Submission. It sounds like a bad word. Especially in the context of the relationship between husbands and wives, it is, to our culture, a bad word. According to Webster’s Dictionary, to submit is to yield to authority. The one with the right to tell you what to do tells you what to do and you do it. Submission is a good thing. First, we submit to God’s authority. God has ultimate authority over everything and everyone, the power to rule over everything and everyone, and the right to tell everyone what to do. So we must submit ourselves to God’s authority (James 4:7,10). Submitting to God’s authority is not submitting to the domination of some mean and wicked person. When we submit to God, we are submitting to His protection and provision – God takes care of us. Submitting to God’s authority is good for you. Most of us don’t have a problem with this in principle. The problem is with the way in which God’s authority intersects our lives… through people. We encounter God’s authority through His direct action (which doesn’t happen a lot, but has in the past and will again in the future), through the Scriptures, and through people. Second, we must submit to civil authority. God, when He created the world, established an order in creation. Within this order God has granted authority to humans to govern other humans. We are responsible to submit to those authorities, i.e. the government (Romans 13:1-7). Even corrupt governments and bad leaders. By submitting to government, we are submitting to God who is ruling over His creation through that established order. Third, we must submit to church authority. I know it sounds weird to say it, but we need to obey church leaders(Hebrews 13:7, 17). It sounds weird to our independent American ears because we think that church is something I do only because I want to. It’s a volunteer organization and, “I can come and go as I please.” True, the church is not a military organization. It’s not ruled by force and coercion. It’s ruled by grace and love, but it is ruled. It is ruled, by God, through church leaders. God has established an order in creation. To submit to His order is to submit to Him. It really has nothing to do with the character of the leader, the political party of the president, or the ministry philosophy of the pastor. It really doesn’t matter if we agree or not.