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How to be a Fulfilled and a Fulfilling Husband By Wayne Mack

I heard some time ago a story about a man who really enjoyed football.
I mean, he watched every football game he could possibly watch and maybe some that he
couldn't possibly watch.
But if there was a football game on television or a football game around the area, you could
count on him being there.
After a while, his wife kind of got jealous of these football games, and one day when
he was sitting in the family room watching a football game, she came in and planted herself
between him and the television set, and she said, I want to know, do you love me?
He said, you know I love you.
Well, she wasn't satisfied with that, and so she said, I want to know, do you love me
more than football?
Silence.
Not a word.
She said, come on, I want to know, do you love me more than football?
He pondered for a moment.
He thought, and finally he said, I love you more than horseback riding.
The Bible commands husbands to love their wives.
In Ephesians chapter 5 verses 25 through 29 and verse 33, God commands husbands in three
places to love their wives.
We read, husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself
up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water by
the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot
or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless.
So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes
and cherishes it just as Christ also does the church.
And then in verse 33 we read, nevertheless, let each individual among you also love his
own wife even as himself.
In verse 25, the husband is commanded to love his wife.
In verse 28, the husband is commanded to love his wife.
And in verse 33, the husband is commanded to love his wife.
Do you realize that there's not one place in the Bible where the wife is specifically
commanded to love her husband?
Not one place.
You can bring her under the umbrella of Matthew 22, which says you're to love your neighbor
as yourself.
And so since the husband is the closest neighbor the wife has, she's got to love her husband.
And if she can't love him as a neighbor, it's still covered because Jesus said in Matthew
5, love your enemy.
And so if she considers him to be an enemy, she's still got to love him.
But there's no specific command in the word of God which says, wives, love your husband.
Now, Titus 2 says that wives are to be taught to love their husbands.
That's not a command.
It's just a declaration of what ought to happen.
But here in Ephesians 5, three times, the husband is commanded to love his wife.
Why?
Why does God pick on the husbands?
Well, I think he picks on the husbands because the husband is to be the leader.
He's to be the initiator.
He represents Christ in the home.
And in 1 John chapter 4, the Bible says we love him because he first loved us.
We don't love God, and then God as a result loves us.
God is always the initiator.
God is love, and he who loves has been born of God.
You can't have biblical love unless you've been born of God.
It comes from God.
The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
He's always the initiator.
He's the leader.
And in the home, the husband is to be the leader as far as love is concerned.
But there's another reason why God emphasizes that husbands should love their wives, and
that's because very frequently the husbands get so busy doing other things that they neglect
this aspect.
And if there's anyone who needs to be challenged to love, it's often those of us who are husbands.
God knows that.
And so he says husbands love your wives, and he says it three times to make sure that we
get the message.
But God not only says that husbands should love their wives, because there are many husbands
who say, well, I do love my wife, like this stuff I mentioned a moment ago.
I do love you.
Well God not only tells us that we should love our wives, he tells us how we should
love our wives.
And I want you fellas this morning to ask yourself the question, how do I rate as my
wife's lover?
Well I want to bring you to the scriptures and let you evaluate yourself in the light
of what the word of God says about the way you should love your wife.
First of all, in verse 28, God says, so husbands ought also to love their own wives as their
own body.
A husband is to love his wife, verse 28, and again verse 33, even as he loves himself
in the same manner, to the same degree, in the same way that he loves himself.
The husband is to love his own wife.
Do you love your wife as you love yourself?
Now let's face it, each of us has carried on quite a love affair with ourselves since
the day that we were born.
It may not sound very spiritual, but it's true.
You love yourself and I love myself.
That's what the Bible says.
It says in verse 29, no one ever hated his own flesh.
Now I may wish that I didn't have quite as much of it, but I don't hate my own flesh
and you don't hate your own flesh.
You love yourself.
There may be some things about yourself that you don't like, but basically you love yourself.
Some time ago I came across an article in a Christian magazine which was entitled, how
do I love me?
Let me count the ways.
And then the author goes on to describe some of the ways in which we love ourselves.
He says it starts with a sudden buzz of an alarm clock, this daily process of loving
myself.
I stagger to the bathroom, cup water in my hands, splash my face, letting the water trickle
between my fingers and dive off my chin into the sink, hopefully.
It takes me around 40 minutes each day to prepare for the world by showering, grooming
and dressing.
This particular fellow really gets prepared, takes him 40 minutes to get prepared.
Maybe it takes you 25 or 30, but at any rate it takes you some time to get ready.
So you have time for yourself when you get up in the morning.
That's about 250 hours a year I spend getting ready to impress people.
During the day I wonder whether I passed the test.
Are my clothes right?
Do people notice me?
Do I fit in?
Is my tan even?
Do people notice me?
That's the main question.
I certainly notice myself.
It's as if I'm the only person who really matters.
To me the others are shadowed people who scurry through vague, less than real lives.
How do I love me?
My whole life is a strung together collection of movie scenes with me at the center of each
one.
Somebody takes a picture and you're in the group.
They show you the picture.
Who do you look for first?
You zero in on yourself.
How do I look?
Am I there?
You're the center of that movie scene.
You're playing the lead.
And then he goes on to say, I think I love myself most when I'm with others.
He says, sometimes I blow it, I'll say something crude or flunk a test or make a mistake or
not do my part.
Even then, while on the outside I'm hot with embarrassment and anger, inside I'm making
excuses, rationalizing it away, it's someone else who is at fault for being too demanding
and nosy.
In any argument my cause is the right one.
If people insist on their way, sometimes I'll grudgingly concede, but then punish them on
the inside by withdrawing and sulking.
They don't trust me, I grouse.
If they trusted me, they wouldn't ask me those questions.
They wouldn't disagree with me.
And on and on he goes, describing how we love ourselves.
And then he comes to the conclusion and says, Jesus told a very successful, cocky man that
the way to live right is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
I know how I love myself.
It's the main preoccupation of my life, my first thought in the morning, my last at night.
But I've hardly considered loving others in that same way.
I don't help them by praising their good traits and forgiving their mistakes the way I want
people to respond to me.
I want them to overlook my mistakes and my faults.
After all, we say I'm only human.
And when we do something well, we want them to praise us.
We want them to express appreciation to us.
But he says we don't do that usually with other people.
It's much easier to block them off, to continue seeing them as minor characters in my life,
undeserving even of a credit line.
What would happen if I truly loved them as I love myself?
Well, what would happen if we husbands really loved our wives as we love ourselves?
Well, Jesus, through the Holy Spirit in this passage, tells us what would happen.
In verse 29, he says that if we loved our wives as we love ourselves, we would nourish
them and we would cherish them.
Now, when he speaks of expressing our love to our wives by way of cherishing them, our
Lord is suggesting that our love for our wives should be manifested in our attitudes.
When I cherish someone or something, it means that I consider that someone or that something
to be very valuable, to be very important.
My attitude toward what I cherish is that of appreciation.
That thing or that person is worth something.
That thing or that person is valuable to me.
I cherish it.
I treasure it.
I think highly of it.
And God says, you husbands are to love your wives by cherishing them, by having an attitude
that expresses value and worth to the wife.
Now, how do we love ourselves?
How do we cherish ourselves?
Well, if we do something that is worthwhile, we have a feeling of satisfaction, and we
allow ourselves to feel satisfied.
If I do something well, you know that there is a sense of satisfaction.
I believe it's proper to have a sense of satisfaction, not pride, I'm not talking about that, where
you swagger and strut and say, hey, I'm really great, but a genuine sense of satisfaction
and accomplishment, and saying, hey, you did a good job with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Paul was not above that.
In 1 Corinthians 15, he says, by the grace of God, I am what I am.
Nevertheless, he says, I labored more abundantly than all of them.
Isn't that pride?
I worked harder than anybody else, said the apostle Paul.
No, that's not pride, that's just fact.
Paul really did.
But then he went on to say, I am what I am by the grace of God.
I don't get the credit.
I did it, but the Holy Spirit and God gave me the power to do it.
Nevertheless, there was that sense of proper satisfaction.
In 2 Timothy chapter 4, he says, I have fought the fight, I have finished the course, henceforth
there laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord has prepared for them that
love him.
And there's that proper sense of satisfaction, looking at what has happened in his life and
saying that, hey, by the grace and power of God, I did a good job.
Now we do that to ourselves just naturally.
But if we love our wives, it means that we should be doing the same thing for them.
We should be giving them generous doses of praise and appreciation.
Now I have couples come for counseling and I'll have the husband tell me all kinds of
things that he doesn't like about his wife.
She doesn't do this, she doesn't do that, or she does this and he doesn't like it.
He'll have a long list of things that he doesn't appreciate about her, but when I ask
him what do you appreciate about her, it's very difficult for him sometimes to think
about the things that he does appreciate, which simply indicates that he hasn't been
expressing much appreciation to her.
And many of them will acknowledge after they have been challenged that it's been many days,
perhaps even weeks, since they have expressed appreciation.
I mean, isn't the wife supposed to cook for him?
Isn't the wife supposed to do the washing?
Is she supposed to clean?
Isn't that why I married her?
Why do I have to thank her for it?
Because you are to love her as you love yourself.
Even though you do something again and again, you still get a sense of satisfaction from
doing it, and you ought to be giving to your wives generous doses of praise and appreciation.
Last night we looked at Genesis 2, verse 24, God's blueprint for marriage.
For this cause the man shall leave his father and mother, cleaved to his wife, and the two
shall become one flesh.
But the verse which goes right before that verse is tremendously interesting as well.
God made the woman, brought her to the man, and when God introduced the woman to the man,
the King James Version says that Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my
flesh.
She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.
Now, that's rather tame.
This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.
The Revised Standard Version is somewhat better.
It says that Adam said, At last, bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.
Now, get the picture.
At last, he's in a perfect garden.
God's created all of this world.
It was very good, no pollution.
Man hasn't done anything to ruin it yet.
The animals are not destroying one another.
The balance of nature is perfect, and yet there was something missing.
And so God made the woman, presented her to the man, and what Adam said was, At last!
I've not seen anything like this before.
All these beautiful flowers.
I've not seen anything like this before.
He's better than all of them.
At last!
He says, Look at what God has given to me.
What was Adam doing?
He was expressing appreciation to God and to the woman.
But I like Martin Luther's translation of the Hebrew in Genesis 2 and verse 23 better
than any, because I think it really gets at what Adam was doing.
Now, Martin Luther translated into German, but the English equivalent of what Martin
Luther said, Adam said, is this.
Martin Luther says that when Adam took one look at Eve, he said, Wow!
Wow!
Bone of my bones!
Bless your mind!
Woo!
Is she ever something?
And what Adam was doing was expressing his deep appreciation for Eve.
And gentlemen, that's what we ought to be doing.
Loving to our wives that we really appreciate them.
We should go on a crusade to make our wives think that we think that she, they are the
best women in all of the world.
Loving them means that you'll express generous doses of praise and appreciation.
But loving them as you love yourself in the form of cherishing them also means that you'll
make time to be with your wife.
You know, there's one person I always have time to be with.
Twenty-four hours a day, I have time to be with me.
I never say, Wayne, don't have time to be with you today.
No, I make time to be with me.
Wherever I go, me goes with me.
And you know, if I love my wife as I love myself, I'll make time to be with her.
Scripture says in 1 Peter 3 and verse 7, husbands, dwell with your wives.
The word dwell means to live with her.
It means to abide with her.
It means to remain with her.
It doesn't say pay her an occasional visit.
Maybe give her a telephone call every now and then, although that's all right.
But do more than that.
Live with her.
Spend your time with her.
I've got a couple that have been coming for counseling.
He's very active in Christian work.
And he's so involved in the church, he's a paid employee in the church.
And they've got the guy going from early in the morning till late at night.
And every day of the week, I've had him keep a time usage record
and so I can see what he's doing.
And recently, the only time that they had to have sex relations
was from 1.15 in the morning till however long it took.
They just didn't have any time the rest of the day
because he was either doing this or that
and they had so many meetings scheduled at the church.
And as a result of that, his wife was in a terrible state of depression.
And unless they begin to make some changes,
their marriage relationship is going to suffer as well.
Well, I emphasize the fact that they had to make time to be with each other.
One of the reasons his wife was depressed
was because she was lacking that fellowship with her husband.
She couldn't talk to him about her problems
because he was so busy with everybody else's problems.
He had time for everybody and everyone else,
but he didn't have time for her.
And really, what that says to the wife is,
you're not nearly as important to me as my job.
You're not nearly as important to me as going out and visitation.
You're not nearly as important to me as the choir.
You're not nearly as important to me as whatever.
It may be golf, it may be bowling, it may be hunting,
it may be fishing, it may be whatever.
And if the husband has time for all of these other things
but he never has time for her, what he's saying
is you're at the bottom end of my priority list.
He's not loving her as he loves himself.
And so loving your wife, letting her know that you cherish her,
involves making time to be with her.
And this to throw out a suggestion to you
as far as what some of us have tried to do.
Some of us schedule a time every day
when we get alone with our wives.
In our case, my wife and I often go into our bedroom,
shut the door, and when the door is shut,
the children know, don't bother mom and dad
unless it's an absolute emergency,
a case of life and death.
We've got to have time to be alone.
And one night a week, some of us set aside
to date our wives at least once a week.
One night a week is for our wives.
If somebody else calls us up and asks us to do something sorry,
I have an appointment.
And I do.
I have an appointment with the most important person
in my life next to Jesus Christ, and that's my wife.
And then we spend that one night together.
And in many cases, it's been many moons
since husbands and wives have really had a night just alone
together.
This particular case I mentioned before,
they've been married for something like three years.
And I asked her to share with me how many times that she
and her husband had just gone out and done things together.
And she remembered three times when
they had gone out and done something just together
in the time that they had been married.
They went bowling shortly after they got married.
They did something else.
And then last week, as a result of the counseling,
they took a night out and went bowling.
Well, they have decided to take one night a week, Friday night
now, where they're going to get away from the children.
They're going to get out, and they're
going to do something together.
Now, we don't always go out sometimes.
We just spend it together in the home.
But my wife and I spend it together,
and we're getting to know each other.
We're being one another's companions.
We're being friends with one another.
And by that, I'm seeking to convey to my wife,
hey, you're really important to me, and I make time for you.
So love your wife by making time for her.
Thirdly, cherishing our wives, I believe,
will involve really listening to them.
In James 1 and verse 19, the Bible
says, be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.
I've had some husbands who tell me
that they don't really get interested in what
their wives are saying.
I mean, they come home, and their wife
wants to talk about what the kids did
and all these little problems, their trivial little things.
And that husband's telling me, well, I'm
just not interested in that kind of thing.
And so when the wife begins to talk about these things,
they just either walk out of the room or tune them out
and sit there and act bored.
The wife, of course, knows what's happening.
She can tell when there's nobody home.
The body may be there, but you're elsewhere.
And that begins to communicate to her,
he really isn't interested in what I have to say.
He really doesn't care.
And it seems to me that it's right at this point
where the Bible has something to say.
When we're not interested in what somebody else has to say,
the Bible says we are to esteem others better than ourselves.
We're to look not every man on his own interests,
but every man on the things of others.
And if I'm not interested in what my wife is saying,
then love says she needs to say it to somebody.
And maybe she's talking to somebody else
because you're not really listening.
You see, you've been with people all day, maybe.
And perhaps she's in the home, and the biggest people
she's talked to are quite a bit shorter than she is.
And here's another real, living, human being who is an adult.
And she wants to be able to share with you.
And after all, you're supposed to be the most important adult
in her life.
So here she is.
She wants to talk to you, and you just tune her out.
And when you tune her out, what you're saying,
if you don't have anything worthwhile to say,
I'm really not interested in what you have to say.
And at that point, you're really not cherishing your wife,
and you're really not listening to your wife.
I can assure you that when I talk, I listen.
I know for sure that there's one person in this room today
who's really listening to me, and that's me.
And I really think that what I'm saying is important.
And if your wife says it, she thinks
what she's saying is important too.
And loving her as you love yourself
means that you will listen to her.
But then still further, loving your wife as you love yourself
means that you will seek her counsel.
You'll ask for her advice.
Proverbs 12 and verse 15 says, the way of a fool
is right in his own eyes, but he who
listens to counsel is wise.
Proverbs 15, verse 22 says, without counsel,
plans are frustrated, but in the multitude of counselors,
there is safety, there is victory.
Proverbs 18 and verse 2 says that a fool
has no delight in understanding, but only
in stating his own opinion.
Proverbs 18 and verse 15 says that the mind of the wise
seeks for knowledge.
And Proverbs 20 and verse 25 says
that it's a snare for a man to say rashly, it is holy,
and then afterwards make inquiry.
You get the picture?
Here's a fellow who's always shooting off,
making quick decisions.
And then after he's made the decision,
he investigates and makes sure that what he said or decided
to do was the right thing.
Then it's too late.
The time to make inquiry, the time to investigate,
is before you've said anything.
Now, the Bible again and again stresses the importance
of seeking counsel.
And the Bible makes it very clear
that as far as the husband-wife relationship is concerned,
the man's chief counselor should be his wife,
because God said in Genesis 2 and verse 18,
I'll make for him a helper who is suitable for him.
Now, of course, that means that the wife
is going to pray and think.
She's not just going to be a babbler.
The book of Proverbs has a lot to say
about the danger of being a babbler
and shooting off your mouth, putting your mouth in gear
or in motion before your mind is in gear.
There's a problem with that.
There's some wives who do that.
But still, the husband is to come to his wife
and seek counsel.
He's to talk things over with her.
He's to get her viewpoint.
He's to ask for her help as he makes decisions.
Surely, he's to be the head of the home.
Surely, he's to be the final decision maker.
But he's supposed to look to others for counsel,
because without counsel, plans are frustrated.
And in the multitude of counselors, there's safety.
Now, if people come to me for counsel, when they come to me,
what they're saying is, Dr. Mack,
I believe you have something important to say.
I believe that you can help me.
I believe that you have some solutions.
That's what they communicate to me
as they walk into my counseling room.
They wouldn't be there.
They wouldn't be paying the money they're paying
if they didn't believe, most of them at least,
that I have some way of helping them.
And of course, when I turn to my wife and I say,
honey, I've got this particular problem.
I've got this particular difficulty.
I've got to make a decision about this,
and I really need your help.
What I'm saying to her is, hey, you've got something up here.
You've got some intelligence.
You've got something that you can offer to me.
What I'm communicating to her is that she is a worthwhile
and a valuable person.
And so we communicate to our wives
that we really love them by seeking their counsel.
Now, unfortunately, there are many husbands
who are really afraid to seek their wives' counsel.
They don't ask their wives about certain things
because they're afraid their wives might give them an opinion
and the opinion might be right.
And they're so insecure and so immature
that they wouldn't want to acknowledge
that their wife has some better ideas than they
do in certain areas.
And so rather than run that risk,
they won't even turn to their wives and ask for counsel.
Now, sometimes that's because of the way the wives give
the counsel, too, and give the advice.
I mean, the wife, when she gives a word of counsel,
it's as though she was speaking as God himself.
And if the husband doesn't follow her advice,
then he gets punished for it the rest of his life.
And so the husband says, no, thank you.
I'm not going to ask you again because if I don't follow
your counsel, you'll punish me.
So he stays away.
But on the other hand, there are husbands
who just don't turn to their wives
because they don't realize that God
has given that woman to them to help
them to make wise decisions.
So husbands love your wives by seeking their counsel.
But then still further, love your wives
by keeping them informed, by sharing with them
what's going on in your life, what's
going on in your thoughts.
Sharing with your wives your problems, your anxieties,
your fears, your concerns, your interests.
There are some wives who really don't know their husbands.
And the reason they don't know their husbands
is because the husbands aren't sharing.
One woman said, you heard of the old stone face?
Well, I married it.
Another woman said, my husband has one word in his vocabulary.
No, I take that back.
He has two.
It's uh-huh and uh-uh.
Another woman said, I married a newspaper with legs on it.
Share with your wives.
I mean, if somebody shares their life with me,
it causes me to realize they have confidence in me.
They're interested in me.
But if someone says, no, I don't want you to know about that.
Ever been in a group and they've been talking
and you walked up and all of a sudden, silence.
I'm an outsider.
It's evident they don't want me to hear what they're saying.
And that's what some wives are getting all the time, silence.
And she begins to feel like an outsider.
Share your life with your wife.
I know of one woman who began to look upon her husband's job
as her competitor.
She was jealous, envious of her husband's job.
I asked her what she knew about his work.
Nothing.
Maybe you heard of the one woman whose husband worked
as a radiologist in a hospital.
And someone asked her what that was.
And she says, my husband works with radios.
That's all she knew about her husband's job.
Well, this woman knew nothing about her husband's job.
He never shared anything.
He never talked about it.
And she felt shut out of that area of his life.
And so she became jealous of his work.
And I told him, in essence, I did it kindly.
But I did it frankly, too.
You're a fool.
You're asking for what you're getting.
Now, your wife is wrong in what she's doing.
But you're wrong, too, because you
ought to be sharing with your wife some of the things that
are happening down at work so that she thinks
that she is a part of what you're doing there.
Husbands, love your wives.
Open up and share with them and keep them informed.
Scripture says, how can two walk together
except they be agreed?
Amos 3 and verse 3.
And how can you agree unless you know
what the other person is thinking
and what's happening in the other person's life?
Now, there's another very important way
in which we express to our wives that they're important to us.
And that's by speaking love to them in their own language.
This is fantastically important.
Different people speak different languages
when it comes to the matter of love.
You might speak German.
She might speak Spanish or French or Italian or whatever.
And you know what happens when you get two people together
who are speaking different languages.
If I speak English and I'm speaking
to a guy who speaks German, for the most part,
he won't understand what I'm saying.
Or he'll even misinterpret and misunderstand my gestures
and the expressions on my face.
What in the world is he saying?
And we won't be communicating.
And I'll come away from that with a feeling of frustration
because I haven't been understood.
On the other hand, if the other person speaks to me
and he may speak very clearly in his own language,
but I don't understand a word that he's saying,
so I don't get anything from what he's saying
because we're speaking different languages.
And that's what's happening in many marriages.
They're speaking different languages,
and neither of them have taken the time
to learn the language of the other person.
If I were going to another country as a missionary
and I really wanted to reach those people,
I would have to learn their language.
And in many marriages, the husband
has never really taken the time to learn the language of love
that his wife speaks.
And he says, I am communicating love clearly.
She says, I don't hear it.
I don't understand it.
Why is that so?
Because they're not speaking the same language.
For example, and I've prepared this
and I use it with my councilees many times,
different people interpret love in different ways.
Some wives may say that what really says love to me
is that you are willing to spend time with me.
That's really important to me.
When I was growing up, a woman tells me,
my mom and dad were always so busy.
They never had time for me.
It was work, work, work, work, work.
And we never had fun.
We didn't go on vacation.
Mom and dad were always so busy that whenever
I wanted to spend time with them, they said, not now, not now.
And the time never came.
And she grew up with a craving to have somebody spend time
with her and show an interest in her,
and then she gets married.
And the guy is always down at the job.
Or one husband I know, he comes home from the job.
He's got a computer down in his basement,
and he heads down in the basement
to play with his computer.
And he has time to do that, but he doesn't have time
to be with his wife.
And this is very important to her.
And so what she says, he doesn't love me because he
won't spend time with me.
Now, he may do a lot of other things.
He may provide for her.
He may give gifts to her.
He may remember her birthday and their anniversary.
But if he doesn't spend time with her,
she says, you don't love me.
Because the key to her love language is time.
And if you miss that key, doesn't matter what else you
do, she won't hear, I love you.
Or it may be the matter of helping.
You know, the husband won't help with the dishes.
He won't take out the garbage.
He won't run an errand.
He won't do the odd jobs around the house.
He won't change a diaper.
He won't put the children to bed.
He won't read the children a story.
He won't have the prayers with them at night.
Everything in the house has to be done by her.
He won't help.
Now, he may do a lot of other things.
But if this is her primary love language
and he doesn't do that, what she says is, he doesn't love me.
And you see, if he's going to love her as he loves himself
and communicate to her that you're really important,
he won't insist that she receive his love the way
he wants to give it.
He will learn how she wants to be loved,
and he will adapt himself to her and begin
to love her in the way that she wants to be loved.
Husbands, love your wives even as you love yourself.
Women think that it's very important
to have their husband tell them several times a day,
honey, I love you.
And if the husband doesn't tell them several times a day,
they begin to think that they're unloved.
And maybe you heard about the guy
who came for marriage counseling with his wife.
And one of the first complaints the wife gave
was, he doesn't tell me I love you.
And he was asked, do you?
He said, no, I haven't told her that.
The counselor said, well, why is it that you don't?
And he said, I told her that I loved her 23 years ago
when I married her, and it still stands until I revoke it.
There are some husbands who find it very difficult to say,
I love you, I love you, I love you, and the wife craves it.
We have four children, each of them are different.
And one of the guys that we have needs a lot of reassurance.
And he'll be constantly, even though he's a teenager,
coming around and putting his arm around me,
giving me a kiss, saying, I love you.
I love you.
And we need to do that to him as well.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
One of our other guys doesn't crave it nearly as much.
Something else is more important to him.
So what I've done with my family is take this particular form,
my wife and I have done this, to find out
whether she understood my primary love language
and whether I understood her primary love language.
And we did this together, and then we
did it with our children as well to find out
what their primary language of love
was so that we could meet that particular need in their lives.
I believe that's part of loving our wives,
even as we love ourselves.
So loving them means that we cherish them.
But this text not only says that we're to cherish our wives,
it says that we are to love our wives by nourishing them.
You nourish and cherish yourself, says the word of God.
Well, you're to do the same thing for your wife.
Now, if cherishing our wives means that we treat them
as though they're valuable and important,
then nourishing our wives means that we
take care of their needs.
It means that we provide for them.
It means that we take care of whatever needs they have.
I love myself, and so when I have a need,
I'm concerned about the need that I have.
I woke up several years ago, and I had a pain
in my lower right abdomen.
Now, I had a lot that I wanted to do on that particular day.
I was really busy, and I had my day planned.
So when I woke up with a pain in my right side,
I didn't say, right side?
I've got too many things planned today.
Don't have time for you.
You'll just have to wait.
You'll just have to grin and bear it.
Tough it out now.
No, I went to the physician.
I put aside everything else I was doing,
because my right side was important to me.
And I went to the physician, and I'm
glad I did because he took a blood count
and discovered that I had appendicitis.
And I ended up in the hospital, and I took my appendix out.
And as a result of that, I'm alive today.
If I had not done something about it,
the appendix could have broken, and I might have died.
You see, when I had a pain in part of me, the rest of me
stopped everything that it was doing
and ran to the assistance of that one part of me.
I was playing basketball with my two teenage guys a while ago,
and I took a jump shot.
I got at least four inches off the ground.
The ball came off of the rim, and I went up to get the ball.
I got my feet off the ground far enough
so that one of my guys could stick his foot under my foot.
And when I came down, my ankle twisted.
I've had weak ankles ever since college days.
And my ankle twisted, and I fell down on the ground.
And I just curled up, and I put both of my hands
around that ankle.
And I said, ooh, ow!
And the tears almost came to my eyes.
In fact, I think they did, because it hurt so badly.
And you know what I did?
I didn't say to my right ankle, look,
I don't have time to roll around here in the ground.
I want to be involved in this game.
All of me stopped and waited and nourished and hugged
that right ankle until it began to feel better.
You see, I love myself.
That means I take care of myself when I'm in pain.
And I always have time to do that.
Well, if I love my wife, I'll be concerned about her needs.
The Bible says that we're to be heirs together
of the grace of life.
And I'm to live with my wife according to knowledge.
That means that I'm to be concerned about my wife's
physical needs.
Now, physical needs doesn't merely
mean having food and clothing.
It does mean that.
It means that your wife's clothing needs are just
as important as yours.
I know some husbands who have money
to buy shoes for themselves and new sports
coats and new pants for themselves.
But if the wife wants anything, that's a different matter.
But it not only involves food and clothing.
It also involves giving her time to sleep.
Sometimes our wives need more sleep than we do.
One woman needs to sleep longer than her husband.
And her husband is very inconsiderate
because he doesn't go to bed till 12 or 1 o'clock at night.
And when he comes to bed, he wakes her up.
He interrupts her sleep.
And then the next morning, he gets up a lot earlier
than she does because he doesn't need the sleep she does.
And he rattles around in the bathroom
and does this or that so she can't even get her sleep.
He's not loving his wife.
He's not nourishing his wife.
She really does need that sleep.
She can't function.
Then he wonders why she's irritable.
Maybe two reasons.
Physically, she's tired.
The other reason, she's upset with him
for being inconsiderate.
Now, she's not right for what she's done.
But neither is he right for what he does.
She has physical needs.
And men, it's our responsibility to make sure
that those physical needs are met.
If she has a headache, instead of saying,
come on, old girl, tough it out.
Hang in there.
Loving her will mean maybe you'll
take over her responsibilities for a while
so that she can get a little relaxation and refreshment.
Maybe it's a tension headache.
Maybe she's been under so much pressure
that she needs to get away from it all.
Maybe she needs the husband two or three hours every week
to say, honey, I'll take the children,
and you go and do whatever you want to do.
They're not your responsibility for this two or three hours.
You can do whatever you want to do.
That is, as long as it's not contrary to the word of God.
Well, loving your wife means you'll
be concerned about her physical needs.
It means you'll be concerned about her emotional needs.
Does she have fears?
You shouldn't be afraid of that.
No, no.
You're concerned about her emotional needs.
Does she have anxieties?
It's your responsibility to help her
to overcome those anxieties, not just
to chide her for having them.
Doesn't do any good to say, you shouldn't worry.
No, you have to find out what's behind her worry
and then bring to her a biblical solution.
You see, it really takes work to be a husband.
It really takes work, but it's worth the effort
because it produces good marriages
and it produces tremendous happiness.
And more than that, it's what God wants us to do.
And that's what it's all about, isn't it,
to do the will of the Father here on Earth?
And I want to be the kind of husband God wants me to be,
not just the kind of husband that my wife wants me to be.
So it means I'll be concerned about her emotional needs.
I had a couple of people who went home for Christmas.
And the wife was just a little touchy
about being in the home of her husband
because she didn't think she was too much accepted
by her in-laws.
And besides that, she had a sister-in-law
who had a lot of gifts, a lot of abilities that she didn't have.
And she had judged herself to be inferior to her sister-in-law
and thought that everyone really liked her sister-in-law
but didn't really think that much of her.
So here she was, just a little on edge,
just a little touchy, you know.
And one night, some of the people
who were there for Christmas decided that they'd go out.
I think it was bowling.
And people got together and went out bowling.
And they didn't invite this couple to go along.
And the wife allowed herself to become hurt by it.
She was wounded by it.
She said, there it is.
They don't like me.
It was just confirming what she had already thought was true.
And she went to her husband, and she said, you know,
I'm really hurt about the fact that they didn't
ask us to go out with them.
You see, they don't really like me.
They don't like us.
And what she was saying is, hey, I'm hurting.
What she was asking for was for her husband
to put his arms around her and say, honey,
I think you're terrific.
You're wonderful.
I care.
I think you're important.
She was just expressing a need.
Now, she wasn't expressing it right,
but she was still expressing a need for somebody to just care.
But instead of doing that, he got on his soapbox.
And he began to defend his parents and the other people
there.
And when he was defending them, what, of course,
she thought he was doing was putting her down and saying,
you're all wet.
You're dumb.
You're stupid.
You don't understand how things really are.
Now, all she wanted was for him to hug her and kiss her
and say, you're tremendous.
And I'll spend the evening with you,
and let's do something great together.
But instead of that, he thought he had to become a preacher.
And at that point, he was not meeting her emotional needs.
Well, your wife has emotional needs.
She has physical needs.
She has spiritual needs.
And we as husbands have a responsibility
to make sure that our wives have time and opportunity
to have their spiritual needs met.
Now, that will involve taking the lead in family devotions.
As husbands, you are the leader of your home
in religious matters.
And you are responsible to teach your wife and your children.
And I believe there ought to be an establishment of family
devotions where you read the word together.
You discuss the word together.
You pray together.
But she also needs time just to read and just
to pray and meditate and think on her own.
In my case, with four children and one little guy
who's four years of age, my wife tries
to get up in the morning before the little four-year-old guy
gets up.
On an occasion, no matter how she tries,
he either beats her up, not literally beats her up,
but he gets up before she does, or else not long after she's
up, he gets up.
And once he's up, it's very difficult
to find some quiet time during the day where
she can read the word, where she can pray without being
interrupted by little Joshua.
And that's not just a problem my wife has.
I know that that's a problem that many women have.
And it's our responsibility as husbands
to be sensitive to the difficulty
that our wives have in this area and to try
to help them so that they might have time
to be alone with God on their own.
We ought to be concerned about their spiritual needs,
their social needs.
They need friends.
They need contact with other people.
About their intellectual needs.
Your wife has a mind, and so many times
she's so busy doing the dishes and other things
that she doesn't really have the opportunity
to grow intellectually.
And her mind begins to become stagnant.
We as husbands need to provide the opportunity
so that our wives can keep fresh intellectually
and be growing intellectually.
Jesus grew in wisdom, and we need
to make sure that our wives have that opportunity as well.
And then they also have recreational needs.
They must be able to get out and have
relaxation and refreshment.
That involves giving them an opportunity
to do the things that are just fun.
All work and no play, they say, makes Jack a dull boy.
And God created a world with tremendous variety.
A lot of different things to enjoy.
And any one of us who is just limited to a few things,
and we do those same things over and over and over
and over again, day after day after day,
and don't do new things and don't have opportunities
to do different things, can become stagnant.
And sometimes our wives get locked in
so that they don't have an opportunity to have recreation.
And as husbands, we ought to be concerned about those needs
and try to make time for them so that those needs are met.
Well, the Bible says, husbands, love your wives
as you love yourself.
It says more than that, too.
We're not going to have time to really look at it today.
But I simply want to remind you that there's even
a higher standard here than the matter of loving your wife
as you love yourself.
For verse 25 says, love your wife as Christ loved the church
and gave himself up for her.
And I want to suggest that you go home and chew on that
for a while.
What does it mean to love your wife as Christ loved the church
and gave himself up for her?
I want to close today by sharing with you
some of the practical, specific ways in which a husband may
love his wife.
In the years that I've been in marriage counseling,
I've become aware that many husbands don't know how
to love their wives practically.
I ask husbands, how are you loving your wife?
How am I loving my wife?
Well, I love her.
That's how I love her.
I love her.
Well, give me about 20 or 25 specific ways
in which you're manifesting your love for her.
Well, I bring my salary home every week.
I provide food.
And once they get beyond, I have sex with her.
Once they get beyond those couple things,
they're stymied as far as how to love their wives.
It's as though you were talking to them about Einstein's theory
of relativity.
They just don't understand how to love their wives practically
or specifically.
So I made up a list of 103 ways in which a husband might
love his wife.
And I give this to the counselees.
And I ask the counselees to go down over it
and check the ways in which they are loving their wives.
And then I ask them to give it to their wives
and put a check in front of the ways
that they would like to be loved.
And I'll just mention a few specific ways
in which many women want to be loved.
Incidentally, this is a compilation
I got from women of ways in which they
would like to be loved.
You may express love to your wife
by functioning as the loving leader of your home.
You may express love to your wife
by telling her you love her frequently.
You may express love to your wife
by giving her a regular amount of money
to spend in any way she chooses.
You may express love to your wife
by leading family devotions regularly.
You may express love to your wife
by smiling and being cheerful when you come home from work.
You may express love to your wife
by helping her wash and dry the dishes at least twice a week.
You may express love to your wife
by taking care of the children for at least three hours
every week so that she has free time to do whatever she wants.
You may express love to your wife
by taking her out for dinner or to do some fun
thing at least once a week.
You may express love to your wife
by doing the fix-it jobs she wants done around the house,
by greeting her when you come home with a smile, a hug,
a kiss.
And am I glad to see you.
I really missed you today.
By giving her a lingering kiss, by patting her
on the shoulder or fanny or holding her hand
or caressing her frequently, by being
willing to talk to her about her concerns
and not belittle her for having those concerns,
by looking at her with an adoring expression,
by sitting close to her, by rubbing her back or whatever,
by shaving or taking a bath or brushing your teeth before you
have sex relations, by wearing her favorite aftershave lotion,
by writing love notes or letters to her on a frequent basis,
by letting her know you appreciate her
and what you appreciate about her,
pretend that you're trying to convince her you think she's
great and important to you, by relating what happened at work
or whatever you did apart from her and on and on
throughout this list.
And what I'm saying is it's the little foxes,
according to Song of Solomon chapter 2 and verse 10,
that spoil the vines.
And they're picking you on little things, you say.
Yeah, that's right.
But it's the little things that destroy marriages.
It's not usually the big things that destroy.
It's a lot of little things which haven't been done.
And when a lot of little things begin to be done,
it's the lot of little things, a lot of little expressions
of love, that begin to communicate to someone else,
you're tremendous.
I love you.
You're important to me.
And it's in that kind of an atmosphere
that a good relationship begins to grow.
And I believe it's in that kind of an atmosphere
with those kinds of actions that we
are obeying our Lord, who said, husbands, love your wives
even as you love yourself.
May God then help us as husbands to hear the voice of the one
that we call Lord, and not to excuse ourselves,
but to make the changes that are necessary to become
the kind of husbands that God wants us to be,
the kind of husbands that our wives need,
and the kind of dads that our children need as well.