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A SPIRIT-FILLED HELPER
The Holy Spirit is our Helper in our time of need (Jn.14:16).
A wife who is filled with the Spirit will naturally then be filled with this characteristic of the Spirit and be a helper to her husband in his times of need. God created Eve to be such a helper for Adam.
A good helper is one who is quick to see the need and the helplessness of her husband and equally quick to run and meet that need. Strong though your husband may be, there are still times when he needs someone to stand by him and encourage him in the battles of life.
Blessed is the wife who can be such a helper to her husband.
Unfortunately many wives are so taken up with their own sorrows and trials that they are always wanting to be comforted and consoled and pampered by their husbands. Thus they are never free from themselves to be of any help to their husbands.
In some cases, this could be because those wives took on responsibilities for many unnecessary things that could have been avoided, and that finally weighed them down with burdens that became too much for them.
We need to recognise our limitations, and take on only what we can handle.
It is not enough that we help our husbands. As mothers, God has called us to be helpers for our children too.
When our children fail in some area and are discouraged, or when they sin and disappoint us by their conduct, or when they don't come up to our expectations, what is our attitude?
Baby-girls are thrown into rivers in China, and into garbage-bins and temples in India, because they are a disappointment to their mothers who wanted male-children. Are we like those mothers, when a child of ours fails us in some way?
A child who has failed, or who feels inferior, needs more love, compassion, understanding and care, more time to be spent with him and more prayer - not to be thrown into the river!!
We must believe that God, the Master Potter, can remake the most broken vessel in the world into something useful for His purposes.
He is able to remove the hardness from the most stubborn child of ours, and to make him a vessel that will glorify Him. The Holy Spirit, the Helper, has come to make Divine successes out of those of our children who are failures in this world. And we mothers are called to encourage our children to believe this.
Or take another example: When the father has had to discipline a child firmly, we should not spoil that child at such times, by "comforting" him by giving him the impression that his father has been unduly hard on him.
Some mothers can go even so far as to encourage their children to deceive their fathers - as Rebekah encouraged Jacob to deceive Isaac. Jacob is commonly spoken of as a deceiver. But who was the one who taught him to deceive? An unwise mother, who was not one with her husband. These things are written for our instruction.
As women, we have a vast storehouse of emotional energy within us. Instead of expending that energy on nagging our husbands for not doing various things for us, why not spend it more profitably on carrying the burdens and problems of our children - for, after all they too have problems, and they are too young to bear them alone. They need someone to help them.
We are in a battle with an Enemy who is determined to destroy our homes, our children and our families. We must never give up in this battle, or lose sight of who our real enemy is, until every member of our family is safe in the kingdom of God. As the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, we as helpers must pray for our husbands and our children.
We can liken this struggle to a tug-of-war, in which the forces of darkness are pulling against our husbands and our children . Which side of the rope are we going to pull on - WITH our husbands and our children (praying for them and encouraging them), or AGAINST them (nagging them and scolding them)?
We need never be discouraged in this battle, for we have the Holy Spirit at all times to strengthen us, all of God's promises to back us up, and a cloud of witnesses to cheer us on. Every one of us can become the type of helper that God wants us to be.
All of our present self-denials and sufferings will seem as nothing in the final day, when our husbands and our children rise up and call us blessed, because we did our task as helpers faithfully.
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