Husbands, Love Your Wives (part 2)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Father, we thank you for this glorious morning, for this opportunity we have to come together as brothers and sisters in Christ, to rejoice in all that you have done for us in Christ.

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Father, I pray that as we look to your Word, as we really mine some of the depths of it and some of the teaching over the centuries about husbands, about the relationships between men and women,

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Father, I pray that you would bless our time, bless our interactions, Father, lead us to be indeed better husbands and fathers.

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In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, I'll try to compete with the hubbub in the kitchen.

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Last week we started talking about this, and I talked about leadership, and one of the reasons

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I talked about leadership is because every husband, every husband is a leader, and some of us are better leaders than others, obviously, but I thought

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I would start with that to sort of set the tone, and one of the things

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I said last week is that leaders set the tone in whatever organization they're in.

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Fathers, husbands set the tone in their homes. They set the parameters for what's acceptable, and then you have to sort of check on that to make sure that those things are happening, because if you remember, you get what you inspect, not what you expect.

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We talked about a lot of things with regard to it. I don't have my whiteboard this morning, which is a shame, but we talked about delegating, and I wanted to just stress that again.

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When you think about delegating authority, it doesn't make you less when you delegate authority.

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It just means that you're probably wise in that you understand that you have some weaknesses, and your wife has strengths that you don't have, and so you delegate those things to her.

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And finally, I get to the material that I intended to talk about last week, and that I'm starting with a ...

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I don't even want to start with that, true or false. Let's just open up to Genesis chapter 2. We're going to see that really from the beginning, men and women were different.

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That didn't mean that women were inferior. It didn't mean that men were superior. It just meant that they're different, and by the way, if I could say it this way, the difference is good.

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It's a good thing. Genesis chapter 2, and I'm going to read verses 18 to 24.

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In fact, I think some of this was read yesterday. All right.

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Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.

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Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast in the field, and every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

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And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock, and to the birds of the heavens, and to every beast of the field.

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But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. So the

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Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, took one of his ribs, and closed up its place with flesh.

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And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman, and brought her to the man.

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Then the man said, this is at last, bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.

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She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

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Now it's interesting to me that God brings every single creature to Adam, says, name this thing.

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And you get the idea, you get the picture, especially in light of what the conclusion of this passage is here.

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That when God brought them, it was sort of to see not only what

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Adam would name them, but how he would evaluate these creatures. And you can just kind of see that Adam is anticipating something, something to sort of kindle an affection in him, to kindle an emotion in him.

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I mean, you can just imagine as these different animals are brought, here comes the duck -billed platypus, and Adam goes, well this is really awesome, and I don't know what to do with that.

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Or a giraffe or an elephant, you know, the elephant comes down and sits next to Adam, and he thinks, well, there may be wisdom in cuddling up at night, but I'm not cuddling up with that thing.

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It rolls over, I'm dead. I mean, there are a lot of creatures that are brought to him, and he just kind of lets them pass.

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It's shocking to me that we don't see a message or a word here about dogs, but we don't, so much for the greatest friend.

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But Proverbs 18 .22 says, he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the

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Lord. And so ultimately, what does Adam get? He gets favor, he gets Eve.

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And when we think about that favor, I wanted to say this, because I talk to some men sometimes who say, you know what,

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I don't love my wife anymore. That's a really tough one.

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What would you say to somebody who says, I don't love my wife anymore? You don't understand what love is, and then you start playing the foreigner song.

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Tell him, he should want to know what love is. No. Yes, that's correct. You don't know what love is.

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Anthony, what's love got to do with it? We're going to go through all the love song titles.

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Well, yeah, but I wouldn't play that one. Anthony, go home and, there's your homework for the week.

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Go home and listen to that song. Unconditional positive regard as a definition for love.

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I like that. Okay, you don't feel love, you do it. Cindy, did you have something? Repent is good, right?

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I don't love my wife anymore. Repent. Why would you say repent? Because Ephesians 5 .25

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says, husbands, love your wives. It doesn't say, if you love your wives.

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It says, love your wives. It's an imperative, a command, right? I don't love my wife anymore.

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I'm sorry for you because you need to repent. Other thoughts?

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You still have to love your neighbor and your enemy. What if your wife, my wife is my enemy?

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What does Jesus say? Love your enemy. Okay, 1

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Corinthians 13, not based on emotion. It's just how we love, right? What's a basic thing that each and every

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Christian can do every day to kind of get their day off to the right start? Could do that, but how about this?

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You know, you wake up in the morning and you just start counting your blessings and one of the things you think is, in light of what

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I deserve, the Lord has really blessed me. First of all, I woke up. Secondly, I woke up in a bed.

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Lord willing, it was mine, right? I own it. I paid for it. I'm not on the street.

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I'm not, you know, serving in some foreign land under awful circumstances. I'm alive.

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I've got a place to live. I've got a wife, which the

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Bible says is a blessing. All my sins are forgiven. I mean, for every husband,

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I would just say this. If you can wake up every morning and think, in light of what I deserve, I'm not in hell. I'm bound for glory because the finished work of Christ Jesus and this is good, right?

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I have eternal blessing in the sense that all my sins are forgiven and I have a temporal blessing in the sense that I have a wife, a companion.

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These are good things and we need to praise God for them. If you're waking up thinking, sure,

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I have eternal life, but I have a wife, repent.

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Repent. Now back to Genesis for a moment. Up to this point in Genesis, God is creating and what does he say about everything that is created?

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It's good. And then what does he say again? He says, it is not good that man should be alone.

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It is not good that man should be alone. If we just think about the last couple of years, maybe what was the hardest parts of the whole pandemic?

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Stuck inside. Well, yeah, stuck inside with someone else in your case. Talking about the cat, naturally.

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Stuck inside. I mean, there was a time where civil libertarians used to file lawsuits for people being in what?

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Solitary confinement because they said it was cruel and inhuman punishment and it is tough being alone, being isolated and that was one of the hardest things.

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Well, so when God looks down on the earth and he says, all these things are good. It's really good what I've done here.

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He's not patting himself on the back. He's just noting that everything is perfect just the way it should be.

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And then he looks at man and says, that poor guy, poor

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Adam. He's alone. He's a pathetic single guy. He's subsisting on pop tarts and whatnot.

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Microwave macaroni and cheese. When all these animals are paraded in front of Adam and he names them, they're brought to him and he names them.

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That didn't solve the problem of it not being good that Adam was alone. He wasn't talking about, let's make a bunch of animals because there already were animals on the earth.

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When he makes the companion Eve for Adam and Adam says,

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Pastor Mike talked yesterday about the poetic nature of it. I'm not going to go into that, but just listen to what he says.

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This at last, talking about Eve, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

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This is someone, this is someone, this is a person.

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This is someone with whom I can have community. This is someone who can end my loneliness as it were.

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He's excited. When Eve comes, I'll just say, strolling down the aisle, right?

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She's walking down. I mean, there's no flower girl. There's none of that stuff. But I think in the same way that we saw

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Tommy yesterday looking down the aisle as Caroline was walking down or as he's looking down the aisle, as she's walking down the aisle,

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I think Adam had that same sort of smitten look on his face.

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I think he was just overjoyed. Now, one commentator, his name's

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Hamilton, says the last part of verse 18 reads literally,

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I will make for him a helper as in front of him. And he says that what that means is that what

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God creates for Adam will correspond to him, will not be superior to him nor inferior to him but an equal.

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The creation of this helper will form one half of a polarity and will be to man as the

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South Pole is to the North Pole. Again, not alone, having a companion.

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That's how we're to think of our wives. I mean, here's a kind of a concrete example.

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What is probably the number one complaint of wives? And maybe you've never heard this one before so maybe

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I'll be giving you new information. What do you suppose the number one complaint of wives is? We never talk.

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See, he's only been married a month and he already knows this. Two months, whatever. We never talk.

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Okay, well, I remember what I used to say is, I just got home, I've been talking all day long or I've been running around chasing bad guys or I've been dealing with bad guys or whatever the deal is,

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I'm tired. I don't want to talk. Well, she wants to talk. Why? Because she's wired for companionship and besides that, the kids aren't really good companions.

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So, get home, she wants to talk. This new creation which man has called a helper, this is the wife, right?

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And Hamilton says that this word,

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I mean, I won't go through all the details of it, but it's often applied to God himself in terms of his relationship to Israel.

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Your wife is every bit the image bearer of God that you are. And the ideal wife, and I say this all the time, what do you suppose makes the ideal wife?

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I'll ask you, I'll leave it to the reader. The married guys are probably like not wanting to answer this question.

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There's some wisdom in that. What is the, what, yes, Janet. Okay, the wife that God gives us.

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You know, there's another thing I, no, it's normally the wife who says this, I think I married the wrong person.

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What's the correct answer to that? Well, that's so close,

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Becky. Yes. Okay, you know, fine,

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Mr. Wright, you make Mr. Wright. Women, your husband is putty in your hands.

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How do you know that you've married the right person? What's that? Because you married them.

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That's why I said it's so close, Becky. It's not because God allowed, you know, in the design of things,

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God designed that you would marry this person. And it's for your good and for God's glory.

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Does it always feel like that? No. But what makes a really good wife, you know, my wife says, well, it's the one you married, and that's true.

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But ultimately, if we just think about this idea of a man alone, right,

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Adam, God says it's not good for him to be alone. Why not? Why?

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Adam had no sins. Why wasn't it good for man to be alone? Okay, because we're relational, right?

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We talked about it's, I would say injurious. We can even say poisonous to us to be locked up and isolated, right?

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Because we are relational. We are social. Why else was it not good for man to be alone? Yes. Okay.

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She helps in all areas. I mean, are there things that, you know, maybe a wife is better at than a man?

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I mean, the guys should be saying yes. They're definitely, you know, my house, it's like, what is she better at?

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I don't know, putting things together, you know, reading blueprints, all kinds of stuff that I just,

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I'm like, what is that? The ideal wife,

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I mean, in my mind, and part of the thing when we're doing premarital counseling, I sort of try to figure out, you know, which of them is strong in different areas and which of them is not as strong.

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And it's interesting to me because sometimes couples come along and the two people are very similar, similar strengths and weaknesses.

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And what's the problem with that? Okay, they amplify their strengths and they amplify their weaknesses or their blind spots, maybe even.

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Whereas if there are differences, those things can, you know, let's say the guy has, you know, gaps, if I just say these are the gaps, and the woman can kind of help close those gaps.

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Well, that makes them a better team than if they're, you know, both the same. I don't know why, what that's all about.

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But anyway, I mean, is that always true?

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No, but I think if you don't, if you don't at least look at that, you're being a little bit foolish.

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Now getting back to this scene in Genesis, the animals are creatures, but they're not,

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Savannah said, they're not helpers. Adam has to look elsewhere for his compliment, for his helper.

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I like what Matthew Henry said, I liked it so much I posted on Facebook last week. He said, Eve was not made out of Adam's head to top him, not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.

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When we, you know, what do wives want from their husbands ultimately? I think, I think this quote from Matthew Henry tells us essentially what they want to be treated like equals.

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They want to be protected, in other words, they want to know that they're safe and they want to know that they are loved.

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And I think that's a pretty good summary, right? Ladies?

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Okay? I mean, any objections? Now let's talk about verse 24 in Genesis 20, or Genesis 2, leaving and cleaving.

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It's interesting because, you know, when you hear the term leaving, what do you think? Yeah, going out, disappearing, see ya, you know, bye mom and dad, love ya, leave the light on.

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That's not what it means. In fact, it's interesting that if you, I'll just read what R. Kent Hughes says, he says, neither before Moses nor after Moses was it ever the custom for a man to leave his father and mother when he took a wife.

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It just was not done. In fact, the custom was for a man to marry and remain in his father's household, as did

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Jacob's sons who remained with him, though they founded their own families and fortunes. Rather, custom called for the wife to join the family of her husband.

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So then what's the idea of leaving? Hughes goes on to say the union with his wife is so profound that he leaves his family even though he remains with them.

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What does that mean? Right, there's a difference in responsibility, right? The daughter has gone from being the responsibility of the father to being the responsibility of the husband.

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Let's kind of shift that a little bit and let's say this, that a man's obligation when he's unmarried is to his parents.

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Well after he's married, his obligation is to his wife.

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That's what it means to leave. It's not the physical leaving, it's the emotional leaving, it's the responsibility leaving.

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You're no longer responsible for your parents, you're responsible for your wife.

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Hughes goes on to say, he says, so many marriages fail today at precisely this point. Husbands and wives fail to leave their parents.

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First loyalties are not established. He says any man or woman who believes that first loyalties belong to their parents believes a perversion.

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Why would he say that so strongly? What is it about, you know, well I'm married but I still kind of put my parents first, what's so wrong about that,

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Anthony? You're not growing up, okay? You've not left your first family unit,

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I'll just leave it at that for the tape. Okay, you're putting a lie, you're putting a lie to that metaphor in Ephesians 5 of Christ and the church.

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And he says, the way he says it, and I have my own kind of take on this, if we just think back, way back, for those of you who were at the wedding yesterday or who've been to a wedding recently, the vows that the bride and the groom take are reflective of exactly what you're talking about, that idea of the relationship between Christ and the church.

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Those are the vows that we take. We don't take, you know, vows on our wedding day that are something like, you know,

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Caroline, with this ring, I promise to take care of my parents.

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We'd be like, what? Time out. The whole congregation would be like, what did

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I just hear? It would be wrong, we understand that. But I've talked to some people who just kind of can't let go of that relationship.

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So leaving is this, it's not a severing of the physical relationship, it's not necessarily a moving out of the house, although, what's the problem with not moving out of the house after you get married?

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Too many cooks in the house, class.

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I don't know, you've been to Salt Lake City lately, what's going on, pal? It tends to kind of warp the lines of authority, right?

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I mean, can you really be a separate family unit within the unit? It's hard, it can be done for a time, but I think over the long haul, it would be wearying.

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Yes, sure. Yeah, when you're talking about aging parents,

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I think we're talking about a different paradigm, you know, where you're then taking care of them in their old age, which

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Janet and I are getting close to, so, you know, we're counting on the kids. Yeah, I mean,

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I think that's just a completely different paradigm than what we're talking about. I mean, it's almost like where the kids or the parents almost can get to the point where they're as dependent as children are, you know, if they live that long.

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So, yeah, and we're not talking about that, we're just, you know, again, what Hughes is talking about is just this emotional severing, the shifting of allegiance,

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I guess we could say, you know, from parental allegiance to spousal allegiance.

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She is now my first priority. Other thoughts, Charlie? Good.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the single most important relationship on earth, and yeah, too often that, you know, here's, if I could just say another thing,

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I mean, Ephesians, of course I can't because it's my class, but I give my permission, my self -permission to talk.

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You know, Ephesians 4 .29 talks about using edifying language and two verses that I really try to push on married couples,

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Ephesians 4 .29 and Ephesians 4 .32, you know, speak only in edifying ways, ways that build up, right?

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And when you fail to do that, the spouses need to be forgiving, forgiving as in forgiving you as God has in Christ Jesus has forgiven you.

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So we need to be forgiving, but we also need to not speak disparaging in disparaging ways.

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And I forget exactly where I was going, but I'm sure it had to do with language here. Why would it have to do with language?

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I just think it's important to, I'll just say this, that for us as husbands to think about our wives, we'll talk about being the weaker vessel.

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What does that mean? It's not just talking about physical strength. Generally speaking, the guys are going to be stronger because they have, you know, they're just built differently.

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They have, we don't have to go through all that, but there's also a certain amount of emotional toughness.

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Yes, there are emotionally tough women, but there are also some sensitivities that sometimes women have that men don't have and sometimes men have that women don't have.

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But we need to be sensitive to all that, not just, you know, think, well, because I'm physically stronger,

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I have to do this. Our words can really cut. And, you know, if I could just say one thing about women in there to just praise women, most women have really excellent memories and we'll just leave it at that.

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Sorry. Some guys do too. You know, having really a memory like a sieve can be an advantage.

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Okay, cleaving. Let's talk about cleaving because we're still in Genesis 2 .24. Leaving, we've talked about.

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Cleaving. What does it mean to cleave to your wife?

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Charlie gave us a preview of that, right? It's to forsake all others, to cling only to your wife.

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And Charlie's right in that if we were clinging to Christ and another

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God, another religion, that would be idolatry.

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So clinging to our wives and to someone else would be akin to idolatry.

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It would be adultery. Again, Hughes says this.

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He says the term leave or stick indicates, or cleave,

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I should say. I don't know why I got leave, but cleave indicates that marriage is to be viewed as a covenant, right?

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That's what we do. Leaving and cleaving involves a public declaration of the side of God. Marriage is not a private matter.

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It involves a declaration of intention and a reorganizing of relationship. The idea of a purely private marriage is a recent aberration spawned by the culture of individualism and the demise of community.

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Christian marriage calls for a public covenant before God, the church, the family, and the state.

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I like that. We got married. I mean, does it matter where you got married?

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There's an interesting thing. Are you married if you go to City Hall and you get a, or if you do the drive -thru in Las Vegas and they sign your wedding certificate?

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Are you married in the eyes of God? Because you're married in the eyes of the state, you're married in the eyes of God.

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People tend to treat those things differently. You have to get married in the church.

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Well, I think it's a good thing to get married in the church. Why is he even talking about that in terms of private versus public covenant?

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Does it matter? Accountability, I think, is good, right?

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Why would I want to get married in front of the church? For the same reason that I might want to get baptized in front of the church.

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I might want to give my testimony in front of the church because I want to be held accountable.

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Talking about this idea of cleaving, though, you leave your mother and father, you cleave to your wife, husbands do.

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What about this idea, we hear this often from couples, why did you get divorced?

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What's the number one answer? We grew apart.

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Was that from the back row? Irreconcilable differences, which usually means we grew apart.

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We were just going in different directions. Whose fault is that?

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Every aspect of your life is involved in this relationship. You know, as Jonathan was talking, I just had this idea because that's how rude

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I was being, I was thinking ahead, which is not a good habit to have, if I could just say that.

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At the workplace, if you said to your boss, you know what, boss?

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I just feel like we're going in different directions. I think we're growing apart.

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Your vision for this job is not my vision for this job. Then what's he going to invite you or she going to invite you to do?

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Find a new place of employment. Now where does that analogy break down in terms of marriage,

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Vadim? Okay, true.

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It's not a manager -subordinate relationship. What else is wrong with the analogy, though? God hates divorce.

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Brian? Okay, so let me just interrupt you there for a moment.

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So what Brian's trying to say, and I'll just say it, there's a vast difference between your relationship at work with your boss and your relationship at home with your wife.

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This idea that you and your boss could be going in separate directions, well that's, that would be unfortunate and it would be kind of stupid of you to bring it to your boss's attention, but you don't have that option with your wife.

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You can't look at her and go, you know what, we're just going in different directions. You can say that and there needs to be a so or a but or a therefore.

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You know, we need to change that, right? We can't continue doing this because there's not an option of, you know what, honey, it's just time for you to go get a new husband.

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You made a vow, you made an oath, and it wasn't just to her, it was before Almighty God. Yesterday we heard over and over again,

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Jesus is the witness, you know, the triune God. You're taking this oath in this covenant before the triune

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God. You can't just say, well, you know what, all those things I said on our wedding day, those were all nice and good, but I had to say those to get you to marry me.

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After the, after the wedding day, if we go our different ways, that's just fine. It's a different, a whole other matter, right?

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To just say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we just kind of grew apart. You don't grow apart. What do we call that?

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What would you say? You know, what if, you know, if you're just like, I don't even know my wife anymore.

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What does that mean? Is she the same person she was yesterday?

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Yeah, you're not trying hard enough. There's a word for that. And in one word, it's called neglect,

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I would say, right? He's completely forgotten to pay any attention to his wife.

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He doesn't know her anymore because he didn't put any effort into it. Brian, did you say idea?

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Okay. Yeah, there were, there was no, you know, um, for this purpose of a man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife until they grow apart until he's not feeling it anymore until she burns the toast.

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See, he's, he's like, man, all these ideas I had are just going out the window. Poor Daniel.

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I mean, what does it mean that the two have become one flesh? Well, we'll talk a little bit more about that when we actually get to Ephesians 5, which is nominally our text.

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But yeah, I mean, the whole idea of becoming one flesh and then so easily,

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I mean, what, I mean, let's put it this way. If, if you're a sociologist at all, if you're studying the society, the writ large, you know what we're looking at, what is the number one thing that is being attacked right now?

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In every way, shape and form, it is the family. It is the family structure, right?

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It doesn't, you know, how many times have you heard this? It's like every TV show and movie that's on. Family is whoever you choose it to be.

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A family can look like anything. Well, is that true? Does it matter how many moms and dads are all in the family, right?

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Is polyamory okay? Well, some of you are like, what does that even mean? It means multiple, you know, males, multiple females, and they're all married together.

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That's common. I mean, think about the logic here. If you can be married to any person of either sex, then why can't you be married to multiple people of multiple sexes?

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What's the difference? Why can't the whole town of Holden just be married?

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Yeah, Bill says I've walked those streets. No, thanks. But to get back to this idea, the idea of growing apart, and now let's take it back to leadership.

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If somebody worked for you, and let's go back to the workplace analogy for a moment. If somebody worked for you, and they said, you know, they started listing all their grievances with you, you know, you would listen,

41:19

I would think, as a good leader, as a good manager, you would listen and say, okay, many of those things are true, or there's some truth there, and so let's discuss this.

41:30

The problem is, when we hear this growing apart thing, the problem is as a leader, as the husband, what

41:37

I have not done is I have not so cleaved with my wife,

41:44

I've not so focused my attention on her, I've not made her the number one priority in my life, right?

41:52

So that there's this idea that we have split, we have grown apart, and we can't do that.

42:01

We can't afford that. We're not allowed to do that. And if that happens, whose fault is it?

42:10

It's ultimately my fault. That's right. If you're married, and you're having difficulties, it's my fault.

42:18

No, it's the husband's fault. It's the husband's fault. Why? Because he's the head, and he's the one who's supposed to be keeping this thing on track.

42:33

Okay, what if she's refusing to acknowledge her husband? Okay, what if she's just going off and doing her own thing every day?

42:42

Then what? How often did

42:47

God pursue Israel? I mean, there's the picture. I mean, ultimately, and to be clear here, we have to presume that both people are believers, right?

42:56

Because you could have a situation in which one person or the other turns out not to be a believer.

43:03

That certainly is possible. But if we're talking about two believers, the idea that she would go day after day after day after day of just going her own way and ignoring her husband,

43:15

I'm still going to say something that might be a little controversial. Something has happened from the wedding day to that day, right, where she's just going off and doing her own thing.

43:25

Something has disturbed the relationship. Something interrupted it. Something caused her to no longer think that this guy is terrific.

43:39

And guys know that look. There's a certain look a woman gives you where you just go, she really, really likes me.

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Right? That look right there. There's that look, and we know it, we can see it a mile away, right?

43:58

And when that look is gone, then what? Shrug. She doesn't like me anymore.

44:09

I guess I'm smoked. Is that what we do?

44:16

Sharon? What does Dave do when, you know, you stop giving him that look? Oh, we'll talk after class.

44:28

Okay. Are there Christians that are super strong willed and Christ just can't?

44:35

I agree with your point. There are women who, you know, definitely don't want to be led and go their own way.

44:43

And I agree, Brian, sorry. Okay. We're going to have to table this here in a minute. So let me just say this, that, and we can talk more about it next week, but I would say that at some point she's going to have to be, this errant woman is going to have to be talked to about going her own way, right?

45:09

But we're talking about husbands. What can husbands do? Does this suddenly creep up on them that their wife is just day after day after?

45:17

Well, there was a day one when she started going her own way. What did I do? There was a day two.

45:24

What did I do? And now we're on day 300 and I'm going, you know, this is really starting to get to me. Okay. Yes. And that's the right answer, right?

45:33

What do you do if your wife starts to go her own way? You pursue her, you know, just go, dude, if you got her to marry you in the first place, and we'll just have one more comment.

45:50

If you got her to marry her in the first place or you in the first place, you know something about her. You know something about what she likes, right?

45:58

You know what the lure was that got her in the first place. Go back to your, you know, your box and get that lure out and try it again.

46:07

Yeah. I would say it's not easy to do. I mean, if it were easy to love your wife, then we wouldn't have a command for it.

46:17

Right? I mean, it's easy. You notice that there is no command to love yourself. Contra to what many people say.

46:24

Why? Because we do that. There aren't, there aren't commands for things that are just simple.

46:30

There are commands for things that are, that are foreign to us or that don't come easy to us.

46:35

And so submitting to your husband, loving your wife, these things are difficult. Let me read one good example that I had submitted to me about how a husband loves his wife.

46:47

My husband, after many years of being together, still makes sure to make me feel like the most important to him, most important person to him.

46:58

And then she says through texts, which I don't really understand, but it sure does make me feel that way.

47:06

Like she's the most important person. Just as I think my day is getting tough. He sends me an encouraging message.

47:13

It's the little things that count, but ultimately his favorite thing to do is read the word together.

47:20

And here's my, and she just kind of underlines my point. And I know this is just like, it seems easy, but if we're growing apart, it's because the guy has stopped doing whatever it is that she likes, right?

47:35

Whether it's getting texts, my wife would be annoyed if I sent her texts during the day, she'd be like, leave me alone.

47:43

I'll see you later. But everybody has to know that every husband needs to know his own life and what she likes, you know, how much contact during the day she needs, what it is that makes her, you know, feel loved and secure, et cetera.

48:03

But she needs to have this kind of mindset, you know, after years of being together, he still makes me feel like the most important person in the world.

48:13

This is, this is good. This is right. He's not, he's not just going to let her wander off and then go, man, we've really grown apart.

48:27

It's important that he be attentive, that he pay attention to what's going on.

48:32

Well, we have to close. We can talk more about this wandering woman next week.

48:39

Father, I would pray this morning for those marriages in our church that are hurting, that are strained.

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I pray that the husbands would seek to love their wives like Christ loved the church, that the wives would be submissive, that they would seek to honor their husbands.

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Father, keeping in mind in all of this, that these are promises, not just made to one another, but made to you.

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When we, when we break our vows, we don't just break them to one another.

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We break them with you. Father, I just pray that we would take our responsibilities as husbands and as wives very seriously.

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That every day we would seek to honor the Lord Jesus Christ in how we speak, how we act, and how we respond to our spouses.

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Grow us in these areas, help us to come alongside the people in the church that are struggling in their marriage.

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Father, we pray for these things and pray for your spirit to enable all of us to be better husbands and wives in Jesus' name.