What Do I Do If My Worthless Husband Won't Lead?

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Christ Alone, Human Sin, and the Coming Judgment

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish. God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. Listen and enjoy this installment of Iron Sharpening Iron as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

Here's Pastor Tim.

The Problem of a Passive Husband

On this episode of Iron Sharpening Iron, we will be answering the question, what do I do if my worthless husband won't lead? Now, as a result of the fall, men are typically tempted in two different directions as it relates to being husbands.

So there is a type of man who will use his authority to essentially dominate his wife. His leadership will be characterized by many irrational commands or instructions that he gives, which are often one-sided, contradictory, hypocritical in certain ways, and often self-centered.

And then he will use his temper to keep his wife under control and has a never-ending list of expectations that he might have, which the wife will fail to meet, while at the same time excusing and ignoring the own issues that he has to deal with himself.

And so there have been many men throughout the history of the world who face that temptation, the temptation to look at the weaker vessel and despise her, and then to use his authority to fundamentally pursue self-centeredness and to dominate her.

Now, that's not the most common temptation that men face today living in the kind of society we live in. Because we live in a matriarchal society, one of the things that happened is that men have fundamentally been feminized to great effect, and part of that feminization has led to the fact that many men are very passive, and this is a temptation that is the reverse temptation of the first.

And so there are many men who are very passive in their leadership, who give little to no tangible instruction, who take little to no initiative as it relates to the affairs of a household. They pretty much promote a laissez-faire kind of leadership where everything goes.

And most women, whether or not they know it or not, will be ultimately frustrated by that kind of leadership. Now, one of the questions that we received as it relates to our podcast in general was the question, what do I do if my worthless husband won't lead?

And there are certainly many situations in life where women are put in situations where they have passive husbands who provide little to no tangible direction. Now, due to the rise of the servant leadership movement within the Church, one of the things that's happened is the Church has promoted basically an irrational concept of leadership that essentially involves following.

So what's been promoted in the Church in many ways is a contradictory oxymoronic notion of leadership that involves little to no leading. And if there's any leadership to be had, it's mostly involved with consulting one's wife to find out what her opinion is on any situation that happens to come up.

Now, women who find themselves under this arrangement might ask the reasonable question, well, what do I do in this kind of arrangement? The Bible says I'm supposed to follow my wife, but then when I look at the way that my husband actually is, there's little to nothing that I can actually follow.

So what do I do in that sort of scenario? Now, no matter who's asking the question, whether it's a wife who's exasperated by the attitude of a husband or the actions of a husband, or if it's a husband coming to ask questions about how he can respond to a wife and whatever problems that she may have, one of the things that we ought to remember is the instruction of the scriptures, which tells us that if we're going to seek to help our loved ones, we must first get the log out of our own eyes so that we'll be able to see clearly to remove the speck which is in our brother's eye.

One of the things that we have to remember is that it's much easier to see the sins of other people against us as it is to see the sins that we commit against them. Now, part of this is related to simple biological realities.

When you think about the way that your eyes actually work, your eyes are set in your head in such a way that it's very difficult to see yourself. It's very easy to see other people and be totally blind to the faults and traits that you have which are sinful and dishonoring to God.

So one of the things that you always want to do when you are setting out at the task of trying to help someone else is to examine your own heart and to think about the sins that you commit yourself and to be much more focused and fixated on the kind of lessons that God wants you to learn before you seek to help anyone else.

Sanctification Through Trials in Marriage

Now, one of the things we realize is when you look at Romans 8 .28, we see that all things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. Now, most people understand that in some sort of trite and simplistic kind of way so that anytime anyone is in any kind of difficult situation and a woman who legitimately finds herself in a situation where she is dealing with a very passive husband is finding herself in a very frustrating situation to be under when you consider God's commands.

But anytime anyone finds himself in a situation like that, typically the counsel that we give to that sort of individual, it might involve some sort of trite presentation of, hey, everything works out for good.

So, you know, I know that it's hard but God has a lot of good things that will come from it. Now, the problem is that God definitely does have good things that will come from it but they may not be the kind of good things that you might expect.

Now, because we live in a world that's dominated by the prosperity gospel, one of the things that we hear when we hear a verse like that is we hear what's being communicated is that, you know, my husband is a real passive, worthless, you know, human being who provides little to no leadership but some good things are going to come out of it.

Maybe someone will get saved as a result of that. Maybe, you know, at some point God will benefit me financially. Maybe it will have ramifications in terms of my testimony and everything else. And I would say that some of those things might happen but, you know, if you keep on reading in the verse, the verse says, for those whom he foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

So one of the things you realize is that God's working everything to good to those who love him, who are calling on him to his purpose. And one of the things you might realize is that there is a good that he has in mind which you don't have to, you know, search for and strain for and you're not looking for the good of positive and favorable circumstances.

Although positive and favorable circumstances may come from whatever particular trial you're facing, the primary good that the passage has in mind is the good of your sanctification. So the text says, for those whom he foreknew, he predestined to become conformed to the image of his son.

So the best question that you can ask is not, what good will come out of this difficult situation? The best question you should be asking is the question, in what ways is God attempting to sanctify me through the midst of this trial?

So James tells us to count it all joy when you fall into various trials for you know the testing of your faith and produces steadfastness. And let that steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

If you're dealing with the trial of a passive husband, one of the things you ought to realize is that this is the trial that God sovereignly put in your life in order to make you more like him. And so if you want to know what the good that God has in mind to come from that trial, the first and foremost question you should be asking is, in what way is God using this situation to make me more like him?

And that's a question that might have any number of different answers. For instance, I need to grow in selflessness. I need to grow in being sacrificial. I need to grow in patience. You can just think about any of the fruit of the Spirit.

God's using this situation that I chose to be in of my own will. He's using this situation to help make me more loving, to help make me filled with more joy, and realize that joy is not dependent on positive favorable circumstance, but a confident trust that God's at work.

This situation God's designed to help me to have a supernatural kind of peace that the world doesn't understand. This situation's helping me to be long-suffering, to follow Jesus' example of being gentle and kind and faithful and self-controlled.

So you just go through the fruit of the Spirit, and you can see there's many different ways and situations that God's going to use that for your good. So part of the answer to this question, what do I do if I'm married to basically a worthless, passive, beta male kind of husband, is to do a spiritual inventory on yourself, and look at the ways that God is pushing you to grow.

Self-Examination Before Correcting Your Spouse

Now, a second part of the aspect of just getting the log out of your own eye is that there's often many situations that we find ourselves in where the things that we're grossly offended about as it relates to our spouse are things that we're committing at that very moment.

I can't tell you how many times I've been in some sort of argument with someone and been a bit indignant about their tone or the way they're talking to me or the facial expressions or their body language, only to be totally blind to my own tone, my own facial expressions, my own body language.

It's very easy to pick at the actions of others and be totally blind to your own actions. And so in order to help people, the Bible says, if anyone falls into any transgression, you who are spiritual, restore such a person in a spirit of gentleness, look unto yourself, lest you also be tempted.

One of the things we need to do is sober self-examination. And some of the questions that we ought to do along those lines is, you have a passive husband, some of the questions you might want to ask yourself are, are there ways in which my attitude is contributing to this?

Are there ways in which I'm resisting the actual leadership that he does give me? When I say that he's not leading in any way, am I having unreasonable expectations about what leadership actually looks like in the ways that he actually is leading?

Am I supporting and following those? Am I minimizing those? Because there's areas of leadership that I think that he's failing at, am I only seeing the negative, failing to see the positive? Am I encouraging him in the positive and everything else?

Now, these are all reasonable questions to ask and they're the kind of questions that a thoughtful and a humble person will ask. And they're the kind of questions that are able to be asked without doing some sort of simplistic calculus, which seems to think that life works in such a way as that in complex relationships, there is one person who is 100 a villain and another person who is 100 a victim.

Life typically doesn't work like that. Marriage problems don't happen in a vacuum. So when you think about the context of your own marriage, sin begets sin. So here's the thing. Life is typically pretty complicated.

When two people get married, you have two sinners who are living under the same roof and their sin influences the other person. And so often one of the things that you're going to find is that when you sin against your spouse, they're going to be tempted to sin back at you.

And so one of the things that you don't want to do is you don't want to adopt some simplistic kind of calculus, which seems to think that all of my husband's sin is somehow my fault in a simplistic way.

And yet at the same time, one of the things that you don't want to do is ignore the possibility that you might be provoking him. So you don't want to take responsibility for his sin, but then you don't want him to blame shift his sin as a result of your sin.

So everyone's going to be accountable for their own sin, but then you can also acknowledge while everyone's accountable to their own sin, there are things we do to tempt one another. And so one of the things that you want to do in that kind of scenario is do some honest self-examination, see what you think the Lord's trying to teach you.

And then you also want to be thinking, are there ways in which I'm provoking my husband? Are there ways in which I'm encouraging this sort of situations? Are there things that I can do that will help in this situation and hurt in this situation?

And so the first step is that sober step of self-examination. And that's across the board. If the husband's asking, what do I do with my worthless, lazy wife? We're going to give a similar list of self-examination that's going to go before we seek to correct the other person.

And it's a sign of spiritual health that you take that list of self-examination far more seriously than whatever's happening on the other end. Because at the end of the day, one of the most encouraging things about marriage, despite the fact that there are some frustrating elements, is the fact that you can be confident that God is only going to hold you accountable for your own sin.

So at the end of the day, you're going to stand before the Lord, and you're going to give an account for your actions. And you're going to give an account for the actions that you perform as a woman. God's going to judge your husband for the leadership and the lack thereof.

But you functionally don't have to bear that kind of judgment. The only judgment that you're going to bear is the kind of judgment where you stand before the Lord and give an account for your own actions personally.

How to Draw Out Direction from a Passive Husband

So God's not holding you responsible for the things that your husband does or doesn't do. He's only going to hold you responsible for the things that you are doing. Now that being the case, I know that there are many situations like this where a woman will say, Hey, my husband's not leading in any way.

What does it follow? And I would look at that kind of woman and the standard kind of advice that I would give in that kind of scenario is the simple kind of advice just to say, Well, if he's not leading, you should be asking him for direction.

So if he's not communicating his desire, if he's not communicating his wishes, if he's not communicating his direction in a very clear sense, there are many ways to get that kind of information out of him, assuming that you're the kind of person who actually legitimately wants to follow.

One of the temptations you should be aware that you might be tempted to face is the temptation that all women face to one degree or the other. While a husband is tempted towards passivity and a husband is tempted towards being domineering, women are also, as a result of the fall, going to be tempted to dominate their husband or to be doormats for their husband who are basically spineless jellyfish who provide no kind of pushback or feedback in any way.

So I wouldn't discount the fact that it might be perhaps much easier to say I would love to follow my husband than what it actually is on the ground. It may be a much more difficult proposition to follow a husband than you may think.

And it may be that you're overestimating at times your willingness to follow him. But one of the ways that you can test that is to go to him and to ask him for a tangible direction. There's been scenarios in my life where I have authority figures over me that are very difficult to follow because they don't seem to have biblical priorities.

They don't seem to have biblical values. They seem to be thinking about things in crass and worldly ways. And one of the things I've tried to mitigate against that is I've tried to be the kind of person who is looking for ways to follow.

It may be that there is an individual in my life who in some sense I'm told to respect and honor who I look at and I realize that maybe I'm not getting a whole lot of spiritual advice. And so there are scenarios where I look at and I say, hey, they have good practical wisdom as it relates to this and so I'm going to go to them for this good practical wisdom and see what I can get out of it.

But a woman can think the same way with a husband who doesn't even have spiritual concerns. A husband who is a pagan, an absolute pagan, a woman can devote herself to his priorities and the kind of leadership he has.

And the reality is it's not a matter of whether or not, it's not a matter of if a husband has leadership, it's what is the leadership that he has. And a lot of times passivity is a kind of leadership.

It's just a kind of leadership that doesn't involve a whole lot of direction as far as that goes. And so if I'm a woman in that kind of situation, one of the things that you can do is you can constantly be asking your passive husband for his advice.

You can be constantly asking your passive husband for his direction. Your husband comes home from work and one of the things that you can say to him is, what do you think we should do today? What is your plan for the day?

How do you think we should spend our time? Those are things that you can ask. You can be approaching your husband, you can say, hey, assuming you're in a situation where your husband's not taking you to church or being a spiritual leader in that sort of way, you can go up to your husband, you can ask him, hey, what do you think we should be looking for in a church?

And have you looked at any? And are there any that you've thought about? And what are your suggestions? And what do you think? And everything else. And a wife can do that. And if at some point a husband is telling his wife, quit nagging me, quit talking to me about it, one of the things she can respectfully do at that point is to say, would you mind if I go visit with the kids and go to a church while you're trying to figure out which one you want us to go to?

Because I don't want to keep on neglecting the fellowship of the saints. And I think at that point you might want to approach it that way. And if he says no, then I think at some point you're having a conversation where you're saying, I have to obey God rather than men.

But what I'm trying to say is even with a passive husband who's not providing a much tangible leadership and direction, you can come to him and you can try to ask him for the advice he knows. Try to ask him for direction in as many areas as you can think of.

If you're looking for direction, one of the things you might find is he's giving a lot more of it than you might realize. And if you could latch on to that and try to follow the actual leadership that he's given, you might find that he's doing a lot more than what you think.

Respect, Quiet Witness, and the Limits of a Passive Husband

Now, a woman who finds herself in that sort of situation might basically get exasperated and say essentially, it feels like I'm holding my husband's hand and this kind of emasculates him in my eyes and how am I supposed to respect a person that I have to basically hold their hand and lead them.

And I would just say to that kind of person that God is gracious with us in our many failings and you made the choice that you made and you're in the situation you're in and God's designing it for your good.

And there's really nothing to stop you from following even a very passive husband in the way that he's leading. Primarily, if there's functionally zero tangible practical direction that he's going to give even with you're coming to him for leadership and he turns that into conflict and fights and arguments and everything else, then one of the things you can realize is that he's basically providing me leadership.

It's just not very specific. He's basically, in a certain sense, whatever he's doing, he's not micromanaging me and so there's a lot more freedom in that kind of arrangement. And so I just wouldn't overthink it.

I would just follow the things that you can have to follow. Pray for him. I think some of the best things you can do is to not get embittered by it, not just fixate upon it, not just fixate upon realities that don't seem to be changing, not just be a continual source of conflict.

The Bible tells a wife to win a husband over without a word as they see her chase and respectful contact. There's nothing to stop you from attempting to win him over without a word if a conversation becomes unfruitful and unhelpful.

There's nothing to stop you from being respectful, even to a passive husband. And one of the things you're doing at that point is you're not respecting his decisions, you're respecting his position. And there's nothing to stop you from being loving and filled with joy and patience and kindness and faithfulness and gentleness and meekness and self-control.

There's nothing to stop you from any of that and showing even the worst kind of scoundrel respect that's due to his position. And so all you can do at a certain point is just pursue the things God tells you to pursue and God's not going to hold you accountable to your actions.

But one of the things that you ought to realize in that moment, though, is that if you're dealing with a husband who's showing little to no spiritual leadership at all, has no interest in spiritual things, providing zero prudential direction, it might be that you're married to an unbeliever and it might be that the best thing you can do is just call what it is and start to pray for them.

Church Support and Final Exhortation

Now, the best thing that women can do in that kind of situation is to attach themselves to a biblical church who can help them and give them practical advice that is going to deal with their specific situation.

It's almost impossible to give helpful counsel from a distance without knowing all the factors that are of the know. But if you can find a good, faithful New Testament church that practices church discipline, that's going to be a great help to you that will actually take on the job of shepherding well and not hand that off to someone else.

That would be a great help to you in knowing how to interact with this sort of situation, which is hard and difficult.

This has been another installment of Iron Sharpening Iron. As always, if you would like to have your question included in one of these midweek episodes, email us at biblebashedpodcast at gmail .com. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Gab.

Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.