Come on now, who was responsible? She's responsible for her own life, but you've got to understand that cultivating means to invest into it, and become a husband, until it becomes a beautiful, productive thing. So God has in mind not that the woman be inferior in any way, but she be a partner for him in life, and that through his ministry to her, she would become beautiful. The trouble is, many have been abandoned by men, who failed to fulfil their responsibility for some reason. Come on, you've got to get a hold of this thing - and God called him to protect her. So this is what he's got to do: first of all, he's got to embrace the responsibility; two, he's got to fill it, and cultivate it, protect whatever. Then he has to trust God to help him do the job he's called to do, because it needs God's ideas; and if he embraces it, and sets his mind to actually do those things, then he can expect that God will give him lots of ideas on how to do it. If you just set it in your mind: you're going to work at making your wife a beautiful woman, I know you'd find a lot of ways to do that - and it wouldn't be nagging her either. Usually it involves sacrifice. That's how Jesus did it. He sacrificed Himself, He gave Himself; He loved the church, and laid down His life for it.
Then He said: in case you think that being a leader, or being the head of the home, is a big deal, He took off His garments in John 13, He became a servant, and He washed the disciple's feet. Wouldn't it be wonderful, if some of the men just go their wife, and just said: honey, sit down there. Now let me get a little basin, just going to wash your feet, and I've got the meal all cooked all ready for you. [Laughter] See I can feel them manifesting all right away [laughter] saying [mutter mutter] - but Jesus did it, why couldn't you? He says: if I am your Lord and master, and I do this, why couldn't you do something like that? I can see this is shocking [laughter] the serious Kiwi male. But a woman is wired to respond to that kind of loving, and you'll feel good when you do it; that's right, instead of exploiting her, or allowing her to carry the weight, and being an overgrown kid with mummy. [Laughter] [I know that feeling!] Come on, it's what it's like in New Zealand. Not in every home, but in many homes, we've got some overgrown kids, that want their wife to be mummy a lot of the time, and the rest of the time their wife, usually at night time in bed. [Laughter] It's true. There are other times it's mummy - shocking, mummy's boy. Isn't that dreadful?
Does it command respect? It doesn't, does it. Why? I'll tell you why it doesn't - you know why everyone gets revolted by that thought? Because it's out of God's order. God's order is extremely attractive. It is extremely beautiful when it operates right, and it produces the goods, because God upholds it. As soon as we resist what God's ordered, there's just no end of problems. They just never stop, so that's why you've got to actually address things at the root. That's why we're focussing on the men, for a little while, because that's where the source of much of the difficulties lies. Is that true? Ooh! How are you going to distribute the responsibilities in the home, who'll do what? Now the Bible doesn't tell you who does what, it just says: the man is responsible to make sure it all happens, so how are you going to see? Well you see what usually happens is, we put things together based on: well in my family, we did it this way. She says: well my family, we did it this way; well I'm from another culture, and we did it this way. But once you're born into the kingdom of God, and you become married, you actually have a new culture, a new kingdom, a new way of doing things. You've got to work it out [applause], and make some adjustments around here.
My wife, she came from a family where her father was a great gardener. She automatically assumed I would be a great gardener too. [Laughter] I have an aversion to gardening. I tried one attempt at it. I was very good at doing the oxalis [local noxious weed], oxalis just multiplied and increased and filled my garden. The tomatoes, I just didn't know whether I wanted to eat them or not, black spots, and small and green, and had things that sort of got around - I just thought: this is hopeless. Then inspiration came! I got my mower out, and mowed the garden [laughter] and turned it into lawn, and I've bought vegetables ever since. [Yay! Laughter, applause.] She couldn't understand that. She said: we had chooks; we had chooks for a while too. We've done all kinds of things to try and figure out how this thing goes. In the end, I said: listen honey, I'm too busy for all of that kind of stuff. God's going to find another way of getting - I'm going to focus my energy over here, and we had to adjust. You understand that? You've got to adjust the way you do it.