 | Husbands7 Things You May Not Do When She Sins Against YouPosted Friday, July 18th, 2008 and visited 148 times, 1 so far today by MInTheGap |
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The Complete Husband
By Lou Priolo
Love is more than a feeling, it’s a choice. When you took your vow to love your wife, you did not vow that you would have the feeling of love until death, but that you would choose to love her until death.
This choice means that you would prefer her over all others, and it means that whether it was easy or whether it was hard you would still choose to love her.
That is why there are 7 things that you may not do when she sins against you:
- You may not retreat.
- You may not surrender.
- You may not give up.
- You may not throw in the towel.
- You may not wimp out.
- You may not allow her evil to prevail against you.
- You may not allow her sin against you to provoke you to sin against her.
The problem is that none of these are easy. When we get into a fight with our spouse, when relations are tough it’s a whole lot easier to let the whole situation alone, batten down the hatches, and wait for the storm to blow over.
That’s not biblical.
As a bonus, here’s 8 symptoms of battle fatigue that will show you that you’ve been overcome by evil instead of overcoming evil:
- Telling yourself things like, “She’ll never change,” or, “I just can’t live with this woman any longer.”
- Permitting yourself to become bitter at her.
- Relinquishing your spiritual leadership (“After all, she won’t let me lead anyway”).
- Unnecessarily limiting the scope of communication with her because of unsuccessful attempts to resolve conflicts in the past.
- Allowing anger to keep you from confronting her biblically.
- Allowing yourself to become sinfully angry, anxious or depressed about the hurtful things she does to you.
- Allowing your “hurt feelings” to keep you from fulfilling your biblical responsibilities as a husband and/or father.
- Resorting to sinful, retaliatory actions such as: gossip, withdrawal, slander, name calling, pouting, temper tantrums, sulking, threatening, quarreling, abusive speech.
In our next installment, we’ll take a look at some of these, and ways that we can effectively deal with a breakdown in communication.
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July 22nd, 2008 at 12:04 pm Subscribed to Comments
Very powerful lists - both. I wonder if you could do an article or two on what, in your opinion, biblical leadership and biblical submission look like. So often, I see men being harsh and women being doormats and I disagree with that. I’ve also seen men give up their leadership and women take over leadership out of a fear of the harsh/doormat combination.
AG’s last blog post..Prayer for Kaleo
July 24th, 2008 at 9:25 am
@AG: That’s actually not a bad idea. I’m not sure that I even have the right balance when it comes to this, so it’d be an interesting study to pursue.
What makes this topic interesting and difficult is that there are two very difficult things to reconcile.
The first is that the culture is such that it actually is beginning to encourage a dominant female. Without diving into how the culture is doing this and why, the husband and wife relationship is much different than it was a few decades ago. Some things are better, some are worse.
The second is that people vary in their personality and position. Some men are natural leaders, as are some women. So, speaking in generalizations is tough because the naturally submissive man has to become the leader, or they have to take this into account before being married.
I’ll see what I can think up.
July 24th, 2008 at 10:03 am Subscribed to Comments
Even with allowing room for varieties of personality types, etc., there should still be a biblical guideline for these things. I’m wrestling with the definitions, as well. To me, plain and simple, biblical leadership is servant leadership - leading the wife by first serving. Biblical submission is also servant submission - honoring the husband by service. But that’s a very general statement and needs a lot of clarity before making it practical.
AG’s last blog post..The Front Fell Off
July 24th, 2008 at 10:12 am
@AG: You’re certainly right that there should be guidelines outside the personality types. Submission implies that a person is willingly setting aside something in order to serve others.
Biblical leadership is serving– not lording it over someone. But the servant-leader is someone that is serving by leading. It’s being the one to make the decisions and take the responsibility for those decisions. It’s different than a dictator that declares what will be done.
The submission of the wife to the husband is different, in that she’s not the servant-leader, but the follower. And here it is important that she helps her husband make decisions and lead. Because, especially in our culture, we have strong women and men that choose to avoid leading.
It really is complex.
July 24th, 2008 at 10:32 am Subscribed to Comments
It’s also important to help the husband make decisions and lead, especially where children are concerned, because sometimes the husband just needs a break. Maybe he’s got a huge presentation the next day at work that he needs to focus on.
I can’t stand it when a “helpmeet” is seen as more of a housekeeper than a partner in the relationship. Someone said to me once (I wish I could remember who!) that in being a helpmeet, sometimes we push our husbands.
If a man is running a race, which scripture says we all are, and he gets fatigued, his helper shouldn’t just stand there behind him and wait on him. But she can encourage him forward, even pushing him on. I think many Christians don’t understand this concept.
AG’s last blog post..The Front Fell Off
July 24th, 2008 at 11:00 am
@AG: You’re right, it is a partnership. There’s a continuum there when it comes to the each person in the relationship between doormat and dominant. The happy marriage has each person close together on that continuum. The unhappy marriage finds them further apart or equal (since truly equal– though possible in the Garden of Eden perhaps– results in problems all their own).