# “But I Just Wanted to Help\.\.\.”
Language: en
Author: by Connie Kuvik
Original issue: The Heartbeat of The Remnant, November/December 2000, Number 5
Source pages: 12–15
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Original PDF: 2000\-11\-remnant\.pdf
[The Heartbeat of The Remnant, November/December 2000]()
The first time God used the word perversion with me, I was shocked\. To me perversion was a very ugly thing—it only had one meaning\. But when the Lord used that word with me, I decided to look it up in the dictionary and see what pervert means\. There were three meanings: 1\. to damage the will or mind of a person so that he thinks or acts in an immoral way, 2\. to cause to be misused, falsified, or wrongly understood, 3\. to change the order of\. God’s Word has been perverted in our society today\. People don’t know what God’s Word says anymore\. They only know what society is saying and showing them\. There are many perversions today where God’s order has been changed\. We as Christian women, need a crystal\-clear understanding of God’s order for our lives\. What is our role? Who are we as women? We have plenty of women on their soapboxes out in the world telling us what we ought to be and what our rights are, but what does God’s Word say about it? Just what is our role?
Titus 2 says the aged women should teach the younger women how to love their husbands and children\. If we were not taught how to love our husbands and children, that is a perversion of God’s order\.
Proverbs 14:1 says, “Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands\.” I thought I knew what that word foolish meant\. I thought it meant “stupid” and “ignorant”\. But the Lord prompted me to look up that word\. Strong’s Concordance says, “sillyness, foolish, folly\.” But it comes from an unusual root word, which means perverse\. Now pervert means to change the order of\. This word foolish comes from that root word which means perverse\.
In order to understand why we could possibly tear down our house, we need to understand ourselves\. We need to understand God’s plan, which means we need to know the Word\. We also need to understand that we have an enemy\. John 10:10 says, “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy\.” We need to recognize our enemy’s tactics and how to stand against him\. We also need to know how we’ve given place to him in the past so that we don’t continue to give place to him in the future\. We need to see how he could use us to tear down our own homes by our own hands\. Satan uses us as we yield to the prevailing attitudes of the modern American woman\.
One way that we can tear down our homes is by the feminist attitude\. You say, “Oh, I don’t have a feminist attitude\. I’m a submissive wife and I cover my head to show that I am submissive and I want to walk with the Lord\. I’m not out there working\.” What is the feminist attitude? It is an attitude of superiority that thinks, I am just a little bit better than a man\. This attitude can cause us to judge and be critical of our husbands\. Maybe we think that we are just a little bit more spiritual than he is\. Maybe he is not quite keeping the “garden of our lives” as well as we think we could\. We don’t have to be out there working and yelling “woman’s rights” to have a feminist attitude\.
Another way is through an attitude of control\. It’s not letting God be God through our husbands\. We think that we need to control every situation\. That first attitude of superiority contributes to this attitude of control\. It makes us think that we must control every situation\. This superior attitude convinces us that it is right, that it is our place to step in and give direction\. We think that we need to cover up for our husband’s mistakes\. That somehow we need to fill in for his weaknesses\. Remember, we are to be keepers at home but God is the keeper of the home, not us\.
Then there is the false burden\. Something that we carry that we should not\. This one causes us to get out of our role and take responsibilities that are not ours\. These are burdens that are not given to us by our husband or by God\. When we are within our roles, the burdens that we must carry are not too heavy for us\. But God did not equip us to carry these false burdens because He never intended for us to carry them\. But we just wanted to help\. We only wanted to be helpful\. But was it something God wanted us to help with? Was it something our husbands wanted us to help with?
All of us have different mindsets\. This is because we all had different parents, different backgrounds and different schooling\. We have all been exposed to different things through the media\. We must look at everything in our lives through the Word of God\. God’s Word will make everything clear\. It will remove all shadows and deceptions\. We need to allow God through His word, to sort out those things that were of the world and influenced us, and those things that are of God\.
1 John 2:15\-18 says, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world\. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him\. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world\. And the world passeth away and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever\.” As wives and mothers, so much of the will of God is in the realm of our homes\. What does God say about our roles in the home? This is very important\. If we love these attitudes that we have learned in the world while we grew up, this is loving the world\. We can be a keeper at home, and still be a worldly woman\. May God Help us\.
What study of the home would be complete without a study of the first home? Let’s look at Adam and Eve\. Gen\. 2:18, “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him\.” Now God did not say, “Adam, you have really messed up as the keeper of this garden\. And I have to get someone in here to help you straighten this mess up\.” Instead God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone\. And I will get you someone suitable\.” He didn’t say Adam wasn’t doing a good job\. He didn’t say Adam could not handle it by himself\. So God took one of Adam’s ribs and made a woman and brought her unto him\. Adam said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man\.” We cannot imagine the delight that Adam must have had when God brought unto him this woman\. We don’t know how long Adam had been alone\. But now he had someone to share the garden with him\. But let’s remember that God didn’t bring us about to compete with man as the keeper of the “Garden\.” Instead we are to be that part that makes him feel whole and complete\.
Genesis 3:16b says, “and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee\.” Our desire is still to our husband\. We all want to please our husbands and be all that they need us to be\. We are not all doing that, but that desire is deep down in the heart somewhere\. “He shall rule over thee\.” This is where God first instituted the need for submission\.
Verse 17, “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife\.\.\.\.” Right here is a very, very important concept\. God didn’t say, “Adam, because you ate that fruit\.\.\.\.” Instead He said, “Adam, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife\.” Adam put Eve and what she said before what God had told him\. Adam made Eve his god\. God had said, “Don’t eat of the tree\.” Eve ate and then she convinced Adam to eat\. The scriptures make it clear later that Adam knew he was eating of the forbidden fruit\. The woman was deceived\. The serpent convinced her that they wouldn’t surely die\. Adam knew they would because God had said so\. But this thing that was so special to him\. This flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones, this thing that I need so much, and this woman that God gave me, was chosen over God\. This is a very important concept\.
Adam was set in the garden as the keeper of the garden\. And then God made Eve to be a helper suitable\. One who would arrange herself around her husband\. One who would be whatever he needed her to be\. She was not to be the leader\. The roles are very clear in the Bible\.
Now there are two kinds of power\. There is the power of position like our president\. He is the president of the country\. He holds a position of great power\. That power is his by virtue of the position that he holds\. But there is also the power of influence like the “first lady” and the president’s other advisors\. The power of influence can be as strong or stronger than the power of position\. We have learned from many history books about the first lady running the country because of her power of influence on her husband\. In the home, the husband has the power of position because God has made him the leader of that home\. He is set there to be the leader and the guide of that home\. He has the power of position\. But the wife has the power of influence\. And her power of influence can be as great or greater than the power of position\. Oh, let us tremble, dear sisters, let us tremble\.
We saw what happened in the garden when Eve used her power of influence to go against the instructions that God had given him\. Adam talked with God\. He knew it was God talking\. And yet Eve used this power of influence and convinced him to go against God’s word\. Now Eve influenced Adam, but he made the final decision\. So he is ultimately responsible because he has the power of position\. But we need to keep in mind that she was able to influence him to do something that changed the course of human history\.
What about her motives? Do you suppose she was thinking, “Oh, I just can’t wait to talk to Adam and to get him to do this wrong thing\.”? No, I don’t think so\. I think in her innermost thoughts Eve was **just trying to help**\. Just like with this superior feminist attitude, the control, and the false burden\. The serpent told her that surely she would not die and that if she ate that food it would make her wise\. And I think she thought that her husband should have some of that food and be wise like God\. I believe she **just wanted to help**\. This is pure speculation, but the result of Eve’s influence on Adam was disastrous\. We are still feeling it today\. It was the fall of all mankind\.
Let’s look at Sarah and Abraham’s experience in Genesis 12\. In verse 2 God says, “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing\.” In order for God to keep this promise, Abraham had to have children\. Now Sarah and Abraham had never had children, but God said, “I will make of thee a great nation\.” In chapter 16:1 Sarah says, “Abraham, God hasn’t chosen to use me to give you children\. Yes, He told you that He’s going to make of you a great nation, but He just hasn’t chosen to give us any children\. I pray thee, go in unto my maid\. It may be that I may obtain children by her\.” Look at this next sentence\. “And Abraham hearkened unto the voice of Sarah.” It is the same words that we saw in the account of Adam and Eve\. Adam hearkened to the voice of Eve\. Was this God’s plan for Abraham to have children by Hagar? No\. The result was Ishmael\. And Ishmael’s descendants are still causing problems in the Middle East today\. But Abraham hearkened unto the voice of Sarah\. He had heard from God\. God had told him directly, “I will make a great nation of thee\.” God hadn’t given those instructions to Sarah\. He gave them to Abraham\. Abraham knew what God had said, but he chose to listen to the voice of his wife and it brought disastrous results\. Do you think Sarah had any awful, wrong intent in offering her handmaid Hagar to her husband? It must have been a hard thing for her to do\. Yet she did it because she **just wanted to help**\. That superior feminist attitude says she SHOULD help\. That controlling attitude said she COULD help\. Taking on that responsibility is the “false burden\.” If God told Abraham that He would make of him a great nation, then it was God’s responsibility to make it happen\. It was not her responsibility\. When she took control, she was not letting God be God\. But I think she only wanted to help\.
How many times in the past years have our husbands made a decision to do something, and we influenced them? We thought he should do this or should do it this way\. Maybe we thought he was going to do something wrong and was going to make a mistake\. There is that superior feminist attitude saying, “I know better\.” Maybe we didn’t trust our husband enough to make that decision\. Maybe we did not trust that our husband had heard from God on that decision\. So we stepped out of our role and influenced him and he changed his mind\. That is a false burden\. Trying to change our husband’s mind is usually a false burden\. We need to trust that our husbands can hear from God because they are the head\.
I have heard it said many times that it is very important for a woman to have her say\. Now I don’t think that a woman should never say anything\. When we are in our roles, often our husbands will ask for our opinions and take them into consideration\. But do we always have to have a say in everything? It is that superior feminist attitude that makes us think that we ought to have a say in everything\. God made the man capable of making decisions without our help\. James 1:19 says, “Be quick to listen, slow to speak\.\.\.\.\.” The next time that you are ready to offer some unasked\-for advice, stop and ask yourself, “Do I really need to have a say in this? Can’t this man hear from God and make a decision without me?” When God set me free from some of these things, my husband was so glad to be able to go out and change the oil in the car without me telling him how\. I didn’t know a thing about changing oil in the car\. I just knew it needed to be done every once in a while\. But I certainly didn’t think he knew how\. So I would stand and watch just in case he needed my help\. We still laugh about how liberated he felt when I no longer felt that I needed to help him change the oil\. Now I know you probably don’t have any situations like that but I know that there are a lot of men who start carpentry jobs in their homes\. Sometimes they don’t finish them\. I have often wondered if this is why they don’t finish them\. Because he got frustrated having her tell him how to do it\. She didn’t think he could accomplish it by himself\. He wouldn’t do it well enough\. He might not get it quite the way she wanted it\. So he just threw up his hands and gave up\. And the projects just don’t get done\. Now I realize there are a lot of other reasons those jobs don’t get done\. But I’ve had to wonder if that is not why some of them don’t get done\. Did he just get tired of us trying to tell him how, or fussing over him to make sure he was doing it right? We are looking at that feminist attitude and the control \(thinking we always need to hover and make sure it gets done right\) and the false burden of stepping out of our role\. Remember Adam was the keeper of the garden before Eve was created\. He really can keep the garden and lead our homes\. He really can change the oil\.
I believe we need to be very careful in offering advice and trying to make things happen\. We need to allow men to hear from God without our interference\. Actually the two of them \(God and our husband\), could probably accomplish a lot more if we would just stay out of the way\.
Just because our circumstances are a bit difficult does not mean that our men haven’t heard from God\. Look at Job\. Job had a severe trial from God\. God allowed him to be tested because he trusted Him\. But what kind of advice did Job’s wife give him? Did she say, “Oh, honey, it will be all right\. God will come through in the end?” Did she encourage him in that lengthy trial that he had? No\. She told him to curse God and die\. Now if Job would have done what she said it would not have turned out the way that it did\. This was one instance when the man did not listen to his wife’s influence\. And the trial continued till God brought Job to the place where He wanted him, till the desired end was achieved\. The Scriptures tell us that the end of Job’s life was better than the beginning and God blessed him\. But what would have happened if he would have listened to that woman? Now why would she give him advice like that? I think she didn’t like seeing him suffer\. **She just wanted to help\.** But what made her think that she knew what was right? That superior feminist attitude\. Ladies, be careful\. Let’s stay out of the way and let God be God\.