Christian women are endowed with great power. Power that can either build up their husband, or power that can destroy a man. Women who profess to be followers of Christ show behaviors that their daughters will copy, and continue in their marriages. It can be either righteous, Christ-centered, husband-honoring behavior, or attitudes and actions that are anything but righteous, centered in Christ or honoring to her husband. It’s our choice. It’s our responsibility. Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:33 that “each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” In today’s culture, with television and movies portraying husbands as laughable and brainless goofs, women are saturated with the idea that to respect or, oh.my.word – submit – to her husband is being medieval. Christians are called, though, to be counter-culture, to be in the world but not of the world. Even so, Christian women have a difficult time with the “r” and “s” words, and create within their marriage methods in which they can absolutely destroy their husbands. Throw away his stuff Mancaves. This genre of rooms in a house has the sole reputation of being where a man can be a man with all his stuff. Sports, hunting, whatever your husband wants in his room, he can have it – but the door had better be able to close. Often, this room is relegated to the unheated and uncooled garage. Some women have even thrown away the boxes of t-shirts that the man wore in high school. It was a simple thing. We were going to have an open house, and I was digging around the attic, looking for something, when I came across an old giant popcorn tin that held my husband’s prized sports stuff from his two favorite teams: the Cincinnati Reds and the Buckeyes of The Ohio State University, his Alma-mater. So I decided to bring it down and set up his things on a shelf in the living room. After all, this was his house too, and our house is too small for his own room mancave. He came home from work that night and noticed his things out in a space of prominence. That little act made his chest puff out and put a smile on his face. It said to him that he matters, and so does his stuff. Put the kids between you There’s nothing that says “you’re nothing but a babysitter that can give me a break” like handing him a kid who’s in bad need of a diaper change as soon as he walks in the door, then immediately locking yourself in the bathroom. “Hi honey, I’m home!” After our daughter was born, I made it a habit of freshening up my makeup (or putting some on), brushing my hair, and meeting him at the door upon his entrance. A nice welcome-home kiss, without a child between us, made him feel like at that moment, he was the priority in my day. God made a hierarchy of marriage, and this resembles Christ and the Church, His bride. A good marriage has at its head God, then the husband, then the wife. Therefore, a Christian woman needs to put God first, then her husband, then her children. Everything else is routed under these. A woman can either make or break her husband just by where she puts him in the order of life. If she’s constantly putting her kids or herself in front of her husband, he will quickly realize that she just doesn’t care that much for him. Listen: sometimes a Christian woman acts like her Christian husband is just a sperm-donor with a paycheck and babysitting talents. Don’t be like that. He is more than that. Snap at him often In order to fully destroy a man, one must snap at her husband when he walks in. If he says “Hi, how are you?” treat that like it’s a declaration of war and demand to know what he wants. Ladies, listen and answer this question carefully: Would you want to come home to you? Just like whining children are like nails on chalkboards, whining and hateful-sounding wives can make a man not want to come home. If we say we’re Christian, we need to be acting like it and studying the very Word of God that we carry around in that fashionable Bible cover. Check out these Proverbs: “A foolish child is a father’s ruin, and a quarrelsome wife is like the constant dripping of a leaky roof.” [19:13] “Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.” [21:9] “Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and nagging wife.” [21:19] “A quarrelsome wife is like the dripping of a leaky roof in a rainstorm;” [27:15] Matthew 7:12 is called the Golden Rule. It states, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Jesus said this. He did not say do to others what they do to you. He said, “Do to others what you would have them to do you.” Do you like it when your children snap back at you? Do you enjoy being the brunt of jokes and snide remarks? No? Neither does your husband. Treat him like you want to be treated. Go for the jugular Right after a man marries, realize that within him is an immature little boy who can score 3-point shots on the basketball court but cannot hit the hamper from two feet away, or worse – the toilet. Make sure that you bring these things up in front of his friends and absolutely belittle him until he storms out. Listen, Christian women: inside every man is a little boy who still likes to play basketball, and at time, video games. Inside every man is a little boy who can have his heart broken just like a 17-year-old girl. There is nothing sadder than a man with a broken heart. This can affect every relationship he will ever have. We either don’t realize the power we have over a man’s heart, or we do and we wield that power like a sharp sword, destined to destroy him. Scripture tells husbands to love us just as Christ loves the Church and tells us to respect our husbands. We must therefore respect them as we respect Christ. Even if we work outside the home and we get home after our husbands or at the same time, we kiss them first before the kids. We build them up in speech, in actions, in acknowledging the Christian partnership that the marriage should be. Women, we have the power within us to destroy our husbands. Would we want this same power used on us? No. We need to respect and love our husbands as the helpmeets we are, in the hierarchy of marriage God intended – not the false, sinful and disposable relationships the world projects.
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