Where can we best serve God? That’s the first question we will ask at as we begin learning about Biblical womanhood from Sarah Edwards. Samuel Hopkins was a family friend of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards and he wrote of how their marriage functioned:
It was a happy circumstance that he could trust everything…to the care of Mrs. Edwards with entire safety and with undoubting confidence. She was a most judicious and faithful mistress of a family, habitually industrious, a sound economist, managing her household affairs with diligence and discretion.
While she uniformly paid a becoming deference to her husband and treated him with entire respect, she spared no pains in conforming to his inclination and rending everything in the family agreeable and pleasant. She accounted it her greatest glory and there wherein she could best serve God and her generation, to be the means of promoting his usefulness and happiness.
This beautiful description of Sarah has prompted me to ask, “What do I count to be the place that I can best serve God? And is my perspective the same as what God says?”
Let’s consider a few things that she did not consider to be her primary role in service to God:
She did not count raising her children to be the place she could best serve God.
As we will see, she was an extraordinary mother and labored to raise her children in the knowledge of God, but raising her children was not primary; rather, her divine call to serve as her husband’s helpmate was primary. She did not demand that he arrange his schedule to what would make her work of raising the children easiest but instead oriented the home and family around what was most strategic for her husband and his effectiveness in the work God had called him to do.
We see this principle in Scripture, that a woman’s covenantal commitment to her husband in marriage (Genesis 2) is — after her commitment to God — her primary relationship. It surpasses even her role as the mother of her children.
Sarah Edwards shows us what it means in day to day life to put our husbands ahead of our children by scheduling the day to optimize his work instead of hers, cooking meals consisting of the foods that seemed to help him work and think best (not necessarily those the children ate best or what was the latest trends in eating), and generally ordering the home in ways that blessed him.
She did not count ministry in her church to be the place she could best serve God.
As part of the Body of Christ, we are all commanded to use our gifts to build up the Church. We ought to eagerly search out ways to love others in our local congregations with the particular abilities we have. And we will see that Sarah Edwards was no exception to this as she used her gift of hospitality to welcome an unfathomable number of guests into her home for the sake of the Gospel.
But all too often it is tempting to begin thinking that teaching a woman’s Bible study, or writing blog posts, or organizing an outreach event, or baking treats for VBS is our primary service to God. Sarah Edwards did not make this mistake. She was deeply aware that her service to her husband as it allowed him to pastor and write penetrating works of theology was service to God, that excelling in her role as a helpmate to her husband (Genesis 2) was the primary way she was to labor for the Kingdom of God. Her dedicated service to her church didn’t trump that.
As I’ve considered these things from Sarah Edwards life, I have been inspired to love my husband better. But this is just the beginning, come back tomorrow to continue learning from the life of Sarah Edwards!
Questions for thought and discussion (feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments!):
- Do I cook meals with the desire to most bless my husband, my children, myself or our guests?
- Do I consider it a great glory when I see a woman spending her life to help her husband?
- How could I orient my schedule to bless my husband instead of making it most convenient for me?
Continue the series: Learning from Sarah Edwards as a Mother
If you found this post helpful subscribe by email or Facebook to get my next post! Or share this one on Facebook by clicking Recommend below!