A GOOD GODLY HOME--- SUBMISSION AND LEADERSHIP

Kamau’s mother’s submissive role in relation to his father was not owing to lesser competencies. It was owing to the God-given nature of manhood and womanhood and how they are designed in marriage to display the covenant relationship between Christ and the church.

He grew up in a home where his father was away for about two-thirds of each year. He was an evangelist. He held about thirty crusades each year from Muranga to Mombasa and at times Tanzania, Zimbambwe and Nigeria ranging in length from one to three weeks. He would leave on Saturday, be gone for one to three weeks, and come home on Monday afternoon.  Kamau went to the Jomo Kenyatta International airport hundreds of times. And some of the sweetest memories of his childhood are the smile of his father’s face as he came out of the plane and down the steps and almost ran across the runway to hug and kiss him.

This meant that Wajiru( kamau’s sister) and Kamau were reared and trained mostly by their mother. She taught them almost everything practical that they knew. She taught them how to cut the grass and ride a bike and drive a car and make notes for a speech and set the table. She paid the bills, handled repairs, cleaned house, cooked meals, helped them with their homework, took them to church, led them in devotions. She was women leader at the church, head of the community welfare club, and tireless doer of good for others.

When Kamau’s father came home, his mother had the extraordinary ability and biblical wisdom and humility to honor him as the head of the home. She was, in the best sense of the word, submissive to him. It was an amazing thing to watch week after week as Kamau’s father came and went. He went, and his mother ruled the whole house with a firm and competent and loving hand. And he came, and Kamau’s mother deferred to his leadership.

Now that he was home, he is the one who prayed at the meals. Now it was he that led in devotions. Now it was he that drove them to worship, and watched over them in the pew, and answered their questions. Kamau’s fear of disobedience shifted from his mother's wrath to his father’s, for there, too, he took the lead.

But Kamau never heard his father attack his mother or put her down in any way. They sang together and laughed together and put their heads together to bring each other up-to-date on the state of the family. It was a gift of God that Kamau could never begin to pay for or earn.

And here is what Kamau learned—a biblical truth before he knew it was in the Bible. There is no correlation between submission and incompetence. There is such a thing as masculine leadership that does not demean a wife. There is such thing as submission that is not weak or mindless or manipulative.

It never entered Kamau’s mind until he began to hear feminist rhetoric in the late eighties that this beautiful design in his home was somehow owing to anyone's inferiority. It wasn't. It was owing to this: Kamau’s mother and his father put their hope in God and believed that obedience to his word would create the best of all possible families—and it did.

So I today exhort you with all my heart, consider these things with great seriousness, and do not let the world squeeze you into its forms.

FATHER, GIVE US THE OLD TIME RELIGION.