For the next few weeks, I’ve asked Karen, my wife of 50+ years to share something with us…
Many wives feel disappointed, angry, resentful, resigned and confused about what to do with a husband who seems spiritually absent or is unwilling to lead his family toward Christ. If this is true in your marriage, the answer isn’t to nag or criticize your husband, nor is it to resign yourself to be passive. Instead, the answer lies in allowing God to work on your husband and you control what you can yourself. To encourage your husband’s faith you must first shore up your own heart. We need to passionately pursue God through Jesus Christ and recognize that it is my most important and basic spiritual connection. We gain truth and insight from His Word. We’re able to complain and cry out to Him when life is hard, rejoice and thank Him when life is good, and when we seek to know and follow him we’re comforted, guided, and taught by the Holy Spirit living inside us.
One of the ways we can encourage our husband’s spiritual life and leadership is to guard our heart by expressing gratitude. Proverbs 4:23 states “above all else guard your heart for its the wellspring of life.” We are guarding our heart when we actively notice and express gratitude for our blessings in the many gifts God has given us, look for things you appreciate about your husband, what he’s doing right, and then write them down in a gratitude journal and share them with him. Hebrews 3:13 tells us to “Encourage one another daily as long as it is today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin and deceitfulness”.
Pastor John Piper suggests that our attitude needs to be “okay, this may never change in my husband. I hope it does, but it may never change. And I’m not going to lock in on this shortcoming as the only thing I think about him. Instead, I will try to love him. Bless him. Enjoy him for the things about him that I delight in and all the while be praying and modeling what I hope he will become for me.”
How Should I Treat My Husband Who Won’t Lead Us Spiritually?
