Loving Your Wife - [Ephesians 5:25]

I was asked to talk about marriage tonight and I'm like well, I don't really know where to start because I don't know what you've already covered the last few weeks. So I was given a suggested topic, you know, what you wish you would have known or done early in your marriage.

And so I thought about what to share and I thought well, I'll just share what I've been sharing with men in the Czech Republic and then in Virginia these last few months. I started a men's group because I'm burdened for the men in our churches.

I feel like a lot of times we haven't had very biblical teaching. I've had pastors tell me I don't know how to lead my family in Czech Republic. I've never been taught how to lead my family. And so I thought well, okay, let's start with loving your wife.

If you're going to be a leader in your home, it has to begin with love. So anyways, we've had several sessions talking about leading your wives, leading your marriages. And so I told Mike, well, I guess the text, if I have to give a text, would be Ephesians 5.

Not that the goal is to expound that tonight because we want to have it more interactive. But that is the text that we'll kind of be looking at tonight a little bit. And so basically I'm going to skip a few pages of stuff that I have here because I have a whole message on leading your family, actually two messages out of this one.

And part of it is what we're going to talk about tonight, which is leading your wife with love. When you look at Ephesians 5, you can see there that Christ gives a parallel with the relationship of the husband and wife as a parallel with Christ and his bride, the church.

So that tells me that our marriages say something about the gospel, right? I mean if he uses that illustration, we're to love our wives as Christ loved the church. And he gives parallels there. And that means our marriages communicate something about the gospel.

Even our relationship with our wife, even how we love our wife communicates something about the gospel. And when you think about Ephesians 5, we're to love our wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

That's not possible really apart from the gospel. Wives submitting to your husbands, that's not something that we see taught in the world today. That only takes place because of gospel transformation in our lives.

It's taking place through regeneration. So tonight I just want to focus in on what we as men should do to better love our wives. Now I don't know how many of you guys are here because your wife told you you should go.

But if you're here, you're here. So let's keep the tomatoes in our pockets. I want this to be an encouraging time for all of us. So first just open your Bible and we'll just look at Ephesians 5. Some of what I say tonight is from my own notes.

Some of it I've got from the outline that I'm going to look at tonight is from MacArthur. And I have a couple of illustrations from Sproul and even from Wayne Mack that I think will be helpful for us.

So I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here, but just pull out some biblical truths that we can apply in our lives. But Ephesians 5 .22 says,. So already we see roles in the marriage relationship. The wife has a role.

The husband has a role. And you know what? In the Trinity, each member of the Trinity has a role. In Scripture we see that the son always submits to the father. And it was the son who sent the spirit.

So there's roles even within the Trinity and there's roles within the family. Then in verse 24, Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, let also wives be to their own husbands and everything.

So again, it gives an illustration of Christ and his relationship to the church and wives and their husbands. Then verse 25, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her.

What Love Is in Scripture

So tonight I want to start with what by first of all, if we're supposed to love our wives, we have to understand, well, what is love? What is love? So when we look at society today and we hear people talk about love, how do we hear the world describe love?

A lot of times you hear people talk about their relationship with their husband and wives and things you see on TV. How does that differ from what we see in Scripture? Okay. So we see love is portrayed as an experience.

Okay. It's expressed as a feeling, as an experience. Exactly. In fact, a lot of times you hear people say, well, I've fallen in love. That makes it sound like an event, you know, something that's happened to you.

It's something indescribable with some sort of an object or something out there. And so it's described also as a physical attraction. Some people describe it as in a sexual way. You know, we make love.

It's an activity or a benefit. You know, when somebody does something for you that you like, you know, I love that person. Sometimes it's just words, you know, like love talk. You hear people speak of love in that way.

Or it's in a state in which you are. You know, I'm in love. It's like you're in some sort of a state. And if things stay in a certain boundary, then you are in love. If things go outside of that or outside of your comfort zone, then, well, I don't feel in love anymore.

And so you hear people talk about it that way. A lot of times, in fact, this past year I was in a conversation with somebody. And we were talking about the homosexual debate, homosexuality. And somebody told me, well, you can't help who you love.

And I was like, really? You know, is this something that overtakes you? Yeah, so it's an example for how they should relate to their mother and respect her and show love towards her. And I want to talk about that a little bit more later.

But, you know, the world describes love way different than Scripture. In fact, I wanted to talk about some ways that the Bible describes love. And first of all, if love is something that you can't help, something that just happens to you, then Jesus was a liar.

Because Jesus gave a command. He said we're to even love our enemies. So it's a command in Scripture to love regardless of how the other person may treat you or speak towards you or act towards you. We're to demonstrate love towards others.

So for somebody to say, you know, you can't help who you love, well, either that's true or that's a lie. And obviously that's a lie because Jesus said you shall love your neighbor. You have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who despitefully use you. So there and persecute you. So there he even tells you how to express love towards them.

You bless them. You do good to them. You pray for them, which is the opposite of what we see in society today. But because love is a command, we express love even when we're not loved in return in Scripture.

And so we don't just love when our wife submits to us. That's not what Ephesians is talking about. And Jesus modeled this. Second of all, we see love expressed as an action, as an act of giving. As our brother here said a minute ago.

And Solomon talks about how we love our enemies. He said Proverbs 25, 21. If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat. And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. So there we see love expressed in action.

And then if you look at 1 Corinthians 13, how is love described? A whole list of verbs, isn't there? A whole list of actions. Love suffers long, is kind, does not envy, does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. So we see a lot of verbiage here. A lot of verbs and how love is exemplified, how love is lived out in our lives. So when we look at Scripture, we see that it's focused on others. It's not considering ourselves, it doesn't think evil, it's not selfish, does not seek its own.

No, it's focused on expressing love and care and concern for others, even if there are enemies. And only the gospel can cause us to love that way, right? I mean, who naturally loves their enemies? It's just not something that by nature we want to do, is it?

We don't have that desire apart from the gospel. The gospel is what causes us to want to love our enemies, even when they're not very lovable. So only those who first love Christ are enabled to love in that way, because He gives us the ability to love our enemies.

So when it comes to marriage counseling, a lot of times you'll hear people say what? What do they say? They say, well, you know, I don't love my wife anymore, or I don't love my husband. So how would you respond to that?

If you heard somebody say to you, well, I don't love my wife or my husband anymore, based on some of the things we just read or that you've just expressed. What's that? Okay, she said, what reason does God have to love us?

Okay, what are you doing to love your husband? I thought I saw another hand somewhere. Okay. Yeah, so when they come in and say, I don't love my husband or wife anymore, I would say, well, then you're not very obedient, are you?

Because it's a command, right? The first thing we looked at is it's a command. It's something that we're commanded to do. And it's not a choice. It's not a suggestion. It's not optional. It's not based on how we feel.

It's not based on what the other person has done for us. No, it's a command in Scripture. We're to love Christ. We're commanded to love God, aren't we? We're also commanded to love others. We're to love our enemies.

And as husbands and wives, we're commanded to love one another. So first of all, if you say, I don't love my husband or my wife anymore, then you're an extremely disobedient person. Because Colossians 3 .19 says, Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.

And when you stop loving your wives, obviously you're being selfish. You have bitterness towards your wife. So Paul commands the Colossian men to love their wives and to not harbor bitterness towards their wives.

If their wives don't do something that they want or expect, that's no reason to not love your wife. R .C. Sproul gives a great little illustration about how men stop loving their wives after they become married.

I'm just going to read this paragraph. He says, Before the wedding, the man seeks to woo the woman and win her to be his wife. He is as zealous as an Olympic-bound athlete. He gives her his undivided attention, makes her the center of his attention.

After marriage is achieved, he turns his attention to other goals. He figures the romantic aspect of his life is under control and now goes on to scale new heights. He devotes less and less time to his wife, treating her as less and less important.

In the meantime, the woman, being accustomed to the courting process, enters the marriage relationship, expecting that to continue. But as the marriage progresses, she finds herself devoting more attention to her husband than she did before the marriage, while he is devoting less attention to her.

Now she is washing his clothes, cooking his meals, making his bed, cleaning his house, maybe even packing his suitcase. At the same time, he is becoming less affectionate, though maybe more erotic, taking her out less, and generally paying her less attention.

Would you say this is true or untrue? I would say in my life it's probably pretty true. Because before you get married, you're like a laser beam, focused on trying to serve your wife, opening all the doors, doing special things for her.

And then after you get married, like you said, you're focused on your job and things, and you stop doing some of those things. How many of you still open the door for your wife? Yeah, I said that wrong.

How many of you still open the door for your wife? So we should still be just as chivalrous after we're married as we were before we were married. And then so Sproul goes on. So then problems arise, and he's wondering what is wrong.

So then he goes on and talks about men saying, you know, my wife is different now than what she was before we were married. And Sproul says, well, who do you suppose changed her? We'll have a little marriage cancel section here in a minute.

So he says, in a sense, the man has, the wife a man has is the wife he has produced. And maybe he's produced a monster. And you know what? I've seen men turn their wives into monsters. I went to seminary with a guy.

We were actually roommates in college and ended up going to seminary together. And he turned his wife into a beast. They both were in all kinds of sexual sin with other people and horrific things. And his wife, to my knowledge, wasn't like that before they were married.

But, you know, he led her into his wicked lifestyle. And so, you know, we can lead our wives to become prideful. If we're prideful, we can lead our wives to become a lot of things that we wouldn't want them to be because, you know, sin is unchecked in our lives and we're not walking with Christ.

So, you know, maybe your wife is like she is because she's a product of your own making because you haven't led her, you haven't loved her for a couple decades. She's not used to you being sacrificial.

And so she doesn't have high expectations from you. And maybe you don't have high expectations of her. Or maybe I should say instead of high expectations, I should say biblical expectations. And so people get frustrated when their expectations aren't met.

And I want to talk about that in a little bit. So love is expressed in actions. Sproul gives an illustration of how our acts of expressing love to our wives can grow cold as the marriage goes on. And so we want to be mindful of that.

We want to be aware of that. Another way we see love expressed in Scripture is that it's selfless. And this is seen in Paul's description of Christ's love for the church where his primary concern was not of himself, but he loved her and gave himself for her.

His primary concern was for his bride, the church. In fact, I don't know if you've seen this before as you've read through Corinthians, but 1 Corinthians 7 .33 says that one who is married is to be concerned with how he may please his wife.

So the question is, how concerned are you about how you can please your wife? Well, if we're concerned about how we may please our wife, well, what does that require of us? It requires that we invest time in that, effort, energy, thoughts, prayers, because we want to please our wives.

And there's many ways in which we can bring pleasure to our wives, spiritually, emotionally, physically, verbally. And so we want to talk about some of those things tonight. And I'm just going to jump ahead here.

But if we're serious about loving our wives, then it will be a great concern for us. And a lot of times husbands are like, well, you know, it's hard to love my wife because she's not very submissive. She doesn't function in her role, and so it's harder for me to function in my role.

Well, that's true. I mean, when you don't love your wife as Christ loved the church, it's not as easy for her to want to be submissive to you. And when she's not submissive to you, naturally, with the flesh, you know, you don't have the excitement maybe to express love to her as Christ commanded you.

So it kind of works both ways. But God wants us to be concerned about how we love our wives because he's commanded us to do that and has given us a model of that in Christ's relationship to the church and how he sacrificially gave his love for her.

And so basically I'm stealing MacArthur's outline for the rest of our time here from Ephesians, where we see four ways that love is expressed towards the wife in Ephesians 5, 25 to the end of the chapter.

And it's not what we see on television. We see it, first of all, expressed as sacrificial. Verse 25, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. There's a sacrifice there.

There's a sacrifice of his own life. The question is, is how do we sacrifice? How do we sacrificially express love to our wives? Maybe you have some examples or at least ways that we should be, if you're not already, should be sacrificially loving your wife.

Well, first of all, if we're going to be…. Wait, is there a hand over here? Okay. Okay. You know that she likes help in an area. You don't want to, but, hey, I'm going to sacrifice, you know, laying on the couch or watching TV, and I'm going to help her wash clothes.

Yeah. If you don't think it's work to stay home and watch your kids, then try letting your wife go away for a couple days. No, Lord. Yeah, I've done that a few times, and it's a lot of work. Oh, my goodness.

Cooking all those meals, washing the dishes, or getting the kids to do their chores, a lot of times it's not easy. But, you know, the natural tendency is just to want to come home and think, you know, I've worked all day.

You know, the least you can do is…. Well, no, the least you can do is help out with the kids or something, so…. But we need to realize that if we truly love our wives, then we're to be more concerned of how she feels than how we feel.

So we set our hearts to loving our wives in such a way that we don't expect her to do things for us because we demand it or we desire it. True love in Scripture doesn't place demands on the other. It's sacrificial love.

You know, Christ didn't say, well, he didn't tell the church, you know, I'll die for you if you do something for me. No, it was, he gave his life willingly, you know. There was no demands placed upon the church.

He came, he gave, and he keeps on giving of himself to us, gives his grace. So, I love what Charles Spurgeon says, he says, A man who truly loves his wife has his heart set upon her, not merely with the eye, but with his soul.

She has a mansion in his heart from which she can never be cast away. She has become a portion of himself, a member of his body, part of his flesh and bones, and so is the church to Christ. And, you know, it's hard to, you can't love your wives that way apart from the Spirit.

The world can't love that way. The world doesn't love that way, but we can because we have the Spirit. We have the love of God poured out in our hearts. We have the ability to love sacrificially, to give of ourselves.

You know, Christ's love for the church cost him his life. He purchased his bride with his own blood, and it was a willful sacrifice. It was a willful giving of himself. He placed no demands upon the Father.

Father, I'll do this if my bride or the church does this. You know, Christ placed no demands before the Father, saying that he would give himself and purchase the church with his own blood. You know, it was willful and sacrificial.

It was giving his best for the best of his bride. And so as we sacrificially love our wife, you know, we come home, we're tired. Sacrificial love responds to the wife. Well, how can I help you, or what would you like for me to do?

And maybe you don't want to do it, but she says, well, I'd like to go shopping, or let's go for a walk. Or help her to do the laundry or something. That's sacrificial love in action. And so at this point, you deny yourself, you deny your flesh and your desires for what would bring her pleasure.

Because why? Because 1 Corinthians 7 says we're to be about trying to please our wives. And my wife always tells me, it's not the big things, it's the little things that speak the loudest. And she said, if the little things are what screams loudly, I love you.

A lot of times we think if we do some big thing for our wife, buy her a big present or something, that that expresses our love. And I don't know if you ladies are like my wife, but she says it's the little things.

I don't know, maybe some of you ladies can say something. Okay, okay, that's a perfect illustration. Okay, good. Okay. Yeah, so we see the example of sacrificial love in scripture, and it's something that we are to model in our lives.

So I told the men in our church, I said, go home and ask your wife how you can serve her. How you can encourage her. How you can express your love to her. Because I think some wives have been so used to their husbands not sacrificially showing love to them, that they no longer even ask their husbands to help them.

And we don't want our wives to feel that way. Okay, very good. Okay guys, I hope you're taking notes. So, you know, I tell guys, if you want your wife to get excited about you, then try going home and asking your wife, you know, how can I serve you?

How can I help you? How can I show love to you? How can I help you? And watch how she responds. But don't just do it once and think you've won. No, it's something that we should be mindful of regularly on a weekly basis.

And so I tell our guys, look, if you've never done it before, then don't just do it once, but do it often until it becomes more habitual in your life. That you're used to putting your wife and her desires and her needs and her wants before your own.

Not because of what she can do for you or not what you hope she'll do for you. But because Christ has commanded you to love her and you're going to care for her. And because of who she is. And because you seek her well-being, you seek her happiness.

And second of all, we seek her purity. You know, the second aspect of loving our wives in Ephesians 5 and verses 26 and 27, where you see that it's a purifying love. That he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word.

That he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. But that she should be holy and without blemish. So genuine biblical love for our wives is not just sacrificial love, but it's also a purifying love as we see her grow in sanctification.

As she's purified by the word, the washing of the word in her soul. And so it's a love that seeks her spiritual benefit. It's a love that's focused on her inner beauty and the holiness of her heart. And of course, Paul tells us here how it's done.

It says with the washing of water with the word. And so, you know, ask yourself, how have you been doing this in your marriage? I have wives tell me before that, you know, I've laid the Bible on our kitchen table hoping that my husband will read it.

Either for himself or us together. I hope and I pray and hope that he reads it. At least for himself, not for both of us. And we should never allow that to happen in our lives. We want our wives to continually be exposed to the word.

We want her to be continually influenced by the word, continually hearing the preaching of the word and to see her growing in holiness and sanctification. We should want her to participate in Bible studies.

I have a family member who doesn't like it when his wife goes to Bible study too much. Like, really? Okay. So, and we should all continually be trying to teach her things from the word. But if we truly love her and concern for her and want what's best for her, then part of that expression of our love to her is exposing her to truth.

To help her sharpen her spiritual sword. You know, we're to be the shepherds and we're the pastors of our home. And so we are to pursue after her purity and to help her grow spiritually. So it's a purifying love.

I tell our guys in our church, and I tell this to myself, you know, my wife is my first disciple. I don't know, has anybody ever heard of the concept of discipling your wife? I remember we were going through 1 Timothy in our men's Bible study.

And we got to chapter 2 on how women are to dress modestly in things. And I told our guys, I said, you know what, you are to teach your wives and your daughters what this means. How to dress modestly.

How to adorn themselves with godliness. If we're not teaching them, then who's going to teach them? You know, how many sermons a year is the pastor able to spend on these type of things? You know, he's preaching through books of the Bible.

You don't hit on these verses regularly. And so we're to take leadership. We're to take responsibility and pursue our wife's purity. That's even teaching them how to dress, how to adorn themselves with godliness, how to pray and not rely on the pastor, not rely on the church.

And I mean, what's Christ doing here? He's given a parallel between the husband and wife relationship and the church and Christ relationship. So we're to model, or we're to duplicate what we see between Christ and the church.

It's a sanctifying love, purifying love. And then thirdly, in verse 28 through 29, it's a nurturing love. Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as the Lord does the church.

So we're to love our wives as our own bodies. How do we love our own bodies? Never thought about that, how you love yourself, how you love your body? Well, most people, they give utmost care to their bodies, don't they?

Don't we want to be, don't we want to feel good, feel comfortable? We'd be well fed. We want to be free of pain, free of stress, free of worries. There's a lot of ways that we seek to bring pleasure and comfort to our bodies because we care for ourselves, we love ourselves.

Well, the same energy and care that we give to caring and loving our own selves, we're to give towards our wives. So that means, well, if I love my own body so much that, you know, I'm willing to take extra time to get more sleep or eat more or do something to make myself feel better or to be stronger.

You know, a lot of people spend a lot of time in the gym. Well, what kind of time are we investing in loving our wives and nurturing our wives and caring for them? I saw a hand over here. Thank you. I couldn't have given a better illustration.

Well, praise the Lord. He should be up here teaching tonight. What am I doing up here? Excellent. Yeah, so we lay things, you know, how many guys, I mean, how many guys are devoted to like hunting and fishing?

I mean, I know guys that every spare moment they're out of work, they're in a boat or in a tree stand or something. And so I was at the doctor this past week, and I mentioned something about hunting because I did some hunting in Virginia.

She said, and the doctor, she said, yeah, she said, I'm a hunting widow. And I was like, first, I didn't know what she meant about that. But now I understand what she means. Like, she's a widow during hunting season.

Like, she doesn't have a husband during hunting season. He's always out in the tree stand. And then at church the other day, another lady said, yeah, I'm a, I don't know. She named something. I don't know if her husband's into sports or something.

You know, basketball widow or something. And I was like, oh, during basketball season or whatever, her husband is coaching, you know, little, you know, little kids teams. And he's watching, going to games and things and stuff.

I'm like, I don't understand what they meant by that. But, yeah, some guys, they devote all their energy into themselves. You know, doing what they enjoy. I know somebody who spends vast amounts of money on toys.

Hunting equipment, sports equipment. Every toy you can imagine. Every outdoor type of thing you can imagine. And I tell my wife, well, what does he ever do for his wife? He loves himself a lot, but what about his wife?

You know, it's to be a nurturing lover, to care for her. What does she need? Rather than think what I need or what I want, we should be asking our wives, well, what do you need? What would you like? How can I give towards you?

And so to cherish her as you do your own self, your own comfort, your rest, your entertainment, strength, health, hunger, thirst, you know, your appearance. And what about her? So we're to invest that amount of energy, if not more, into caring for our wives.

And we don't see anything in this text about the church giving back to Christ. We see Christ giving to the church. And that's the model we have here. It's the husband to be sacrificially giving and nurturing for his wife, and nurturing his wife.

And then we see last of all, verse 31 and 32, it's an enduring love. And so what Paul is saying here is this is an abandonment of the previous life. It's a death to self. It's a death to the former life that you, you know, when you lived in your singleness.

Did everything you wanted to do. Now you're one with your wife. You're one flesh. And it's for life. You're glued together for life. You're one. And so when the husband cares for his wife, he's really caring for himself.

Because you're one flesh. And Paul says this is a mystery, the union between the Messiah and his church. And then verse 33, the end of the chapter says, Okay, so, as we just kind of touched on these verses, here we see four ways in which we can express love to our wives.

It's sacrificial. It's purifying. It's nurturing. And it's enduring. So what are some ways, guys, that we can express love to our wives as we think about these things? Don't all speak at once. I said guys.

Let's start with the guys. Okay. Okay. Well, it doesn't say wives love your husbands right here, does it? But we know in Scripture we're to love one another, right? We're to love each other as saints.

We're to love our enemies. And so it's natural that if the husband loves the wife, the wife expresses love to her husband. And we see how she expresses her love, even though it's maybe not stated in that way, as she respects her husband.

She gives honor to him. And I remember when we had our premarital counseling, the husband is described as a learner, a lover, and a leader. And the wife, they said, is an honor, a helper, and a homemaker.

Those are the roles we see in Scripture, you know. And in Genesis, she's seen as the helper, right? God created Eve because He needed a helpmate. We see her as a homemaker in Titus 2. And she's an honor here in Ephesians 5.

And so those are ways that she demonstrates love towards her husband. But yeah, there's not the phrase, the terminology in this text, you know, wives love your husband. Yeah. Yeah, they're to teach the younger women to love their husbands.

Is that a question or a statement? Yeah, the feminist movement has distorted the makeup of the family. And it's always the husband that's often portrayed as the one who has to do things, and not really the wife.

I don't think you really hear much about that, do you, on TV? The way the family's portrayed. But like you say, the husband is often portrayed as kind of like the bumbling idiot, and the one that everybody in the family makes fun of.

I mean, there's a lot of sitcoms like that. My wife and kids were watching one of those one time, and I said, I don't like how they portrayed the family in this. I don't even know the name of the program.

And I pointed out to them, and they're like, oh yeah, you're right. I mean, that's how this family is portrayed in this particular sitcom, whatever it was. And so that's why we even have to be discerning what we watch, what we allow our children to watch, because they're learning a certain behavior there that they may be expressing in your own family.

So that's why we turn to Scripture, and if we had more time, we'd go more into this text. If you go into Chapter 6 of Ephesians, it talks about the children's role in the home, honoring their parents and obedience and things.

Okay, for the sake of time, ladies, how can men love you better? I have a list of things that I want to go through before we finish if nobody has anything. That's good. His example brings conviction upon you, right?

To want to function better in your role. Is that what you're saying? Okay. Yeah, not being critical basically, right? Yeah, be thankful for what she has done rather than what she hasn't done. Okay, she said finding out what is the heaviest thing on your wife's heart and seeing if you can help relieve that.

See if what's worthy? Okay, okay.

So for the husband to evaluate his own life and to ask himself, am I worthy of being imitated? You know, we're to be imitators of Christ because, you know, we should be a model to our wives and children for them to imitate us as we imitate Christ.

That's what she's saying. Okay, very good. Well, I have a list from Wayne Mack that I want to read through because he's very good at these type of things, bringing practical application. And so I'm just going to read through this list and we can talk about these things.

We've got about five minutes left. He said a few practical tips to show love to your wife. First of all is communication. You know, we express love with words a lot of times. And he talks about how a lot of men are afraid to tell their wives that they love them.

I mean, maybe you've heard of the guy who says, well, I told my wife when we got married I loved her, and if I ever change my mind, I'll let her know. Well, that's not really communication. That's not how we're to communicate our loves to our wives, okay?

So, you know, don't be afraid to tell your wife you appreciate her, appreciate what you've done. You've noticed how she serves you and cares for the kids. So express your love to her. Express your thanks to her.