# The Power of a Submissive Spirit
Language: en
Author: by Tom & Debbie Gregoire
Original issue: The Heartbeat of The Remnant, September/October 2000, Number 4
Source pages: 16–21
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Original PDF: 2000\-09\-remnant\.pdf
[The Heartbeat of The Remnant, September/October 2000]()
![Illustration of a woman wearing a head covering\.]()
*Dear readers,*
*We have received many letters over the years from sincere sisters who have husbands who are not born again, or who do not share the same convictions concerning child training and other areas of the Christian life\. “What do I do?” is their constant question\. The following testimony and teaching is an answer to their heartfelt plea\. What a beautiful salvation God has wrought in these two lives, and in their marriage\. One of the meanings of the word salvation is salvage\. This describes exactly what has happened in their lives\. Oh, the power and blessings that come when we follow His ways\. Secondly, these principles found in I Peter 3:1&2 are not only given to women who have a husband who is lost\. It is clear from the context that this is how all holy women should be with their husbands, even if they are godly like Abraham\.*
*\-\-The Editors*
Warm Christian greetings to all\! We are Tom & Debbie Gregoire from Martinsburg, Ohio\. It is our desire, through this article, to “proclaim the praises of Him who called \[us\] out of darkness into His marvelous light” \(I Peter 2:9\) with the hope that the “God of hope \[would\] fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” \(Romans 15:13\)\. It is our hope that our testimony might stir the hearts of struggling couples to exercise genuine confidence, trust, and faith in the “God of hope” for their lives and marriage\. For it is only by truly trusting God and taking His instructions to heart, that we and our marriages will ever know the depths of joy and peace that God fully intends for us\. This is the message behind our testimony\. And this is the simple truth that radically and wonderfully changes hearts and homes\.
We have been married for nearly 17 years and I can say truthfully before God that we have a wonderful marriage, and have had a wonderful marriage for many years\. However, our marriage hadn’t always been a happy one\. Years ago our marriage knew very little happiness\. We regularly fussed and fought, cursed and complained, and manipulated one another for our own selfish gain\. Discord, grief, and strife were common in our home\. It was so common that we could no longer bear it or each other any more\. So filing for a divorce, we happily planned to go our own separate ways\. *“But God\.”* But the “God of love and peace” intervened in our lives in a very real and powerful way, bringing love and peace to our hearts and home\. Our great God and Savior took our two dead souls and one dead marriage and “made us alive together with Christ” \(Ephesians 2:5\)\.
When people ask us what happened to us many years ago, my answer to them is simply “God sought us” and we responded\. The Bible teaches that prior to conversion, “There is no one who seeks after God” \(Romans 3:11\)\. And that was true of us\. We did not seek after God\. At that time, my heart was very hard towards God and anything religious, and Debbie was very indifferent or apathetic towards God, having had no desire or notion to seek after God\. Though our upbringing was different in many ways, it was very similar in one way: that is, we both had no desire or realization of God whatsoever\.
**Tom** – Well, God used our short yet failing marriage to bring us to Himself\. As would be expected with two selfish souls seeking their own selfish ways, our marriage soon fell apart\. With each of us contending for our own ways, our home became a battleground of wills\. I would want one thing, Debbie would want the other\. She thought we should do this, I thought we should do that\. I thought it was okay to have friends over at all hours of the day, she didn’t\. I tolerated and enjoyed certain vices, she abhorred them\. In short, we each wanted our own way and battled each other to get it\. Our different opinions, ideas, and dreams coupled with our strong wills led to a home of discord, grief, and strife\. Now don’t get me wrong, we weren’t always at odds with each other\. There were brief times of mutual enjoyment and agreement, but those times became more rare as time passed\. Our conflict of wills eventually caused us to grow emotionally cold towards each other, and over time, our affections for each other ceased entirely\. On different occasions we separated, without divorcing, thinking that time away would restore our relationship and affections\. Well, separating wasn’t the answer\. After separating several times, we both realized that our marriage was dead and hopeless\. So, we peaceably agreed to divorce and go our own ways\. Sitting at her mother’s kitchen table, on our one\-year anniversary, we signed our divorce papers and planned our lives apart\.
**Debbie** – I was the one to initiate the divorce, compile the needed paperwork, and file for dissolution of the marriage\. As the only girl in an upper middle\-class home, I was accustomed to having my own way and getting what I wanted\. Married life was not turning out at all like I had expected\. And because I was certain that there was a better husband for me than Tom—someone who would satisfy my wants and make my dreams come true—I was eager to end our marriage and move on with my life\.
**Tom** – Just prior to our signing the divorce papers, Debbie moved back to her parents’ home\. At this time, we were both happy and content with our new lives \(in a fleshly sense\)\. Absent from conflict, and free to indulge ourselves as we pleased, we were enjoying our new lives\. Debbie began dating a friend of ours from high school, and I was running around with my friends free from her hassles and complaints\.
Debbie’s parents, on the other hand, were very unhappy\. They grieved over our pending divorce, for I had become a son to them and we had a very good relationship\. In an effort to reconcile our marriage, they arranged various outings and meetings where we would be together, but these attempts were failures because we knew our marriage was dead and hopeless\. We were cordial and friendly with each other, but we knew that neither one of us wanted to get back together, so it was a hopeless effort on their part\.
Then, in what I believe was a desperate, last\-ditch, attempt to re\-unite us, my wife’s mother called a Christian customer of theirs \(her parents owned a pest control business\)\. This Christian woman/customer, at some time in the past, had testified to my mother\-in\-law how God had restored her troubled marriage\. Somehow, my mother\-in\-law remembered her testimony and decided to call her\. After a short time on the phone with this woman, my mother\-in\-law handed Debbie the phone and told her, “Sue’s on the phone\. Talk to her\.”
**Debbie** – I stood there dumbfounded and highly irritated at my mother’s meddling and finally said that I didn’t want to talk to anyone religious\. My mother, equally irritated at my stubbornness, insisted that I talk to her\. So I took the phone and proceeded with a forced “hello”\. Now what took place during the phone conversation was purely divine\.
I began the conversation intending to just let this lady say what she had to say so that I could be quickly released from this unpleasant imprisonment on the phone\. However, as the minutes passed, amazingly I found my heart softening, and my will yielding to be still and listen as she shared how God worked in their lives and actually transformed their marriage by first changing their hearts\. As I listened, God’s grace was being poured out upon me, for He was stirring my heart to honestly consider her words and the truths she was sharing\. Over an hour later, as we ended our phone conversation, I was awestruck and wondering whether there really is a God\. I also marveled at the thought that God would actually involve Himself in someone’s life, and that He could drastically change a person\. My heart was awakened for the first time to the reality of God and His desire to change the hearts of men and women for the good\. I was eager to learn more, so I consented to attending church with Sue the following Wednesday\.
Well, Wednesday came, and though I felt quite nervous and out of place, I sat through the service as the preacher explained many wonderful truths about God that I never remembered hearing before\. I drank in all that he had to say and my heart exclaimed within me, “Truth\!” The gospel was clearly presented to me that evening and I happily embraced Jesus as my Savior and Lord\. In the following days after work, I spent my evenings locked in my bedroom \(at my parent’s house\) reading my newly bought Bible, crying, and praying\. My sins, though earlier confessed, were still very vivid and loathsome to me\. So I continually poured out my heart to God each night begging His forgiveness\. Then, one evening, His mercy and love encompassed me in a powerful way, filling my soul with joy and removing my guilty conscience\. I knew then that my path in life was fixed and that I would love and serve this God who had so wondrously shown His love and mercy to me\.
During that time, I had learned what God thinks of divorce \(Malachi 2:16\)\. This greatly troubled me, for I thought, “How could I possibly proceed with something \(our divorce\) that God declares that He hates?” Realizing God’s will in this matter, it seemed inconceivable to me to continue the divorce process\. This sobering reality, coupled with my trust in Him, led me to call Tom\.
**Tom** – Debbie, out of the blue one Sunday afternoon, called me and told me she wanted to come back and make our marriage work\. I laughed and told her that we tried that and it doesn’t work\. In a very earnest and serious way, she stressed again that she wanted to make our marriage work and asked if she could move back in\. Not wanting her to return, but also not wanting to look bad before our families, I consented\. However, I stressed to her in very clear terms that I wasn’t going to change, and that if she wanted to return she was going to have to put up with me the way I was\. And to my surprise\.\.\.she agreed\. Soon thereafter, she was standing at the door with suitcase in hand\.
I did not welcome her return\. I was enjoying the single life and had no desire to be a husband again\. At the very outset of her return, I purposed in my heart to chase her away\. I would not look bad before our families if she left again, so that was my plan\. Immediately I was cold to her, but surprisingly she responded unreservedly and kindly\. I then chose to spend my days as though she didn’t even exist, while purposely doing things that I knew she despised \(things that were foul and ungodly\)\. And when I did acknowledge her existence, I often insulted, criticized, and/or cursed her\. Surprisingly she didn’t seem too bothered by my railings\. She would often just go to the bedroom and leave me to myself\. This was unusual behavior for her, for she used to be quite feisty and quick\-tongued, not being afraid to speak her mind and lash me with her words\. Her reactions to my insults and mean treatment indicated to me that something was different about her\. Then one day\.\.\.I came to the realization that something was drastically different about her\!
That day stands out vividly in my memory\. It began with a phone call from my friends\. In the past, I had always put my friends before Debbie and she passionately hated that\. Whenever my friends called, I would drop what I was doing with her and run off with them\. In the past, she would have whined and nagged at me all the way out the door about spending time with my friends\. But this time, something different occurred\. Instead of whining and nagging at me, she softly told me on my way out that she would have supper ready for me when I got home\. I remember chuckling to myself as I was leaving, thinking, “You have no idea when I am going to get home\.” Well, as it turned out, I got home late in the evening \(I think it was around 10:00 or 11:00 p\.m\.\)\. And, as I came in, Debbie came lumbering out of the bedroom with her eyes half open\. As I went to turn on the television, she went to the refrigerator and pulled out a nice meal and began heating up what needed to be heated up\. When it was ready I sat at the table fully expecting to hear a string of complaints of how rotten, irresponsible, and immature I was for running off with my friends\. But, to my surprise, the complaints never came\! She just peacefully joined me at the table and made pleasant conversation\. Then, after the meal, to my further surprise, she began displaying much affection to me\. It was then that I realized that she had drastically, drastically changed\! This was definitely not the same woman that I knew just a few weeks ago\!
**Debbie** – This was a difficult time for me to endure\. Tom’s actions and words toward me were so crushing\. Honestly, in my flesh, my instinct was to give Tom an earful, telling him what an immature, insensitive, lousy husband he was\. There is no question that in my unconverted state I would’ve been packing up to leave that miserable situation\. But the difference in my actions and responses was simply Christ living in me\. The Lord was my strength, and I regularly turned to Him in sincere prayer, and He extended His grace towards me, helping and empowering me to maintain a godly example before my husband not only with my words, but also in my actions, expressions, and attitudes\. For what drawing power is there in an obedient, yet joyless wife? A husband will see right through the words to the heart\. My heart’s focus at that time was not, “How long do I have to put up with this until my husband changes?” But rather it was, “God, I will stay true to You even if my husband never changes\.” For my responsibility to God, as I saw it, was to be the wife and woman God wanted me to be regardless of how Tom acted, even if he never changed\. This was not easy\. During those days, I prayed much with tears and spent much time in His Word and my Lord was faithful to uphold and strengthen me, and keep me from spoiling my witness to my husband\.
**Tom** – As would be expected when someone is self\-sacrificing, things start to get better\. Our marriage couldn’t help but get better\. Debbie was being so sweet and self\-sacrificing and I was thoroughly enjoying it\. In the flesh, I was reveling in my new servant girl and I eagerly took advantage of her\. Sometimes I pressed her to see how much she would endure, and was stunned by her willingness\. A new person she was indeed\!
Over time, her sweet countenance and self\-sacrificing acts caused me to appreciate her more and more\. This in turn rekindled my affections for her\. Then I found myself wanting to do things with her and spend more time with her and to my surprise \. \. \. please her\! A drastic change was occurring in our relationship\. Though my acts of love were very shallow compared to hers, they were nonetheless a drastic improvement in our relationship\. It was this new desire to please her that led me to say that I would go to church with her\.
“No man can come to Me, except the Father which sent me, draw him” \(John 6:44\)\. One day, when we were enjoying each other’s company, Debbie had asked me if I would go to church with her on Sunday\. At that moment, I wanted to make her temporarily happy, so I told her I would go\. However, as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew that there was no way that I was going to go to church\.Though I was manipulating her for my own selfish gain, God was actually manipulating me\! He took my deceitful commitment to my wife and used it like a rope to drag me to church so that I might hear the truth and be saved\.
When Sunday rolled around, Debbie reminded me of my agreement, to which I replied something like, “There is no way that I am going to go to church\.” My reply caused her to remind me again in greater detail of what I said earlier in the week\. This only brought another, “There is no way \. \. \. \.” Again, she pleaded with me based on my commitment earlier in the week\. And again, I told her, “There is no way\.” Then, as she started to plead with me again, I hastily interrupted her with an angry barrage of, “There is no way, there is no way, there is no way,” over and over again\. Finally, I told her angrily to get it out of her mind, because there is absolutely no way that I was going to go to church\. Debbie, realizing that her hopes were totally dashed, wilted to the ground and started crying\. Seeing her on the dining room floor crying, I was now confounded with two things that I didn’t want\. On one hand, I didn’t want to go to church, but on the other, I didn’t want Debbie to continue crying like she was\. I had absolutely zero desire to go to church, but I also couldn’t endure seeing her cry\. So, in an effort to turn off the tears, I finally told her grudgingly, “Okay, okay, I’ll go, just stop crying\.”
Reluctantly, I got myself ready and we headed off to church\. After arriving late to church, to my great disbelief, Debbie took my hand and led me to the second center row at the front of the church\. I felt as though I was an arm’s length away from the minister\. How I wished to be anywhere else at that time\.
Prior to our visit, I had absolutely no faith in God whatsoever\. But while I was sitting there, listening to the minister preach, an unsolicited and marvelous thing occurred\. I became so overwhelmed in my spirit and soul with the reality of God’s existence\! To this day, I cannot remember what the minister said, but God in a very real way made Himself known to me\. By His Spirit, He bore witness of Himself to me\. It was as if a bright light turned on in my heart and head, for it was a major, major revelation to me\. I remember sitting there as the preacher was concluding his message, repetitiously thinking to myself in astonishment, “There is a God\! There is a God\!” Soon thereafter the service was over and we were heading out, but my mind and heart could not stop pondering this amazing fact: there is a God\! As we exited, the minister handed me some tracts\. I took them and we left\.
When I was alone, I decided to read the tracts that the minister gave me\. Reading the tracts brought great conviction to my heart\. They caused me to examine myself in a way that I had never done before\. It was then that I realized for the first time in my life what a selfish, sinful person I was; and what a horrible person I had been to my wife\! The Spirit of God used the conduct of my wife to clearly show me my selfish conduct\. My selfish ways contrasted in the light of her self\-sacrificing ways magnified the corruption and guilt in my heart\. In one hour of honest introspection, I had come to a deep sense of my sinfulness and guilt\. God had earlier revealed Himself to me, now He was revealing myself to me\. This revelation of myself brought bitter regret to my heart for how cruelly I had treated Debbie\. For I had been so mean to her and took advantage of her over and over again, yet she just continued to love me\. My remorse over my sin and how I had treated her made my admiration and love for her grow a hundren\-fold that afternoon\. In one afternoon, God had radically changed my heart towards her\. From then on, I greatly esteemed her\.
1 Peter 3:1\-2 says, “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear\.” I came across this passage for the first time about a year after my conversion\. When I read it, my heart leaped with excitement over the truthfulness of God’s Word\. Wives, this passage is so true\! For I was won by the faithful, loving conduct of my wife\!
The following Wednesday evening, the church was having a special Thanksgiving service, which we attended\. The minister provided two wicker baskets on a table in front of the room: one filled with corn kernels and the other empty\. He asked that we would come to the front and take a kernel and publicly express our gratitude to God for at least one thing and then place the kernel in the empty basket\. After one of the elders went first, to everyone’s surprise I stood up next and went to the front\. With tears streaming down my face I publicly thanked God for my dear wife who had so lovingly endured an ungrateful and cruel husband\. As I spoke the tears flowed freely from others and it was a wonderful night of thanksgiving\.
The following Sunday, the minister preached a very clear salvation message\. My heart being already broken and ready, I went without delay to the altar and cried and prayed\. I entrusted my soul to the Lord Jesus Christ and earnestly expressed my willingness and desire to follow and please Him\. Then, before I knew it, nearly the whole congregation was crying and praying with me\. After I got up, I was soon told that the whole church had been praying specifically for me for weeks\. Hearing this, my heart overflowed with praise and thanksgiving to God for answering their prayers and giving me life\. It was truly a new and glorious day for me\.
From then on, I knew that God had done a major work within me; addictive desires disappeared, my heart was liberated from its guilt and shame, and my view of life and others drastically changed\. I felt like I had been in a cave all my life and didn’t really know it, and now, for the first time, I was allowed to see and enjoy the beauty of the outside world\. It was as though I had been looking at the world in black and white, not knowing anything different, but now was seeing everything in bright, vibrant colors\.
From then on our marriage and love for each other continued to grow and blossom as long as we kept ourselves to one common purpose, to please our Lord Jesus Christ and do His will\. As long as we both maintained this solitary purpose of heart, conflicts and difficulties between us remained rare\. However, whenever our self\-wills rise up, conflicts and sorrows immediately follow\. For it is an absolute truth that when there are two or more wills competing in the home there will be conflict and strife, and their byproducts—grief and sorrows\. But it is likewise true, that if we will fully trust God and submit ourselves to one will \(His will\), peace and joy prevail\. That has been our experience and that is how it will be in heaven, and that is how it can be in our homes\. IF we will completely, unquestioningly trust our loving Creator and exercise that trust, by happily submitting ourselves to do His will, we will “taste and see that the Lord is good” and that His ways lead to life and peace\.
![Tom and Debbie Gregoire with their children\.]()
***Tom & Debbie Gregoire family***