I was over committed and fatigued.

God brought me full circle to being a stay at home mother and enjoying it by having me walk through some very rocky valleys. I was hospitalised for weeks at a time during which I was shown how much I did appreciate my home and miss being with my family. A bout of glandular fever which lasted for 6 months, brought home to me that my job was creating a lot of stress that God did not require me to carry. And my children were not being cared for properly by a woman I paid a lot of money to, for before and after school care.

About this time, I was being discipled by a lovely group of Titus 2 women who were the most contented and fulfilled women I had ever met. Through all of these experiences, God showed me that the Divine Order is the best. These women taught me about our priorities as godly women. And I am blessed today to have had the privilege of being a stay at home mother for most of my children’s formative years. I am so grateful to God and to those women.

When a woman places herself under the protection of God’s Umbrella of Divine Order, she not only finds fulfilment as a wife, mother and homemaker, but she allows her husband to become the head of his home- the position given him by God in His wisdom. By allowing her husband to lead, she is strengthening her marriage and home and creating strong bonds to develop between not only her children to their father, but herself and her husband. Where a marriage is strong, there is every chance that godly children will be raised.

And where there is chronic illness, staying under God's Umbrella actually shelters us from trying to take on more than He intends us to have. He knows we are stretched to the limit already and He intends to shelter us from unnecessary burdens we weren't meant to bear.

God has provided the blueprint for a successful marriage and family. It is we who mess things up when we live outside of that blueprint by coming out from under the Umbrella of God’s protection. I urge you ladies, to rethink your life and check if you are living under the protection of the LORD. If not, it would be to your eternal advantage to take measures to step back under His protection and allow God to protect you and your family.

God provides protection for your husband too when he is under His Umbrella of Protection. In providing for you and the family, and despite perhaps being an unbeliever, he is still to be respected as the head of the home. But even so, he is to be in submission to God. This is God’s Divine Order. Many a family has come to ruin because a husband has allowed a wife to usurp his God-given authority as head of the home, and forced his wife to take on the role of leader- a position that God did not intend her to have to take.

We all know of marriages that have suffered because the wife has usurped her husband’s role and has decided to lead. It is often a cause for divorce at the most and the husband’s dissatisfaction at the least. And in this day and age particularly, we often see children ruling the home with demands, petulant displays of temper and tantrums, excessive shouting and fighting, argumentativeness, surliness and disobedience. This is another case of God’s Divine Order being breached- and the family suffer the consequences. Children come under the parents in the Divine Order.

Seeing the trouble that breaching the Divine Order makes for us, we would be wise indeed to stop and reflect just where we are in our own life- and if we find we have come out from under God’s Umbrella of protection for us, we would be prudent in getting back into order so that God can bless us and lighten our daily cares.

I sincerely praise God for making His ways known to us so that we and our loved ones may be blessed as we live under His protection and love.

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

He hath shewed thee, O man, what [is] good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? Micah 6:8