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You’ve probably heard the phrase “happy wife, happy life” before. Maybe it’s in the context of something simple, like choosing what restaurant to eat at or not leaving dirty clothes on the bathroom floor.
The idea of unconditional respect for the husband has always been the Love and Respect message’s unique feature, based on Ephesians 5:33. Many books stress Paul’s instruction for husbands to love their wives (“each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself . . .”), but few spend equal space if any at all, to the rest of the verse (“. . . and the wife must respect her husband”).
Many wives share disappointment that their husbands rarely talk to them at a deeper level. “Emerson, when we were dating, we used to talk long into the night getting to really know each other. What happened to him?”
In the beginning, after God had created Adam and placed him in the garden to cultivate it, He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18).
In the Bible, we find two realities to which we are to respond: God’s commands and God’s promises. God calls us to obey His commands and trust His promises. Most of us have sung the song "Trust and Obey,” which captures these two quintessential truths.
Though God commands the husband to love and a wife to respect, a strange twist might take place. A wife puts on respect for one reason: to get her husband to be loving. A husband puts on love solely to get his wife to respect him.One pastor who wrote me shared his concerns fearing this very thing: that husbands and wives will manipulate each other when applying love and respect based on Ephesians 5:33:
Husbands and wives have many hot topics, but not many rate higher than sex and childrearing techniques. Yes, we can throw finances, in-laws, and work issues into the mix, but sex and childrearing are usually right up there for most couples. A husband wrote:
Over a ten-year period Fritz Ridenour was my editor. He soon became a family friend. Because of that he penned a poem for the wedding of Joy Eggerichs and Matt Reed. Those of you who know the love and respect message and all of our tag lines will appreciate his brilliance. THE BALLAD OF PINK AND BLUE
In part 1, we discussed Job and his disrespectful wife and how he was able to love her “as to the Lord,” despite her being a conduit for the devil. Now let’s turn to a biblical example of an unloving husband with a wife who found a way to still respect him. What about the Respectful Wife? What about the wife living with a man who turns everybody off?
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