Lisa Barry: All this week on Gateway To Joy, Elisabeth Elliot is helping us improve our marriages using discipleship as our model. If you have a desire to transform your marriage into one that honors God, then you'll appreciate the ten recommendations that Elisabeth Elliot is making. Yesterday, she ended the program with number five, now she'll pick up where she left off.

Elisabeth Elliot: Number Six: (very important and so often overlooked) Pray for each other. Pray together.

How I thank God for a father who prayed first at five o'clock in the morning for all his children and long lists of other people. Every morning when we came to breakfast at seven o'clock, of course, my father asked the blessing. When breakfast was over we were all herded into the living room where either my father or mother sat down and played a hymn on the piano. Then my father read the Bible and then we all got down on our knees and he prayed for each of us individually and then we all ended with the Lord's Prayer.

Now, you can imagine that as kids, we rattled off the Lord's Prayer without the slightest inkling of what we were saying. But don't be discouraged; make sure that your kids are probably way ahead of you, anyhow. But by all means, teach them to pray and don't despair because their prayers seem to be foolish and flippant and perhaps way wide of the mark.

But as I think back, I think what a tremendous heritage we had because my father never gave up the singing of hymns, the reading of the Bible and the prayer. And that was every morning and then every evening, of course, he always asked the blessing at the dinner table. And before we were excused from the dinner table, he would read a little bit from the Daily Light and again he would pray for each of us by name.

But, number six here means pray for each other and pray together. So this applies to both husbands and wives, of course.

Number Seven: Never go to bed angry. And if you find yourself going to bed angry, you jolly well better do something about it. Let's look at Psalm 4:4. "In your anger do not sin. When you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent." That's Psalm 4:4. "In your anger do not sin. When you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent."

Number Eight: Whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up!

Number Nine: Keep sight of your place in God's order. And each of us knows the place in which God has placed us. You husbands, you fathers, have the most awesome responsibility. Ours is subordinate. But of course, the fact that most of the time that women are with the children--much more often than the fathers usually are--so of course, we have to be very careful to do just what God tells us to do. Keep sight of your place in God's order.

And Number Ten: Be faithful to your vow. Remember that a vow is never to be broken. Be faithful to your vow. You married him or her because you loved him or her. But now, you must love every day because you married her. Just remember that--you married him because you loved him, but from day one and thereafter you have to love him because you married him. And to men it's the other way around, of course.

So those are what I call "The Ten Commandments for Husbands and Wives."

In 1 Peter 3 we read, "Wives, be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives." That's a serious call to us to remember that we are not necessarily to use words. It's probably more effective if we simply live the life of Christ Jesus in and through and for us.

Peter says, "they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such a braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes." And I'm sure that there may be some very different ideas about exactly what he's talking about here and scholars disagree on just exactly what Peter was forbidding.

"Instead, it should be that of your inner self," that is, obviously, much more important than the outer self. "It should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight." And again, this reminds me of my mother.

She did not come from a very strong Christian home, but it was when she was eighteen years old that she was led to Christ by another Christian girl. And when she married my father, of course she married into a very strong Christian home.

And I don't ever remember hearing my mother raise her voice. I can remember nothing at all, whatsoever, about any conflict between my parents. Now, they must have, upon occasions, had some--not anywhere near where we could hear them. But I just know that, generally speaking, my mother always accepted my father's decisions about, just about everything. And there were may times when he would also tell her that certain things were definitely her job to do and he was very thankful that he didn't have to do them all.

"It should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight." And that I saw demonstrated in my mother, daily--a gentle and quiet spirit.

Now, not all of us women are born with a gentle and quiet spirit. I don't know if any woman is ever born with a gentle and quiet spirit, but some probably receive it better than others. But what a difference it would make in so many different marriages if we women remembered to exhibit that in a way that Peter is referring to.

"This is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers."

It's just amazing. I don't know why it should be so terribly amazing, but, you know, I think of Peter, a fisherman--and obviously that was his major job, to bring home the fish. And it was then while he was fishing that Jesus called him and the other disciples. But he is the one who is able, by experience no doubt, to say, "Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner."

Certainly we women may have certain strengths which would be different from you men's strengths, but God has ordained that we be different and that makes life much more interesting, doesn't it? How boring it would be if we didn't have the two sexes that God has created. But this is one of God's gracious gifts of life. What a wonderful thing it is to realize that every single person in this room has a spouse, that God ordained that. And of course, it's because of the fall that a lot of things happen nowadays.

When I think back on the three husbands that God has given me and how very different they were, I've had some very difficult times trying to adapt myself to these three different men. Not all at once, fortunately.

Jim Elliot and I had gotten acquainted and then fallen in love when I was at Wheaton. And I was a year ahead of him. So, I was graduating...and it was just a couple of weeks before I graduated that he revealed his love to me. And told me that he had been falling in love with me all that year. And he said, "But as far as I know, God may want me to remain single for the rest of my life." So that was case closed as far as I knew. The chances of seeing him again were very slim since he lived on Portland, Oregon, and he had another year of college and I lived in New Jersey and I was going to be going away to study linguistics that summer.

And so it was five and a half years before God brought us together. And by that time both of us had gone to Ecuador, I to the western jungle of Ecuador working with two British women, single women, and Jim was in the Eastern jungle. And it wasn't until he had been there for more than a year that he felt that God gave him the liberty to ask me to marry him. And so, of course, when we were married, I just thought, stars in my eyes, I think this is wonderful; til death us do part. And death parted us twenty-seven months later.

We were just talking with a girl this past week and she and her husband had waited ten years to get married. And they had seven years after that and he died. So, you never know. And then, of course, I didn't ever expect to be married a second time. But in the providence of God a much older man by the name of Addison Leitch, who was a professor and the president of Pittsburgh Seminary at one time, he and I were married and his time with me was four and a half years. And he died of cancer.

Well, as you see, there's one more over here. He looks fairly strong and able. But I only mention these three and how different they were, just as a way of reminding all of us women that it doesn't make any difference what kind of a man you might have married--these are the rules that have to apply. And every single one of us, of course, is different.

Lisa Barry: If today's program has been helpful to you, then I'd like to challenge you to take another step forward and consider this book by Elisabeth. It's called Let Me Be a Woman. And just to give you a little taste of it, listen to this section from chapter 23.

"First of all, who is it you marry? You marry a sinner. There's nobody else to marry. That ought to be obvious enough, but when you love a man as you love yours, it's easy to forget. You forget it for a while and then when something happens that ought to remind you, you find yourself wondering what's the matter. How could this happen? Where did things go wrong?"

Well, that's just the kind of straight talk that you get throughout the entire book. We are making Let Me Be a Woman available today for a suggested donation of $9.00 when you contact us and request it. Our toll-free number is 1-800-759-4JOY.

Today's program is also available on tape. We'll tell you about that when you call us at 1-800-759-4569. You can also write to, Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, NE 68501. And if you are on the Internet be sure and check on our Web site at gatewaytojoy.org.

Gateway To Joy has always been a listener-supported ministry of Back to the Bible, so thanks for doing your part. Elisabeth talks about harmony in marriage next time, so be sure and join us then for the next Gateway To Joy.