Originally posted 5/22/20
God made each of us to be in relationship with not only him, but each other. Relationships are hard, messy, and beautiful all at once. If you have been married for longer than 30 seconds, you know it’s not easy to be in a relationship with someone else. Your husband may be your complete opposite. Where you like a nice, neat, and tidy house, your spouse just doesn’t see the mess. They can leave an eaten apple on the floor for a week and totally forget it’s there until they look down one day and see the rotten apple. You may love to go hiking and just be outdoors, while your spouse’s idea of a good time is cuddling on the couch, watching a movie together. Whatever your differences, one thing is certain, to maintain a healthy marriage, you must sacrifice and put in lots of hard work.
Ephesians 5:22-33 tells us what each of our roles are in marriage. Ephesians 5:33 sums it up like this, “However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” The husband must love his wife, and the wife must respect her husband. In our culture it’s easy to understand that love needs to be unconditional. We know that it is Godly to love and be loved unconditionally. We desire for our husbands to love us no matter how badly we may behave on any given day. It is true that our husbands should love us unconditionally, but love is not the only action mentioned in that verse. It says that women must respect their husbands.
Should we respect our husbands unconditionally? Is respect something that should be earned? Take a look at something my husband wrote regarding earning respect:
In reference to Eph 5:33, let’s say that a man’s wife believes that her husband has to earn the respect that the Lord commands her to give away freely (aka unconditional respect). Then what does the husband do? He puts together a list of what he must do and must not do to earn his wife’s respect. If he performs well, she might be pleased, except he will always need to be out-doing himself so she’ll be more pleased. On the flip side, if he doesn’t perform well, he will be punished. Verbal abuse, disrespect, and ignoration may follow. The husband will be caught in a cycle of confessing wrongdoing, performing better, failing, confessing… again and again on this vicious cycle. He has now turned his marriage into a religion, where he’s focused on rituals to appease an angry wife, afraid of punishment and condemnation. The relationship disintegrates until he gets sick and tired and looks for respect elsewhere. Maybe he finds it at work, where his professional accomplishments have earned him the respect he craves. Maybe there’s a coworker who lavishes him with respectful compliments, and he turns his heart toward a new lover. His marriage relationship is damaged beyond repair, and he tears himself apart from his wife, all to satisfy that inner need for respect.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my marriage to look anything like that description! Here’s the thing, ladies, we are commanded to respect our husbands. I have learned over the past 16 years of marriage that respect is something that guys need. It’s just as much a need for them as feeling love is a need for us. Imagine a world where our husbands walked around demanding that love needs to be earned. Don’t you think your relationship would look a lot like Brett’s description of earning respect? I do! Again, I have zero desire to be in a relationship where love has to be earned. I don’t believe I could ever do enough good things to maintain my husband’s love, if that were the case.
If respect isn’t something that men should have to earn, but it is something that is needed, how do we go about showing them respect unconditionally? First, repent to both your husband and God about your wrong thinking. Repent just means that you acknowledge that you were thinking about respect all wrong, and you will choose to think about respect like God does. Second, find times during the day or week to just say, “Honey, I really respect you for doing ______.” or “I really respect that you work so hard to provide for our family.” I challenge you to do this and see how your husband’s face lights up! Lastly, and most importantly, ask God to empower you to show unconditional respect to your husbands. Because showing our husbands unconditional respect is only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Here is a great example that my husband used in a study earlier this week:
Now, there’s a concept that we can’t give away something we haven’t received. Or, to say it in the positive sense, we can only give away that which has come into our possession. If someone asks me for $10 but I only have $1, my response is, “Sorry bud, I only have $1. I can’t give you $10 because I don’t have $10.” In the realm of marriage, we husbands can’t show unconditional love to our wives unless we have first received unconditional love from our Lord. This concept is the principle found in 1 John 4:19, “We love [unconditionally, agape] because He first loved [unconditionally, agape] us.” [brackets mine] In the same way, it is impossible for your wife to show unconditional respect unless she first receives it from God Himself. How do we receive unconditional love for our wives, and how do our wives receive unconditional respect for us? By asking. Ask, seek, and knock (Luke 11:9-13). Search for Him (Jer. 29:13). Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of what we need, and He fills us with His Spirit, empowering us with Himself, allowing us to operate in the heavenly realm, the realm where unconditional love and respect is freely received and given.
Have you received God’s unconditional love and respect? Here’s the thing ladies, God shows us exactly what unconditional respect looks like. Never once does God tell us that we have to earn anything from him. He gives everything to us, his children, freely and abundantly. (See Matthew 7:11.) God respects us enough to allow us to make our own decisions, both good and bad. God shows us respect by allowing us to be ourselves, even more than that he created us uniquely. If we as wives are going to show unconditional respect like God does, then we need to allow our husbands to make their own decisions. Even decisions that are bad decisions. I know how hard it is to sit back and let someone we love make a wrong decision, but it is imperative to do so if you want to have a healthy and Godly marriage. We also need to allow our husbands to be who God created them to be. They are unique individuals, just like you and I are, and they need the freedom to behave the way that God created them to be. Hear me when I say, I don’t mean that we need to tell our husbands it’s ok to do something that harms themselves or others. If my husband was doing something like looking at porn, and then claiming that he was just doing what God created him to do, I would tell him that is crap. By doing something like looking at porn it harms him, our marriage, potentially harms our children, and it definitely harms his wife because it would cause wounds to my heart and self confidence. So, no, I am not saying to give your husband the freedom to do anything and everything, but I am saying that as long as what he wants to do or how he wants to do something doesn’t cause damage to himself, yourself, your marriage, your kids, or anyone else, let him do it. Sure, it may not be the way you would do it, or even what you would want to do, but it’s ok.
Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed about raising my family near family. I grew up surrounded by cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. It was a great way to grow up! As we were having kids, we were living one state away from my family and two states away from my husband’s family. After six years, and three kids, we finally had the opportunity to live in the same city as my family. My dream was finally coming true! About a month after we got there, my husband’s job offered him a temporary position in Ireland. When he asked if I wanted to go, my response was, “Ha! No way! We literally just moved. I’m not going anywhere!” At first I really thought he was joking, but by the time he asked for the third time, I heard God tell me that we were going to go to Ireland. So although I had zero desire to move to a forgein country, I submitted to God and my husband. I respected my husband enough to allow him to make the decision that he thought was best for our family. It was definitely not a choice I would have made. Now we are six years later and going to Ireland was truly the best decision for our family. While this decision turned out for our good, not every decision my husband has made has turned out that way. Even still, I am thankful that we experienced the results of his bad decisions. Through each of those, God has used them to teach both of us valuable lessons. So go ahead and take a step back and a deep breath, and allow your husband to make those decisions. Everything will be ok. I promise!
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