Good Wife/Godly Wife

"Help me to be a good wife." This is a regular prayer of mine. I pray it when I am happy. I pray it when I am sad. I pray it at home. I pray it driving along the road. As I prayed it recently, though, the Spirit convicted me with the question, "Do you want to be a good wife, or a godly wife?"

A good wife is a designation of my own definition. Something I long to be, but seem to never seem to quite achieve. I want to bless my husband, give him all he needs, and more, never be a burden, and maybe even be someone of which my husband is proud. Instead, I am anxious, angry, weak, and generally not what I want to be, a far cry from the good wife of my dreams.

That's just the thing, though. My definition of what it means to be good is mine. It isn't my husband. It isn't God's. So what does it mean to be a godly wife? Well, that I need to figure out. I am not here on this earth to be good. Jesus was that. Because of Jesus, I am here to be godly.

To be godly, I must love God first. Having "no other gods before me" means idolizing neither my husband nor my definition of what it means to be good (Ex 20:3, New International Version [NIV]). It means loving God first, and not living for the pleasure of man, even if that man is my husband and I really do desire to bless him.

Being a godly wife means living according to God's created order. That means submitting to my husband (Eph 5:22; Col 3:18; 1 Pet 3:1). Sometimes this submission means not doing the "good," I want to do, ceasing striving, and resting according to my husband's requests, as he seeks to follow the Lord and guide me in how I live.

Choosing godliness means putting my husband first, instead of selfishly attending to my own desires. This requires humility and a recognition that I simply cannot do it all (Phil 2:3-4). My desire to be good can get selfish when I seek to be good instead of asking and listening to what my husband wants and needs.

Being a godly wife means letting God define my worth. It requires humble submission to my husband and the truth he speaks to me. It means praying more for God's glory and focusing less on my definition of good. It requires a bit of a mind shift, one not quite done, but one that is in progress. May "he who began a good work in [me] carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil 1:6).