Honoring your Husband

October 20, 2014

Ezekiel: "Welcome to Heaven Talk, dreams, visions, comment and discussion on all things heaven. I'm Ezekiel.

Clare: And I'm Clare.

Ezekiel: "And we're in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico.

There are some areas that can actually hinder our heavenly realities and living a heavenly life. Tonight we have something that might seem a little off topic, but not really - although we talk about Heaven and heavenly things. Typically the enemy will try to come against, right off the bat, our marriages and families. We want to address some of those areas in our marriages that can actually hinder our living these heavenly lives and walking in heavenly places.

Clare: We are talking about balance in our relationships and balance in our marriage. We must be honest with each other, so you can be a covering for me. In fact, the teaching that I do on this just before this video is all about the dynamics between my husband and I and how he is my covering and how I can lose my covering by being headstrong and dominant and fall into error.

Ezekiel: "Keep in mind, this isn't an overnight thing. We haven't set any records here. We've been married for 23 years and it's just in the last two years we've really been able to work together like this. Although, spiritually we've been together from the start - but even with that we began to grow apart.

Clare: I guess what I want to say is, the first time I noticed there was a serious problem in our marriage is when you almost died. We had a longstanding, slight disagreement with what to do with a certain amount of money; whether to do a small indoor therapy pool or not to. You had agreed with me but there was a sense that deep down you didn't agree with me. I had asked you and wanted your covering; "Is this okay and is this okay with the Lord?" It turned out later on that you weren't being as honest as you could have been. Why was that?

Ezekiel: Because you would override me and I just didn't want to deal with that.

Clare: "So basically you recognized that I had such strong opinions and desires and ideas about the way I wanted things done, that it was futile to even mention that you had serious reservations about this.

Ezekiel: That's exactly right. I tended to coward down or get quiet and not speak up.

Clare: Especially if there's a history of the wife being strong - like in my case. My background is a single parent family. My mother was a go-getter and businesswoman and I was raised with that mentality. It never occurred to me that people found it difficult to disagree with me and were intimidated by me. I've learned this about myself since we've been married.

Ezekiel: We don't really notice that we're being really strong - and maybe a little too strong. One party might not realize that the other party is getting left in the dust while you're running the charge up the hill. He may be getting some real valid and serious checks in his spirit. If you're running 90 miles an hour, it's hard for him to even catch up to even say, "Well, wait a minute." I think human nature tends to be as such, if you're on a roll and things are going good, working on a project, and especially doing things for the Lord and somebody in particular, like your spouse says, "Whoa, wait a minute." You're natural reaction might be, "What? Wait, what? Huh?"

Clare: Especially when you've already talked about it and we're supposed to be in agreement. There is a warning sign that there wasn't the agreement you thought there was, and you need to stop and take a serious look at it.

Ezekiel: I would be real watchful in the very first place as to when your husband or wife in some cases, begins to grow cool, cold, or quiet.

Clare: Or starting to get depressed. You started to get depressed. I was really in pride in that situation, because I thought you don't like the construction noise or like the disturbance, the inconvenience so naturally you're starting to fuss and fume about what's going on out there. That was totally my prideful take. That wasn't it at all. Those things were probably playing a factor.

Ezekiel: Oh, they did - but be careful not to jump to the conclusion that he's being lazy.

Clare: There was more to it than just inconvenience. I kept saying, "Honey, you're going to love it, especially in the winter time and it will be a place to go that will still be green like the jungle." He would agree with that, but I could still feel that there was an undercurrent of resistance to it. In my pride and presumption to it, I wrote it off to, "He doesn't like the nose and the inconvenience of all this work."

Ezekiel: In your mind right now, you might be thinking, "What does that have to do with my ministry for the Lord?"

Clare: No one wants to call into question that their spouse doesn't believe in their ministry. We really do want to try and agree, especially when we know in the past disagreements have resulted in conflict that is hard and painful. In a sense, he may feel obliged to go along with and not put up a fuss. What would you say is the best approach with that?

Ezekiel: Try really hard to not force or push him to not believe in you. I know that sounds like a harsh statement but wouldn't you agree that it's more important to believe in the Lord and be close in the Lord... and come around to where he believes in the things you're receiving? You can encourage him in God's belief in him; not his belief in you but the Lord believes in you. Build him up. Don't tell him, "You don't pray enough, I think you need to spend more time in worship." Even if you say it in a subtle way he really doesn't want to hear that, because he's struggling in himself. He's already at the point where he is struggling with the Lord, he may be in a dry place, and it looks like you are charging ahead with, "The Lord said this" and "The Lord said that." It's hard to hear those things.

Clare: It makes you look like the "almighty prophet" in the relationship and that, as I had mentioned in my teaching, that also creates a problem in dynamics. I've noticed that if men see someone excelling in a situation in their lives, too, a lot of time they drop down and drop back. They figure, "Why should I compete with her? She's got it all together, so I can just sit back and ride on her coat tails."

Ezekiel: When someone says, "The Lord told me to do this or that" that leaves a person feel like there is no room to move. Well, God is the ultimate authority. Either your husband has to believe it or he's a bad person - period. He doesn't know what else to think about that or he has to be honest with his own feelings and say, "This just doesn't feel right or sound right." Then she might say, "Well, how would he know? He doesn't even have the prayer life to back it up." You may not know the place where Almighty God and a soul come together in a sanctified place with the privacy of a soul. That man may cry blood, sweat, and tears in the early morning hours while you are asleep.

Clare: We've kind of been in that place.

Ezekiel: Right, when one has really been praying and the other one doesn't know it. There are different ways to pray.

Clare: I'd like to add to this, that we've really come to the place where I come to you and say, "Honey, I need your help discerning this about such and such. Would you please pray about it and see what the Lord says about it?" I've learned not to play that role of, "Honey, the Lord said this or said that," unless you ask me and then I'll be honest and share what I feel the Lord has been saying. I think you made a good point about him not feeling the freedom or liberty to say anything, because after all God said it. You know that goes both ways.

Ezekiel: Oh absolutely.

Clare: You can come to me and say, "God is showing me this and telling me that," and I feel like I can't say anything about that. What do we do when we're in that situation? Typically we go into "lift it up to the Holy Spirit" discernment mode.

Ezekiel: First of all, we try to be real careful not to just throw that out all the time; "The Lord said this or that." What we might say is, "We feel that the Lord is saying such and such." Anything that is directive or corrective is highly suspect anyway.

Clare: When these things come up and we're a little charged up, because we don't agree with each other, we put it on the shelf and we seek the Lord. Sooner or later, the Holy Spirit clarifies what His real thoughts are about it. Because we're both really submitted to the Holy Spirit, we're submitted as believers, but I'm also submitting unto my husband. It's a two-fold kind of submission and thank God He is submitted to the Holy Spirit.

When I talk about the husband having wisdom that is beyond what you would expect from someone who doesn't have enough of a prayer life by your own standards - don't think, "Well, I'm way ahead of them in prayer," - that dismisses the fact that this is a union that God has created. The man is supposed to be the covering for the woman. Because of that, whether the man prays a whole lot or not, he will still come up with God's will in many situations, because Jesus lives in his heart and because that is his job. He can't do his job unless God puts it there.

Ezekiel: It's not like you're up the ladder and someone else is down. We're kind of side by side and in this together. The Scripture says, "Let no man stand, lest he fall" (1 Corinthians 10:12). Humility is just the truth about anything; who we really are before the Lord. He has shown me and us how He can crush us into fine powder when we think we're standing.

Clare: It's very true and I've been guilty of that. When we first came together, I felt like I was a little bit ahead of you, because I was in full-time ministry. I think that was something I was in a rude awakening for. The other issue to look at there is, I came from a single parent family with a mother had to wear the pants and who was a professional, grew up in the city and was hardcore. I picked up a lot of that stuff from her.

Ezekiel: And, in all difference to you guys, if we as men would stand up and wear the pants as we should and cover our families properly and our wives; you ladies may not feel you have to be so strong. Wouldn't it be nice if you did have some help and you didn't have to always be the one to hear from the Lord and to carry out His mandates? You've got to build this guy up. He's coming from a place of... you feel in love, you dated and had a relationship at one time that was probably not as deep, because you weren't used to each other at first yet. The following years, because you mentioned you guys were having some problems, you may feel like you're having problems - but this guy may have had the same thing in his gut from 12 years ago,, but someone shuts down eventually.

Clare: That's one of the things that the Lord brought up in the last teaching. It's really an art form and a delicate affair to allow a man to come back into the position. Maybe he's never even held that position before. Allow him the space to be in the position to be a true covering for his family. You had mentioned something that the Lord showed you once in a dream or a vision about that.

Ezekiel: It was actually during what we call dwelling or soaking prayer. It was very quiet and instantly I began to see something play out in front of me. I was sitting in a fishing boat and there was another person there. And in the boat there was a live well; a box that goes down into the water from the boat so the fish stay alive until you get to shore.

I would notice we weren't even fishing with pokes and these salmon would drift up alongside the boat and be on their side, like when a fish goes belly up or dying - but they were still alive. In one scenario, the person in front of me would grab a salmon and slam them into the boat and put them in the live well. We noticed they weren't staying alive, they were dying.

The scene switched to a replay of the same situation, however the person, I think it was Jesus, was now gently putting His hands into the water lifting them up very gently. A fisherman knows when you catch and release, you release them very gently and let them get used to the water again. He was handling them with kid gloves. Now the fish, He put them in a live well with oxygenated water and they were coming back to life and they were healthy.

Many of us as men and women are that way. We are broken from things that happened to us in childhood. We're all damaged goods. Yes, the Lord heals and frees us and by His stripes we are healed and set free, but it doesn't cover up the pain that most of us carry around with us. It's the walking wounded; soldiers that are in a real battle that have taken some real scars and real shot. There's a beautiful poster that I love and it says, "Understanding is standing under." Get beneath and under this man who is very fragile in your life, by the way. You could lose this man at any moment and the Lord could take him - then where would you be? How would you really feel about this man that you had distained possibly before?

Clare: When you went into the hospital that time and I was praying for you, I remember I had doted over you and waited over you that day. I loved telling the Lord how much I loved you and appreciated you and all of that - but I wasn't going deep enough in my discernment as how I really felt. There were some ways I snided you.

When you live with someone, there's familiarity - like leaving your towel crumpled up on the floor, (which he doesn't do by the way) or leaving your shoes out in the middle of the room - which I DO do, by the way! There's a point where we lose patience with our partner and not even saying the demeaning words in an out-loud conversation but play out your dialogue on the inside. That is depreciating him.

The demons are working on that little job, the little foxes that spoil the vine. We're a vine together, the two are one. The little foxes are coming along and biting the grapes and spoiling them on the vine. These interior dialogues are going on inside of you and don't kid yourself: the devils are working just as hard as you as they are him. He might be thinking, "Why doesn't she have dinner on time? For Pete's sake, she knows I don't like to eat that - why is that on the table?" There are a million different ways we could show disrespect or downgrade our spouses that are just secret, quiet things going on inside the heart.

Ezekiel: Until you lose what you thought you had and that's exactly what happened. I died. I went through three surgeries and I flat lined and I was resuscitated. We don't know how long I was out or gone but it was a shakeup, wakeup call for both of us.

Clare: The Lord did talk to you about me and He had some things to say about you - but when you saw Him, He did have some things to say.

Ezekiel: Keep this in your hopper: you're going along in your marriage and your ministry and you feel like everything is okay. And your partner or someone in your life isn't quite there, but whatever, I'm just going to go along. All of a sudden, they are right at the edge of being taken or maybe they are. All I know is, I felt like I was sliding down; I could see the bed rails sliding down beside me and I was coming out of myself, my body.

I was instantly in front of the Lord. There were two things I noticed immediately, the first thing is there was a deep chasm between He and I. My first response was to say, "Oh Lord, oh thank you, God this is the moment I've waited for and I'm here," but then I realized it wasn't a very wide chasm, but it was extremely deep. He probably couldn't have been more than 4-5 feet away from me but He wasn't smiling. I was like, "Oh, no, Lord... what? What's wrong? No, this is my moment, my homecoming." He didn't say a word, He was downcast.

I began asking for mercy and He started to speak to me about things in my character, things in our character as a couple, and things within our body, the two as one and later reflected on the Body of the Church. Some of those points were, "You are not being grateful and thankful. You are hurting the heart of My Father. You have no idea the pain you are causing My heart and His heart because you complain, you bicker, you judge one another, and you are ungrateful. You have got to stop complaining. You have got to stop judging and start thanking and being grateful for the gift you are to one another that My Father gives and that My Holy Spirit gives you."

I knew he was dead serious, eternally serious.

Clare: Yes, I knew that was a real wake up call for me, too.

Ezekiel: So please, just consider this person that you may have had some judgments about: they don't go to church enough; they won't go to Bible study. In our case I was standing before the Lord and I looked behind Him and I could see all the beauties of paradise; all the things I dreamed of, everything I'd ever wanted and I said, "Lord, what do I do? This is your call. Is this IT for me?"

Jesus said, "It's your choice, but before you choose I want you to see this." He showed me my wife standing in a hallway, with many people around her that had come. Her shoulders were slumped and her eyes were drenched with tears. She looked totally devastated. I thought, "Oh, Lord, I want this more than anything in this world but I can't do that to her. I can't put her through this. I don't want it to be like this. I can't come. I need to go back."

I could tell it was the answer He was moving for. The fact that this can happen to you and it could be your husband that the Lord brings up before him and is honest about the state of his soul but he's also going to be honest about the state of your soul. The Lord will give him an overview of everything. He will tell your husband, "It's up to you." What have you cultivated in this man so that he would say, "Lord please, I don't want to put her through that. I love this woman."

This is a man who works 40-60 hours a week, so that you could pray for you and your children. What are you going to do with that? Please don't let the Lord have to correct you like He corrected us. Don't let it get to that point. Pray and ask for the grace to be transparent and honest, to be able to be correctable by the Lord. "Lord show me." It's okay, He'll leave the good things and make them better. He's just going to take the things that will make you crash and burn anyway.

Clare: The Lord had told me, "You can have all the gifts, the teachings, the songs, the artwork and they can be in operation - but if you don't honor your husband, I can't use you. He doesn't want to replicate the disrespect for leadership and your covering within the Body. That's part of my nature. It will bleed through on my teachings, my songs and it will poison the Body. He would rather not use my gifts then. He doesn't want me growing that resentment and keeping it going within the Body.

Ezekiel: They say that you always water the grass furthest away from the sprinkler, but the grass closest to the water source doesn't seem to get anything. We have children, family, friends who watch and listen - many of them unbelievers. They hear how we speak and how we act, especially the younger women who look to you for wisdom. You don't want them to follow that example.

Clare: Right. The hardest, when the man doesn't feel like a covering or being respected as a covering and is not covering you, you can be misled by a Jesus look-alike. They are demons masquerading as Jesus who are extremely subtle and know how to talk very graciously. It will set you up for a fall.

Ezekiel: Why would you say the Lord would allow something like that in the first place?

Clare: Because the man isn't covering the wife and the wife isn't going to her husband to look for his covering. In the situation with us, when you had that near-death experience it really became obvious that the buck stops with you. The Lord was holding you accountable for my behavior, so part of you wanted to avoid confrontation on the issue and go along with it - and the other part was insecure about it.

I think what happened is, the whole situation turned out to be so painful, that you came to understand that the Lord does hold you responsible for the errors of your wife; if you're not correcting her when you know there's a problem. Many of us believe in the Rapture and we're waiting for the Lord and some of us have set dates. Then the date rolls around and nothing happens. If the husband is not busy about the Lord's business; covering his wife with discernment, she could be running her entire household to end on a certain date. The repercussions of that are tremendous.

You think, "Well, there's no point in doing this, because that's not going to happen, because the Lord is coming sooner than that." A lot of people have done that and it causes disorder in the Body of Christ. If the man is asleep on the couch in his household, then his household is disrupted, because he's not discerning and taking the time to go to the Lord. He will also suffer a disordered household and disordered life because he didn't stand up and get to work and cover his wife. She could be going off on a crazy tangent and he could be saying, "Yes dear, yes dear." In the meantime, things could be falling apart in his family, things for the future, and things that should be done.

This isn't the case for everyone, but it can happen and the Lord will hold man accountable for those mistakes. He might say, "Why didn't you pray, listen to Me, and cover your wife to see to it that she didn't go off in a bizarre direction?" All of us believing in the Rapture is bizarre anyway, but we all know it's going to happen and we're all waiting for it. I just want to stress the point that the buck does stop with the husband. He could be keeping his nose to the TV or in the newspaper and he's going to suffer the consequences for not getting in there and discerning it.

Ezekiel: If he feels that his opinion just doesn't matter anyway, and if the Lord said this or that and he feels forced to believe these things, he begins to feel powerless. Like he doesn't have any use and he feels like he needs to submit to the Lord that is speaking to you, but he doesn't really know what's going on. You will have to build this guy up again, because his self-esteem is so low and his worth is so low, he doesn't believe God can use him.

First of all you need to ask the Lord, "Please give me Your heart and mind for my husband. Give me Your love for my husband so that I can naturally, not reading a script like a robot, can naturally build him up. So he can know, feel, and experience how precious he really is. I have to see that first Lord. Show me."

Clare: That's not to say that it's totally your responsibility that he is not discerning it's just to say we have a part in him having the hope and the trust, so that he can discern, too.

Ezekiel: We can all be lazy. Men shouldn't be slovenly. We do have times for different things. He needs a little time to relax and unwind but then the Lord is the only one that can convict him to get up and pray. It won't just come from conviction - if he falls in love with the Lord, the Lord will be so sweet. Your husband will throw the TV out and quit the newspaper. He'll run to be with the Lord and he'll run to be with you and to pray for you.

I can tell you from personal experience that's happened to me. I had to ask the Lord, "Please Lord, give me a new love for You," because I realized that I don't love You the way I should. Boy, you pray for that for yourself and your husband you'll both be so madly in love with Jesus and running to Him and you'll accompany one another and not abandon one another.

Clare: The other point to that is, you are the only love letter that your husband has. If by your love for him and your acknowledgment for him, and building him up, he begins to recognize what great worth he is in the eyes of the Lord.

Ezekiel: I have to say this, that my wife protects me. She covers and protects me. She makes me feel so loved, so safe, and so secure that I feel comfortable, relaxed, and rested enough to go in to prayer and nurture that relationship with the Lord. This also helps to love and pray for her and to back her up and to also have the courage to step up and say, "Honey, something just doesn't feel right."

Clare: I tell you when you come to me with that sweet, meek, loving voice, "Something's not feeling right," I know that you tremble before you come to me, because of my past with you. When I hear those words I really get down to business. I take it and put it up to question, serious question. If he has any inkling that something is off, I take it as a sign from the Lord that something isn't right in the water.

Ezekiel: We have a discernment shelf. It all comes down to respect. If you begin to love the Lord and fall in love with Him again - you may think you already do but you can always love Him more - you will start to see and love the Lord in your husband and he'll begin to see and love the Lord in you. You'll begin to respect and honor one another in the Lord.

Clare: Just so our Youtube family understands just how human we are... this wasn't easy for us tonight. We had to back over some things that were very painful; things that I didn't want to remember and things he didn't want to remember. We did that, because the Lord told me basically, "I am wanting to heal marriages; especially for those people who have prophetic callings." He didn't say that but that was the impression of His focus. There are people out in the Youtube family and God has called you to the prophetic and to be healers in the Body; to be used by Him.

The problem is that there is disorder in your family and that's an open door for the demons to come in and sift you. Again, it has to do with the husband's role. That's what He wants to address right now, because He needs the wives to bring the husbands back from the dead, cooperate with the Holy Spirit and raise them back to where they need to be. It isn't going to be easy. It's going to take all of our feminine whiles to accomplish it, I'm sure. It will be so worthwhile, because when a man covers you and you are equally yoked spiritually, it's really beautiful. It's worth all the work and all the tears. I just want to share that with you because it hasn't been easy for us, either.