Husband

1. Love God More Than You Love Your Wife

After three years of dating Mary Ann, we began talking about marriage. A little while later, we broke up. I was devastated. While praying one night, things became crystal clear: Mary Ann had become an idol in my life. I cared more about what made her happy than what made God happy.

God’s purpose for marriage is to make us more like Christ.

It was as if God was saying, “You will have no other gods before me, and if you put something or someone else in My place, I will remove it.” In 25 years of marriage, I still run into the same problem. I keep myself in check with this question: Whom do I fear more — my wife or God? The level of pain may be more immediate or more pronounced when I don’t please my wife because when I don’t please God, He doesn’t go into the other room and go silent on me.

But God reminds me, “You do the right thing even if for the moment it doesn’t make her happy.”

2. Be a Spiritual Leader

Both you and your wife may have come into your marriage with some idealized image (or expectations) of what your spiritual walk together would look like. Maybe it was sitting around a table eating breakfast and doing devotions. She imagined you leaving for work and saying, “I’ll be back this evening, and we can have devotions again.”

About a month into the marriage, your wife was probably thinking, “What happened? Reading the Scriptures and praying together is so important.” If I could rewind my marriage and start this practice earlier, I would do it in a second. No matter how long you’ve been married, now is the time to develop a pattern that can work in your marriage. Remember, it’s a husband who ought to initiate this. “A man may not be a vocational theologian,” says Doug Wilson, author of Reforming Marriage. “But in his home, he needs to be the resident theologian.”

3. Lead With Humility

A big reason there is such a debate about whether men ought to be leaders in a marriage relationship is because too many men have not led with humility. Men may be called by God to lead their wives, but our leadership should be selfless. Philippians 2:3 says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” (New International Version). Put this verse into practice, and it will solve 95 percent of the issues you face. I have never met a woman who says, “I resist my husband’s leadership even though he is very humble and Christlike.” The women I’ve met are craving godly leadership in their marriages.

4. Have Godly Courage

First Corinthians 16:13 gives a clear definition of biblical masculinity: “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong” (NIV). Before we can be godly husbands, we must be courageous. Wrapped up in that definition of what it means to be a man is the idea of courage. And the essence of courage is to have such a great fear of God that you fear nothing else.

5. Be a Provider

1 Timothy 5:8 says if a man fails to provide for his household, he is worse than a pagan. That’s not the kind of reputation I want to have in the community. Part of the root meaning of the word provider means “to look ahead.” A provider is one who anticipates and does the strategic planning for the household. He thinks about the goals — not just the financial goals, but the spiritual goals and emotional goals. In a sense, he is the chief executive officer of the corporation. It’s his responsibility to set the direction. And many times, his wife is the chief operating officer. The two of them need to unify their direction for the good of the family.

6. Love Her Biblically and Extravagantly

To love her biblically, we need to ask, “What is God’s love for us like?” The essence of His love for us is reflected in His commitment to us and His sacrifice for us. That’s what our love for our wives needs to look like too. For me, it often means placing my wife’s needs ahead of my own. And it means that I will still sacrifice for her even when we disagree. She must be my priority. Remember the little line in the marriage vow, “Forsaking all others, until death do us part”?

That means your relationship with your wife is more important than any other relationship — friends, your boss or even your children. Put simply, after our love for God, we must love our wives more than anything on earth. That is the essence of the marriage relationship. D.L. Moody summed it up best: “If I wanted to find out whether a man was a Christian, I wouldn’t go to his minister. I would go and ask his wife. “If a man doesn’t treat his wife right, I don’t want to hear him talk about Christianity. What is the use of talking about salvation for the next life if he has no salvation for this?” This past May, Mary Ann and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in Maui, Hawaii. The surroundings were incredible, but really, we were just happy to be together. Over dinner that night, we could both say that, in spite of any challenges that have come our way, we wouldn’t change the outcome of our shared 25 years.

That’s because God has used our relationship with each other more than anything else to make us more like Christ. And, ultimately, that is His purpose for marriage.