The Husband Every Wife Wants

Well, I invite you to take your Bibles and turn back to one Peter this morning and we're going to pick up where we left off last week. And we looked at chapter three verses one through six, which focuses on the woman's responsibility in a marriage, particularly to a marriage with a man who is disobedient to the word. And this morning we're going to look at the men's responsibility, the husband's responsibility, and it's just one verse, but don't let this one verse fool you, man, because there's enough in this brief sentence to keep us busy for the rest of our lives. And so let's read it together. First Peter chapter three, verse seven.

You husbands in the same way live with your wives in an understanding way, as was someone weaker since she is a woman, and show her honor as a fellow air of the grace of life so that your prayers will not be hindered. Father, we pray right now thanking you for how wise your word is. Anyone who's been married for any length of time can just read this verse and see how relevant, how practical it is for a man and a woman living under the same roof, striving to honor Christ and honor one another. And so, Lord, while this may be a sensitive subject to some, I pray that your word would minister to all of our hearts wherever we're at this morning and those that need to be confronted. Lord, I pray that your text would do that work, your spirit would do that work through this text, I should say, and those that need to be comforted, Lord, that your spirit would use this text to comfort. And ultimately, Lord, we ask that your spirit would conform all of us more to the image of Christ. We ask this in His name. Amen.

Well, a new store recently opened that you may not have heard about yet. It's called The Husband's Store where yes, you guessed it, where women can shop for a husband. The store has six floors and the quality of men that a woman can choose from increases on each successive floor. However, there are some strict rules. A woman can only visit once. They can choose any man from any floor or go up to shop on the next floor, but she cannot go back down except to exit the building. So a woman walks into the store and on the bottom floor there's a sign that reads floor number one, men who have good jobs, she's like, well, that's nice, but I wonder what's further up. And so up she goes, where the sign reads floor two men who have good jobs and love kids, she's intrigued, but continues to the third floor where the sign reads Floor three, men who have good jobs, love kids and are extremely handsome.

Wow. She feels drawn but also compelled to keep going. So she goes to the next floor where she sees the sign floor for men who have good jobs, love kids are extremely handsome and help with the housework. She's thinking to herself, it can't get any better than this, but then in voice inside of her asked or can it? So she goes up to the next floor, floor number five, where the sign reads many who have good jobs, love kids are extremely handsome, help with the housework and are very romantic having found what she's looking for. She's tempted to stay and pick a guy from that floor, but something propels her to the sixth floor.

And when she arrives, she sees this sign floor number six, you are visitor, 1,012,345,000 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely to prove that women are impossible to please thank you for shopping at the husband store. Have a nice day. Now, ladies, before you roll your eyes and husbands before you start doing this and feeling justified that she settled for Mr. Good enough instead of Mr. Wright, right, you're a good enough. I didn't tell that joke to take a shot at the women. I told it to simply point out that women tend to have high expectations for the men that they marry. Is that not true? And those expectations oftentimes go unmet and rarely do the men that you marry live up to what you hope for or dreamed of.

But whether you realize it or not, that is by divine design. And while God created marriage so that men and women could enjoy the most intimate of human relationships, he intended it to create a sense of disillusionment like something is missing. He wanted our marriages to remind us that nothing or no one other than him can ever fully satisfy us. And if we look to anyone or anything other than God to meet our desires and wants, we are guaranteeing frustration and disappointment. I wanted to read from a devotional that Kelly and I have been using over the last couple of years. We're on our second run through it and spoiler alert, if you get married or have gotten married recently or will get married soon, this is going to be your wedding present from Kelly and I because this is, we've been so blessed the minister to by this little book.

Maybe it just hit us where we're at in our marriage, but just everyone seems to hit us right between the eyes, right when we needed it. And this is a little chapter here where he says this, and this is by Gary Thomas, the one who wrote Sacred Marriage. What if God created marriage not to make you happy but holy? I mean the subtitle alone is worth the price of the book, right? This is what he says. I'll go out on a limb and claim it's somewhat healthy to feel a little disillusioned in your marriage because it's at that point you'll realize you need to look to God for your highest joy. You may feel tempted to respond to disillusionment by searching for another spouse who promises to fulfill you more, but eventually you would find that while she had strengths your spouse lacked, she was missing some of your spouse's better qualities.

Life with that new person would inevitably bring its own disillusionment until one day you'd wake up to the fact that your soul's happiness really does not depend on, excuse me, that your soul's happiness really does depend on a holy perfect God, not on a sinful human being. He says, so if your spouse has disappointed and continues to disappoint you, thank God you're in a great place. You're in the doorway of disillusionment where you can learn to let go of the expectations of the created and fall into the arms of the creator. That good, good reminder for all of us that no one will ever love us like Jesus loves us. But at the same time, God does entrust wives to husbands and expects them to love their wives like Jesus loves them. Ephesians 5 25, the foundational verse in the whole Bible about the role of a husband.

Husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. Paul also acknowledged in one Corinthians chapter seven, that husbands should be devoted to pleasing their wives. And it's interesting, it may sound like it's coming from a negative context, but listen to what he said, one Corinthians 7 32, but I want you to be free from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord, but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how He may please his wife and his interests are divided again. It sounds like he's discouraging people from getting married. He's simply acknowledging the reality that if you're married part of that responsibility, that calling of being a married person is that you desire to please your spouse and you should, according to the Old Testament law, God commanded that newly married men were not to be enlisted into the army but should be allowed to stay home for the first year.

Deuteronomy 24, 5. If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him for one year. He is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he's married. If you were looking for the biblical support for happy wife, happy life, that's it right there, that it's okay to strive to make your wife happy, to please your wife, to bring her happiness God would want us to do. God wants us to do that. The question is how do we do that as husbands, how do we please our wives? How do we make them happy? And I'm sure that there have been times when every husband in here has felt like you couldn't say or do anything to please your wife. And you thought to yourself, what do you want, woman?

What's even more frustrating is we're not allowed to ask them that question because we know they expect us to figure it out without them having to tell us. Well men, we should be very thankful for Peter because he provided us the answer to that question. And based on what Peter said in this verse, it's not as difficult as it might seem to figure out what women want husbands and those aspiring to be husbands. Someday. I cannot recommend another verse more highly for you to put to memory and to put into practice than this verse By the grace of God this month, Kelly and I will be celebrating our 32nd wedding anniversary. And I have found over those 32 years that whenever our marriage is in a slump and there's some obvious issue or lack of closeness between Kelly and me, I can usually 99.9% of the time trace it back to my failure to apply this verse.

I get busy, I get distracted, or I get lazy or I get comfortable and I forget and I neglect what Peter said, and our marriage suffers as a result. And so husbands listen up because Peter says it well. And what he does here is he exhorts husbands to relate to and engage with our wives in two ways that will minister to them most and lead to the best marriage possible. Two ways to minister to our wives the most and which lead to the best marriage possible. You ready? Number one is pursue your wife. Pursue your wife. Notice he says you husbands in the same way, that little phrase in the same way tells us he's referring back to the theme of this section which is patiently submitting to those who treat us harshly and unjustly. Verse 13, submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution.

Verse 18, servants be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also those who are unreasonable for this finds favor for the sake of conscience toward God. A person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly. Verse 21, for you have been called for this purpose since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps, who committed no sin or was any deceit found in his mouth? And while being reviled he did not revile in return while suffering. He utter no threats but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously.

And then he says in verse one of chapter three, in the same way, you wise be submissive to your own husbands. And again, now in verse seven, you husbands in the same way. So Peter now turns from the wives to the husbands who have been placed by God in a position of authority over their wives, and he admonished them to not abuse that authority by treating their wives harshly or unjustly. And we talked about this last week that by virtue of her submissive role, a wife places herself in a vulnerable position which is open to exploitation. That's why we said submission is scary and men need to be sensitive to that and considerate of that and not take advantage of that and exercise their authority in a Christ-like way. In fact, Ephesians chapter five, verse 22, Paul called before he ever got to telling the wives to submit and the husbands to love, he told both husbands and wives to be mutually submissive to one another. He said, submit to one another in love.

And so a husband doesn't submit to his wife as if she's the leader, but he is considerate of her interests and desires and subordinates, his interests and desires to her. Philippians chapter two verses three and four, do nothing out of selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind. Consider others your wife more important than yourself. Don't just look out for your own interests, but look out for the interest of your wife. Have the same attitude that was in who Christ. And I think this is so helpful because so many men, it seems are selfish and really completely oblivious of what their wives want.

But based on this verse, there is no excuse for being a clueless, dumb guy. Can't use that as the, you can't play the dumb guy card, the clueless guy card, not with this verse staring you in the face. So notice he says, you husbands in the same way live with your wives in an understanding way. Now this sounds like a command, but it's actually a partisan bowl, but it's used as a command here. This is a present active partisan bowl, which means this is something, what Peter's saying is something that we must do continuously. This should be an ongoing way of life. This is not something we just do once in a while for the first few months of our marriage. This is something that we do all the time throughout our entire married lives. We need to live with our wives in an understanding way.

And we know there's plenty of jokes about the differences between men and women and the impossibility of men ever understanding women. Guys, we all know that our wives are very different from us and we often point out those differences. We make fun of those differences. We let those differences irritate us or frustrate us and even use them as an excuse for not loving them and serving them well. And I think the reason this happens is we try to understand our wives instead of simply living with them in an understanding way. In other words, being sensitive, being considerate, being empathetic. I've shared this story many times, but I'll never forget it, the very first time that Kelly cried after we got married, I shouldn't say that because she did cry when I stuck her in a U-Haul truck and made her leave Washington to go to California to go to seminary, she cried all the way from Bellevue through Tacoma all the way into Oregon, I think is when she finally stopped crying.

But we were settled in our little apartment in California and maybe a few months into our marriage and things were going great. We were still in the honeymoon season, as they call it. And so I remember one night getting ready for bed, and I noticed that Kelly was on the other side of the bed and I thought, well, her back turned towards me. I thought, this doesn't look good. And I could tell that she was crying and I thought, oh man, I must have really messed up. I must have said something or done something. I don't even know what I said or did. Well, I guess I needed to ask her. So I said, Hey honey, are you okay? Did I say something or do something to hurt you? And she sat up and the tears were coming down her face and she said, and I immediately thought, well, then somebody else must've said something or done something and I, I'm going to fix this. I'm going to find out who it is and what it is and we're going to fix this. And so I said, well, honey, who said something?

And so at that point, I'm at a loss. I'm like, honey, I asked the obvious question, the logical question every guy would ask in the moment, why are you crying? And she said, I don't know. And I went from being very compassionate and tender to be very angry and frustrated, which obviously scared Kelly because I was not being kind and gentle and gracious. And so we were learning about one another in that moment. Well, to this day, I still don't understand why she cries from my perspective for no reason. Although I shouldn't say anything. I always cry in the sports movies whenever the horse wins the race or they win the Super Bowl or the hockey team gets the winning goal. I dunno why I'm always crying about those things, but I mean at least I have a reason for crying. I mean, that was really inspiring, right?

But I do know this, that it's part of who she is and it's helpful for her to release that emotion from time to time. And for me just to be there to comfort her and not to try to be fix it. Felix, you guys know who fix it. Felix is who wreck it. Ralph is right. Fix it. Felix is the other guy in that movie. And so I've even got to the point where I can just kind of see it on her face and rather than her starting to cry, just say, Hey, do you want to cry?

And oftentimes she'll take me up on that and hey, by the grace of God, I've got it down. All I need to do is have some Kleenex close by and just give her a good strong hug and just provide some Kleenexes. And she cries and she's done. And she blows her nose and she's on her happy way. I'm like, why does it take 32 years to figure that out? Notice he says Here, though you husbands in the same way live with your wives in an understanding way. That phrase literally is according to knowledge. In other words, you need to know your wife.

And I think this knowledge that Peter was referring to is twofold. Okay? We will get to the knowing your wife part, but I think it starts with a general knowledge of marriage that you need to understand the purpose of marriage. You need to understand the rules of a husband and wife. You need to know how to communicate in a godly way. You need to know how to resolve conflict. You need to know the biblical principles of sex. You need to know about raising children. You need to know what the Bible teaches about divorce and remarriage. There's a lot to know about marriage. And in order to grow in our knowledge of these things, we need to spend time studying God's word and listening to sermons and reading books. So we need to have a general knowledge of marriage, but also we need to have a specific knowledge of our wife. We need to know the intimate details of her life. What makes her tick? What irritates her? What scares her? What frustrates her, how she thinks, how she responds, what are her dreams and goals, her strengths, her weaknesses, her temptations, her besetting sins, her moods, her hormonal cycles likes her dislikes, what makes her feel loved? What makes her feel unloved?

And in order to grow in our knowledge of these things, we need to spend time studying our wives. You're like, where's the book for that? Right? No, you need to study your wife and listen to them and learn how to read them. And guys, we need to have a sincere desire to understand our wife and to get to know her on a more than just surface level and demonstrate an interest in her and develop a sensitivity to her. And I think the place to start is just to carve out time in your daily and weekly and monthly schedule to spend undistracted unhurried time with your wife.

I had lunch with a buddy of mine a couple weeks ago and he showed me this little a text called Intentional Marriage. And it had three pieces of advice that you, and this is what it was called, daily delay, weekly Withdrawal, annual Anniversary. In other words, you need to take a few minutes every day to communicate with your wife. And then you need to have a weekly withdrawal, a date, a time when you get a little more time together, kind of a date night and then an annual anniversary to go away every year to celebrate your anniversary for a few days or a week. Again, just put it in your calendar, schedule it. Some of you ladies might feel offended that you're another item in your husband's calendar. Kelly loves it when she sees her name in my calendar, I always put little hearts next to it like this is Kelly time, right? And she likes that. She sees I'm striving to be intentional and deliberate because if I don't, time will slip away.

So man, this may mean that you need to be home more. Maybe you need to work less hours or hit a few less golf balls at the driving range, except for this week, I know it's okay, you're getting ready for the tournament, but maybe take a few less trips to the Dear Lease or turn off the TV or put down the cell phone or your iPad. We don't ever want to give our wives the impression that we're more interested in what went on in the world today than we are what went on in their world that day.

And once you're sitting there, you need to work hard at stimulating meaningful communication by asking good questions that go beyond your schedules and deals with more than just facts. I'm a facts guy. I dunno about you guy. I'm a facts guy. Just tell me the facts where we know our women are more into what feelings. And so this is, I mean, guys just get to go, Hey, how's it going? Good, how are you? Good. It's like we just kind of keep things on the surface and instead of asking your wife the question, so what did you do today, honey? You can ask her that question, but then you got to follow it up with a question. So how did that make you feel?

Talk about scary. That's a scary question for a guy to ask his wife, especially a sports center is coming on in 10 minutes because you're probably not going to get a 10 minute answer, right? I mean, that's one of the differences between a man and a woman. You ask a guy how they feel, how do you feel? Fine. That's about it. And that's a legitimate answer for most guys. That's all they can come up with. Whereas if you ask a woman how she feels, well, you never know it's going to come out. She could be sad, she could be happy, lonely, excited, scared, upset.

And so when your wife expresses how she feels, how you may have hurt her or what she perceives to be a problem in your marriage, be careful how you respond because if you react in anger or frustration, you'll likely shutter down. We need to create an atmosphere where our wives be open and honest and where they're not afraid to tell you what they really think and what they really feel, which means we don't laugh at them or minimize the problem by telling her she's way too sensitive. Or maybe perhaps it's we are the ones that need to be more sensitive. We can't get defensive or try to rationalize why she's feeling that way or acting that way or talking that way. She's just having a bad day or it's that time of the month. That may be true, but mentioning that in that moment, I don't think your wife probably will appreciate that.

And again, guard against always trying to fix whatever is being talked about, which can sometimes be very prideful and self-serving. Because what we're thinking as men is, you know what? I don't need this right now. How can we get to the solution as quick as possible and move on? I got other things I got to deal with. So it can be very proud, very self-serving just to want to fix whatever it is. I think if you've been married again, married for any length of time, that sometimes wise say things that sound like a question, but they're really not looking for an answer or a solution. They just want us to feel it. Whatever it is it is, right? I'll give you a homework assignment, okay, you ready for this? Write this down. It's not about the nail. If you've never seen that little YouTube video, go home today.

Sit down as husband and wife, gather the kids around, okay? It's a great little lesson for the young boys to see that this is true. By the way, this is approved by my wife. She's laughed with this video along with me, okay? This is not like a guy thing making fun of women. This is like, that is so true. It's not about the nail. Go home and watch it and it's your family worship for this week, right? What are some practical ways to pursue your wife? Just some practical things. I'll just list them off here. Plan a regular date together.

Ask deep thought provoking questions that draw her out. Listen to her suggestions without getting defensive. Let her vent frustrations without correcting her trying to fix it. Keep physical or mental notes of things you discover about your wife that you want to remember, things that maybe she likes, places she would want to go, restaurants that are her favorite, maybe things that she mentions. Make a mental note of that. Actually write it down if need be. I know a guy that actually has a notebook that he keeps on his wife. All the things that he learns about her, he writes 'em down so he can refer back to them.

Another suggestion to pursue your wife. Experience her world. Do some of her daily chores or task, wash the dishes, fold the laundry, dust the house, change the diaper. Wow, what a novel thought, guys, right? Change the diaper. Try making dinner inner besides just scrambled eggs. I know we all know how to do that, but try to go a little beyond that. Again, I think this makes us appreciate our wives and understand what they go through on a daily basis. And just another one last practical way to pursue your wife. Be a student of your wife.

Don't just settle for a high school degree, a high school diploma on your wife. You need to be pursuing, not even a bachelor's degree master, you need to be pursuing a doctorate in your wife. And the truth of the matter is, we don't actually have a choice when it comes to furthering our education because even if we're content with what we know about our wife or think we know all that there is to know about them, God enrolls us in a new class when we least expect it. Like menopause 1 0 1 for example. Now I know everybody's cringing. Now. It's like I purposely asked my wife, I said, sweetie, I don't want to dishonor you while preaching a message on honoring wives. I said, but we both know that this has been a great learning season for us when it comes to this whole thing about living with your wife in an understanding way as someone weaker since she's a woman. So I got her permission, okay, to share this. And I guess I could just start by saying, I agree with the Christian comedian, Jeff Allen, if you've ever heard him, he's a really funny guy. He said when his wife started menopause, he would lay awake at night and dream of the good old days of PMs.

And a few years back, something thing happened to my wife, and at first I wasn't sure what it was and what to do about it. And little did I know that my wife was experiencing a major physiological change in her life. God had installed a furnace inside her and our house and our car started getting very cold. And guess what? So did our marriage. And all I remember is wondering where that sweet, kind, grateful, gracious woman that I married went and who was this crazy lady that all of a sudden I was married to and am confessing to you? This is a confession that I did not respond very well at first, especially when she shoved a book on menopause at me and told me if truly loved her, I would read it. I guess this was a textbook for this new class that God had enrolled me in, and I didn't want to be in it. I didn't even want to audit it. I wanted out of it, can I drop this class? Where's the drop deadline?

Because it definitely put a strain on our marriage and created a lot of tension between us at the time. But then two things happened that changed everything. The first thing was during one of our heated conversations, that's code word for hot flash conversations. During one of those heated conversations, Kelly blurted out, I'll never forget this, she said, I feel like a crazy lady. And I immediately thought to myself, that's what I've been thinking. But in that critical moment, it dawned on me that even she didn't know what was going on inside of her, which made me much more patient and compassionate towards her from that moment on. And then secondly, Kelly got her hormone levels checked by a wise doctor who knew what she was doing, who gave her a prescription that has balanced her out. And we both call it now her crazy lady medicine.

And whenever she tells me it's ready to be picked up, I drop whatever I'm doing and I make a beeline to the pharmacy. And we joke about that, and I'll never forget this early on in the struggle and our struggle together as kind of navigating this whole class we never signed up for. I guess you sign up for it when you get married, right? That's all part of it. For richer, for poor and sickness and in health, right? The good and the bad. Well, it was early on in our struggle that Kelly and I confided in a mentor of ours who was a few years ahead of us in their journey. And as he was sharing with us how it was for he and his wife, he said something I will never forget, which was a game changer for both of us guys, get your pencil out, your pen out, your iPad out because you're going to want to get this.

This is what he said in this unique season in our wives lives, they're feeling fearful, unsettled, vulnerable, and insecure. And when he listed off those things, I could just hear Kelly in her mind quoting that line from You've got Mail 152 Insights into my Soul, those of you who watched that movie, like that movie, like, wow, that's an insight into my soul. And I said, Hey, can you say that again? And I actually took my phone out and I emailed myself those four words and I thought they just nailed the situation. So now we call it fu. That's how we remember it. Kelly and I both remember that by fuey, fearful, unsettled, vulnerable, and insecure.

And again, this all goes along with this text. Notice what it says here. You husbands in the same way live with your wives in an understanding way as with someone weaker since she's a woman. Again, this is not a derogatory term that implies that women are inferior to men. Nowhere does the Bible say that women are inferior to men, they're spiritual equals. He's about to tell us they're fellow heirs of the grace of life. Peter, excuse me, was simply referring to the basic fact that generally speaking, men are physically and at times emotionally stronger than women. I mean, guys, let's face it. Most of us could easily overpower our wives physically if we wanted to.

We are the ones, I dunno about you. When you hear some noise in the middle of the night, you don't say, Hey honey, why don't you go check that out? We get up, right? Grab the baseball bat or grab the gun or whatever you got next to your bed and you go exploring for that sound. When you get a flat tire on the freeway, you don't say, well, hun, I'm going to make some phone calls and answer some emails. Do you mind getting out and fixing that flat? No. We get out and we fix the flat.

When we get hurt, guys, our typical response is, I'm good, right? You get a bowling ball dropped on your head, oh, I'm good. You get electrocuted when you're trying to do something and you get thrown back shocked, you're like, I'm good. But when our wives get hurt, they usually say, ow, ow. And they get even more hurt if we don't acknowledge their pain and if we don't make an effort to commiserate with them again, wives tend to be more sensitive, more easily, deeply hurt by things, especially insensitive treatment by their husbands. And so rather than causing us disdain or frustration or irritation or impatience, the weakness of our wife should make us want to honor and respect them even more. One Corinthians 12, verse 22, the members of the body, which seem to be weaker, are necessary, and those members of the body, which we deem less honorable on these, we bestow more abundant honor. God has so composed the body giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked.

And so we need to change the way we think about this whole idea that we're living with someone weaker. It says she sees a woman, literally the one Peter was suggesting that our wives femininity should compel us to treat them with a higher measure of thoughtfulness and tenderness. You may have heard it said somewhere by someone that men need to get in touch with their feminine side. You're like, yeah, right. Well guys, that's true. It's called your wife. She's your feminine side, and you do need to get in touch with her because she's a weaker vessel. That word is maybe in your translation, that word vessel jar, instrument container. The idea is that she's more fragile. This is the idea of the expensive treating your wife, like this expensive fragile vase that you got at the Houston Galleria at one of those high-end stores. And you put it up on the mantle and you honor that rather than the trash can that you bought at Walmart that you kind of drag in and out of the garage every week. You treat them as someone weaker since she's a woman. So we need to pursue our wives, number one. But then secondly, and this leads us to the second point. We need to prize our wives. We need to prize our wives. Notice he says here, and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life.

Show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life. Assign her a place of honor in your life, man, next to your relationship to Christ. Make your relationship to your wife your highest priority. Let her know she's more important to you than anything or anyone else. Put her above your job, your friends, your hobbies. Cherish her. Treat her like a precious, priceless jewel. And the reality is, most of us guys who are married wouldn't be married today if we hadn't done that already for our wives at some point. Agreed. I mean, this is natural for us to treat a woman like this. When we first meet, when we're dating, when we're engaged, that we're courteous and polite and thoughtful, and we act like a gentleman and we're creative and we're spontaneous, and we go out of our way to make things special. And we're never at a loss for words and the conversation never drags. But then after the wedding day, we have the temptation or the tendency to mount our trophy on the wall and to go off and conquer the next goal in our life.

And over time, the wife ends up feeling like nothing more than our cook or our concubine or our cleaning lady. And so how can we prize our wives? How can we honor our wives? Well, lemme give you a few suggestions. Think of her as more important than you. We already talked about that. Give her your undivided attention when she's talking to you. Seek her counsel and take her advice that honors your wife. Include her in major decisions. Don't ever raise your voice at her or shout at her or hit her or push her or grab her or control her by force. Train your children to speak with respect to not just their mother, but to your wife. I heard a guy say one time his kid was mouthing back to his wife and he said, Hey, don't talk to my wife that way.

That's a good reminder, right? Defend your wife if you will express your appreciation to her for making the meals and washing the clothes. Tell her thank you all the time. Surprise her with a special night away. Send flowers during the day. Pick up your clothes, put them in the hamper. Don't expect her to always clean up after you. This is an honor her. Pull out her chair. Open the car door for her. Speak highly of her to others. Never belittle her or badmouth her in front of others. Don't share her weaknesses with other people. Give her space and freedom. Don't monitor every move or every penny that she spends. Change any habits that irritate her or annoy her. Provide her time to get away from the responsibilities, the duties of the house with maybe the children and whatever else. Just spend some time alone or to be with some friends that really ministers to our wives. It honors our wives. Communicate where you're going, what you're doing when you'll be home. Overlook minor faults, physical flaws, personality quirks. Don't demand perfection when you can't produce it yourself.

You want to honor your wife. Don't lust after other women. Compliment her on how she looks, and don't just focus on her outward appearance. Tell her what you appreciate about who she is or what she does serve her. Don't act like a pompous king sitting on your throne expecting her to wait on you hand and foot. If you want your wife to treat you like a king, you got to treat her like a queen, right? Well, Peter gives a reason why we should honor our wives in the same way he gave a reason for why we should pursue our wives. The reason why we should prize our wives, it says because they're a fellow heir of the grace of life.

This word, fellow air or joint air is a familiar term used by Paul Romans eight in Ephesians chapter three. And I think it's just the idea here that we are on an equal standing before God in the spirit realm. Even though we've been given authority over our wives, we are on the same spiritual level where we see the same spiritual inheritance. We are fellow heirs of the grace of life. Now there's some discussion about what is the grace of life here? Is it life in general that we're just fellow heirs of this thing we call life? Others say it's marriage that this is God's most gracious gift apart from salvation. It's the gift of marriage. It's the grace of life that both husband and wife mutually enjoy the best relationship this earthly life has to offer. Ecclesiastes nine talks about, Hey, enjoy the wife of your youth while you live on this earth under the sun. But it also could be a reference to eternal life that we're both partakers of God's gracious gift of salvation, which leads to eternal life.

The point is that we're one, we're fellow heirs of the grace of life, whatever. It's however you interpret that. But notice the final phrase, which I think contains the overarching motivation for husbands to pursue and prize their wives. He says, honor them. Show her honor as a fellow heir the grace of life so that your prayers will not be hindered. That word hindered. There is a military term used to describe when an army would cut down trees and throw them across the road to block the path of an approaching enemy. And so when you put prayer in that context, we could say that prayer is our pathway to God. And when we don't live with our wives in an understanding away, when we don't honor them, our path to God is blocked off.

Some of you men may be wondering why you have such a hard time praying or why maybe your prayers are not being answered. It might be the result of months or perhaps even years of debris that you've allowed to pile up between you and your wife. And as long as you continue to treat your wife poorly, God is not going to hear your prayers. Psalm 66 18, if I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear. We know Matthew 5 23 says, if you are bringing your offering to the Lord and somebody has something against you, you leave your offering there and you go make it right first.

In other words, God's not interested in having fellowship with you unless you're right with your wife and right with his daughter. You think about how if a guy mistreats his wife and he comes into the presence of her dad who gave her away to him and trusting her to him to take care of her, how do you think that's going to go? Probably not so good. And I think this is a good reminder that these women that God has blessed us with are a gift from the Lord. They're his daughters that he entrusts to us to care for. And so that's why there's a connection between our love life and our prayer life. And the better our relationship is with our wife, the better our relationship will be with God. And at the same time, the better our relationship is with God, the better our relationship is with our wife. I mean, these two relationships, our relationship with God, our relationship with our wives are inseparably linked and they invariably influence one another.

Ever since I've known Kelly, our relationship has paralleled my relationship with the Lord. And if you were to chart this or graph it, if I'm growing and getting closer to the Lord, then guess what's happening in my marriage? Same thing. But if I'm not growing and I'm drifting away from the Lord, if I'm not in a good place spiritually, guess what? You can follow that my marriage relationship graph falls along with it. And so guys, these things are the key to not only maintaining a right relationship with our wives, but also maintaining a right relationship with God.

This isn't just what our wives want, this is what God wants from us. And I think this is the wisdom of this passage. God knows what women want most. He made them. And more than anything else, I think wives want to be pursued and wives want to be prized. And if I were to take a survey this morning and ask all of you married ladies, if you can have anything in your relationship with your husband, and I asked you, how does being pursued sound? How does being pride sound? I think most of you would be like, I like the sound of that. That's what I want. Well, why do you want that? Because God designed you to want that notice. I'm using the word want and not need because there's some very confusing books and counseling and teaching that come out of the world of psychology that talks about all these needs that we have and guys have needs, and gals have needs, and husbands need to meet their wives needs, and wives need to meet their husband's needs. And if they don't, they're going to go off and have an affair. His needs, her needs. Well, I'm okay with that concept as long as you call it his wants and her wants, because these are not demands, right? These aren't things that you can demand from one another, and ultimately there are things that you shouldn't expect.

But these are things that we should prayerfully seek the Lord's grace in. Speaking of prayer, this is how, prayer is how we express our desperate dependence on God when it comes to obeying the things that he has commanded us to do, which are not just difficult guys. If you're feeling like, whoa, that sounds hard. I don't know if I can do that. Well, it's not just hard, it's impossible. It's impossible. Apart from Christ. Another book that Kelly and I are working our way through is this book called Love That Lasts. I would highly recommend it. I think our new favorite book on mayor is Gary and Betsy Ucci wrote this, but listen to what he says at the end of the chapter on men's roles, the role of the husband and the title is Desperate and Dependent. He says, the desperation and inadequacy I feel when considering the fullness of the task before me is in fact the only response that can position me to succeed desperate is exactly where God wants us.

Far from being a desperation devoid of hope, it is a self despair that acknowledges absolutely no inherent adequacy, sufficiency, or competency for the task. It is a desperation that turns the eyes of faith toward the God of grace there and there alone. Do we discover complete and perfect adequacy, sufficiency and competence? It comes down to this. He says, we can love and lead our wives because, and only because Christ first loved us, our role originates in the gospel, is empowered by the gospel and is perfected through the gospel. We can love and lead our wives because our savior, Jesus Christ, loved us, gave himself up for us and leads us each day in mercy and grace.

He says, we have a journey to complete. And the central theme and central focus of this journey is God's perfect and unchanging love towards us, not our own failures, to love our wives. So the really important question is not how badly have I failed, which I think every guy could say, yeah, that's me. I feel probably more like a failure than a success when it comes to these kinds of things more often than not, but rather, with all of God's limitless grace at our disposal, the question is, what can I do today to trust God, to obey God, and to glorify God in my marriage by loving, serving, leading, and I would add, pursuing and prising my wife? Let's pray. Father, thank you for such a relevant, practical portion of your word. And Lord, again, I don't know where everyone's at this morning, where every husband, every wife, every marriage is, but Lord, and I pray that you would just take your word and use it as an encouragement to everyone's hearts. Again, if we need to be confronted, Lord, that your spirit would do that as only he can do. And if we need to be comforted, Lord, your spirit would do that as only he can do. And so, Lord, accomplish your purposes in our lives and in our marriages and our church for Christ, honor and glory. We ask this in His name, amen.