3 Ways a Wife Can Strengthen Her Marriage
Here at A Legacy of Faith, we are dedicated to strengthening marriages. We are saddened by the weakened state of the family, but we believe there is hope. There is hope for strong, committed marriages. There is hope for thriving families built on the kind of faith that is passed on for generations. Today’s post is for any woman who would like a stronger marriage. Let me share three things that a wife can and must do to strengthen her marriage.
- Respect your husband. Ephesians 5:33 says, “…let the wife see that she respects her husband.” Our husbands need respect. Moreover, husbands don’t have to earn the respect any more than a wife has to earn her husband’s love. As wives, we expect our husbands to love us even at our worst. If he ever told us, “I’ll love you when you earn my love,” we would be crushed. How many wives, though, think that we’ll respect our husband only when he does something worthy of respect? Respect should be offered freely because of who he is – your husband. He will love you better. (Although, that is not the reason we ought to give the respect.) Even if he doesn’t love you better, you still need to give him respect because he is the man you made a covenant with. He is the man you agreed to love and honor above all other men. That should mean something!
- Don’t belittle your husband. Sometimes wives think that complaining, making fun of, and talking negatively about their husbands is just the thing to do – especially around other women. On the Building Godly Family video series, our brother in Christ, Steve Higginbotham, made a very radical challenge to married folks. He said that he and his wife had made an agreement to never speak negatively about each other. Can you imagine that? Imagine never making a sly remark about what your husband does or doesn’t do around the house. Imagine never joining in with the girls when they start talking about how clueless their husbands are. Every time we belittle our husbands we are taking away a part of him. If we have an issue with our husband, we ought to discuss it with him (in a respectful manner). If the issue isn’t resolved, there is still no benefit to our marriage to talk about it to other people. Truly, belittling your husband is just a way of making ourselves look a little better than him when we are around other people. Never belittle him and when someone makes a snarky remark about him or any other husband, respond with a positive remark. That will stop the “husbands-aren’t-worth-anything” bandwagon in its tracks!
- Honor marriage. Hebrews 13:4 says, “Let marriage be held in honor among all…” Marriage is an honorable institution, but you would not know that by listening to society. Sadly, you wouldn’t even know that by listening to some Christians. It just seems that there are so many jokes and negative comments about marriage in general. We have all heard about the “ball and chain.” We have all heard about “having fun before you are tied down.” Frankly, some people make it seem as though your life is over once you are married. How sad! The Bible teaches that it is honorable to be married. Everything that comes with marriage is honorable – the sexual relationship, the children that follow, the years of commitment ahead. We should not only honor our own marriage, but we should honor other marriages. If more women had a “hands off” attitude about other women’s husbands, marriage would not be in the sad state of rampant divorce that is today! Marriage as an institutional whole and individual marriages should be held in “honor among all.”
We can have stronger marriages. Implementing these three simple, albeit hard behaviors will help us to strengthen our own marriages and also strengthen the marriages of others.
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AUTHOR: Leah Faughn
Photo background credit: Christopher Thomas on Creative Commons
