{"id":211,"date":"2011-04-15T02:07:27","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T06:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ralf-schlegel\/?p=211"},"modified":"2013-01-27T00:31:02","modified_gmt":"2013-01-27T04:31:02","slug":"dinangat-mail-april-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ralf-schlegel\/2011\/04\/15\/dinangat-mail-april-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Dinangat Mail, April 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What God says about marriage has been the topic in Dinangat for the last two weeks as we were teaching through Ephesians 5. And we can only say: God\u2019s idea of marriage is a very new one for the Dinangat people!<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cHusbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.\u201d<\/strong> Eph.5:25<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201c\u2026and the wife must respect her husband.\u201d<\/strong> Eph.5:33<\/p>\n

You must know that most marriages here were arranged. It is still quite normal that the family members decide which woman their son will marry and which man will marry their daughter. Therefore many couples are merely co-workers that don\u2019t get along with each other. Their purpose is to work their gardens and gather firewood to survive, and to have children that will take care of them when they get old. To love each other, to serve and to respect one another\u2026 these are very new concepts for the believers of Dinangat, especially the old ones.<\/p>\n

Many men are angry at their wives. Wives are often mean and gossip about their husbands to other women. Some men are gone to town for months because they are tired of their wives and when they get home they don\u2019t get a warm welcome because, of course, the wife is suspicious that her husband was with another woman\u2026. The list goes on.<\/p>\n

On Sunday after Gary and Ralf taught on God\u2019s Word, which says that husbands need to love their wives just as Christ loved the church, they asked the people what that would look like practically in the community here.<\/p>\n

Lukas (3rd<\/sup> picture) says, \u201cWhen I get a piece of pig meat from a friend, I wouldn\u2019t eat the whole thing by myself, I would bring some home to my wife, so she would know that I thought of her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonjong tells, \u201cWhen I know that my wife is coming back from the garden with a heavy load, I will go to meet her on the road and carry the load for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

To challenge the men\u2019s thinking a little bit, Ralf asked the men if they ever thank their wives for working hard or cooking food for them. Most men looked away embarrassed or shook their heads. Later when the men were sitting together alone, it became more evident that it is really hard for most men to love their wives.<\/p>\n

Jinongke says, \u201cWe would love our wives all right, but they always talk so much nonsense and are so slow to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boringke (1st<\/sup> picture) adds, \u201cThe men are supposed to be the leader of the home, but my wife always has the last word.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emma (a man \ud83d\ude42 ) tells, \u201cMany men are angry at their wives because the wives don\u2019t respect them and so they go off and look for another one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did you notice that they don\u2019t talk much about their own responsibilities, but about what their wives are NOT doing? (This is surely not going to help!)<\/p>\n

As I was talking to the women about our responsibilities as wives and that we need to show respect to our husbands by our words and deeds, many felt bad and said, \u201cWe don\u2019t do that, we always nag at our men. We don\u2019t praise them, we complain, that\u2019s all we do!\u201d<\/p>\n

When I asked how then we can show them our respect, Epepe (Emma\u2019s wife) said, \u201cWhen my husband comes home from the garden and I see that he is tired, I tell him to rest and I cook him a meal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mesari is one of the women who has a very hard situation with a at times very bitter and angry husband (it looks like that he deliberately didn\u2019t even come to the teaching on marriage). After we talked as women about these situations we said that even though some husbands are tough men, the Word of God still has a specific admonition to women to respect their husbands. So if we only wait for our husbands to change, we may wait a long time with no change whatsoever. But if we trust God\u2019s Word and DO what it says, then only GOOD can come out of it.<\/p>\n

PLEASE PRAY for the marriages of Dinangat! It is a hard thing to change a relationship-mess. But by God\u2019s strength and by His Spirit it is possible! Please pray that the Dinangats will experience this power and that even the church as a whole will experience healing by blessed marriages.<\/p>\n

THANK YOU, the Schlegels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What God says about marriage has been the topic in Dinangat for the last two weeks as we were teaching through Ephesians 5. And we can only say: God\u2019s idea of marriage is a very new one for the Dinangat people! \u00a0\u201cHusbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,3607],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-family","category-ministry","category-news-article","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ralf-schlegel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ralf-schlegel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ralf-schlegel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ralf-schlegel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ralf-schlegel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ralf-schlegel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ralf-schlegel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ralf-schlegel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ralf-schlegel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}