Dying for your Wife

Several years ago I was standing by the wood stove reaching up for something on the mantle. The young man visiting our home asked, “So I am thinking about marrying _______ and am asking some older Christians who know us both what they think first.” This question surprised me at first. How should I answer such a personal question with lifelong implications?

I answered with a question. “Are you ready to die for her? And I don’t just mean take a bullet for her-- that is too easy. I mean are you ready to die for her every day.”

Many of you have guessed I was referring to Eph 5:25: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,”

I have had occasion to think about dying for one’s wife more in recent days. What does it mean for me to love my dear one like Christ loves the church? I believe it is to do what is best for her without thought of the personal cost.

Christ’s love for the church caused Him to redeem us from our slavery to sin, self, and Satan. We might have thought our need was for an easier life, maybe a reversal of the curses on the land so we could raise crops with less sweat. Maybe we thought we needed to get along better with those around us or to be free to do what we pleased. Yet Jesus knew that our basic need was redemption. In the same way, we must not seek to do what our wives want. They may not see their need, but we must seek God so that we might see it.

Christ’s love for the church caused Him to act at great personal cost to redeem us. I don’t know if we can understand the depth of the cost that Jesus paid to redeem us. I have read of the physical torture and the pain He endured yet others are tortured to death. More than the torture, the abandonment of God and suffering the punishment of my sin had to be worse. By comparison, any pain I need to undergo to love my wife is small.

I remember right before I married I bought my first nice truck. A red 1977 Datsun 5 speed with a shell. Everything worked. It was nice. After we were married I bought my wife a ’76 Monza. It was sporty but broke down before we got it home. It was junk; it even had “plug foulers” (something that kept the spark plug outside the engine block so it wouldn’t get covered with the oil that leaked into the cylinders.) I knew my wife needed a safe and reliable car to drive, so both the Monza and the truck were sold and I bought her a two year old, striped down, basic Chevette. It wasn’t much for style or comfort, but it ran for years until we outgrew it. Now that was a small thing, but it is an example of the type of thing that is needed. I liked that truck, but my wife needed something different. She may have wanted a sports car, but she needed a reliable one. That is the type of small death that is needed every day as we fulfill the Biblical command to love our wives and Christ loved the church.

Yet if we think that buying our wife the right car for them is all there is to dying for her, our vision is stunted. We must view the entire scope of her life, her home, her social needs, her besetting sins, her need for spiritual growth... It get overwhelming doesn't it? This asks the question “How do I lead this woman anyway?” but that is another subject...

Book Review: Spiritual Leadership

Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders

“No one need aspire to leadership in the work of God who is not prepared to pay a price greater than his contemporaries and colleagues are willing to pay. True leadership always exacts a heavy toll on the whole man and the more effective the leadership is, the higher the price to be paid.” J. Oswald Sanders.

One of the advantages of getting older is you get to go back and reread books that have shaped your life in the past. Spiritual Leadership, by J. Oswald Sanders, was required reading for Operation Mobilization, a mission group I worked with years ago. So at twenty years old, with that volume in my hand, I took up and read. Sanders clear and hard hitting words laid out for me then much of what is involved in being a leader.

The book is a series of messages given at OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship, formerly China Inland Mission) leadership conferences in 1964 and 1966. In it he examines what makes a leader, the biblical requirements of a leader, disciplines of a leader, the cost involved in being a leader, and training leaders. As I recently reread this book, I found myself continually challenged and called beyond where I am now. I have found myself rereading chapters as I try to internalize what he writes to help me order my life and priorities.

In his chapter on prayer Sanders writes, “In nothing should the leader be ahead of his followers more than in the realm of prayer… If you wished to humble anyone, I should question him about his prayers. I know of nothing to compare to this topic for its sorrowful self confessions.”
I cannot emphasize enough that this is a book that you should read.

A major warning though: Do NOT buy the new Moody Press revision. The editors at Moody Press took it upon themselves to defile Sander’s excellent work by making it gender neutral. They explicitly deny biblical directives for male leadership and have changed the book accordingly. To say this is a sad commentary on the state of the evangelical church and evangelical publishing, is understatement. Instead, look up the book on ABE books and get an older edition, there is a good supply.

Living With Your Wife in an Understanding Way

You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered. I Peter 3:7 (NAS95)

We live in a society that has attempted to blot all difference between the sexes. In Church of the Good Shepherd we are intent on restoring masculinity to men. Similarly, we should be about restoring femininity to women. When I say femininity please don’t think of women sitting primly with white gloves at a Victorian tea party. Not that that is excluded, rather it is in no way the definition.

My dear wife loves to share all manner of outdoor pursuits with me. But to “live with her in an understanding way” I will not pursue them with her in the same way as I would with a man. If I take Anne kayaking, we don’t go down Clear Creek at flood, or down the Elkhorn in KY. Rather, we will go on a quiet lake or stream. This is not because a woman can’t enjoy fast water, but, because my dear one doesn’t.

I teach my sons to shoot a shotgun and .22 around junior high or high school. My daughters are welcome to try it but not expected to. (A shotgun can give a surprising kick). I think it is necessary due to occasional animals needing to disappear from the farm. I have suggested my wife also learn, but she replies, “That is why I have sons.” If I pressed it, she would learn, but I have not had a son yet who didn’t take to it right away. Boys are just different from girls; I need to keep that in mind.

When Anne and I were dating we had some fights. Some I remember; most I don’t. I can remember one vividly. I can’t remember what we were fighting about, but I remember my sweet dear one taking a can of Tab and rapidly emptying the contents about my face and shoulders. It got my attention. I remember thinking, “Hmm… there is something about this I don’t understand.” This behavior wasn’t like her at all, and I didn’t think the fight rose to the level of throwing pop… so I knew I must be missing something. What I was missing was an understanding of my wife.

So, how do you live with this woman who is so different from you in an understanding way?

It is assumed you want to obey this command.

First, you assume that your wife is not like you. God did not make her the same. I guarantee it. He made her to complement you not imitate you.

Second, you pay attention, you observe, you study your wife. What makes her smile, what makes her scared, what does she talk about for months afterwards? If you don’t know, ask questions, lots of questions. Most women love to talk. Does she need to talk things over more than you do? Does she care more about the house or the car, care more about relationships? Does she want to stay up later after the kids are asleep? To live with her in an understanding way you need to begin to understand her.

Finally, you relate to your wife according to this understanding. If she shies away from an aggressive discussion, then learn to say what is needed in a gentle way. Does she look disappointed on your dinner date at the steak house? Try taking her to a Thai restaurant. If she has been at home with the kids all day, then spend some time drawing her out in conversation. If this is sounding one sided, remember you are called to die for your wife. I have much more I want to say about dying, but that is for another post.

You may have noticed that is some ways you wife is weaker than you. Of course the Bible already told you that, so how do you treat someone weaker? You stand up for them! You protect them. You don’t get mad at them for being weaker. Rather you honor her as someone with the same standing before God as you.

Now for those of you who are yet to marry, practice living in an understanding way now! If there is a young woman you are interested in, study her. No… not just the way she looks… I know you like that… study her, her strengths, sins, preferences, and delights. Never assume she is like you – why would you want that anyway? Then when you start to understand her, act like you do.

Children and Work

The Need

I was talking to some men on a work site about raising children. These men all work hard every day, yet there seemed to be the assumption that the children should free from work to help the family. They believed that it was OK for them to work at school, and good for them to work at sports/ play, but chores around the house or working to help support the family were thoughts foreign their mind.

History would laugh at this idea; after all, children eat - shouldn’t they help get the food? Large farm families were the norm with everyone wanting to do their part to help with the work. Perhaps it is the abuses of child labor at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution that caused people to believe that children shouldn’t work.

Yet we were created for work. Adam tended the garden, and “… for six days you shall labor and do all your work…”, the Decalogue thunders at us. Work is a good gift from God.
And what better heritage could we give to our children than knowing how to work and how to work hard? (OK - Love for God, His church, and those in the kingdom of darkness would rank above work, but it’s up there, and will serve them better than a love of soccer or a volleyball scholarship to college.)

So if you are with me, the question becomes how to teach them.

Working Together

Children learn by example more than by word. Do you work? Do your children see you work, or is all your interaction with those God has entrusted you with training based on play, sports (the male state religion of this nation), movies, and vacations?

I am a not the greatest businessman. (Just ask my accountant.) Yet one of the reasons I don’t “get a job” and work for someone else is that I can involve my children in my work. This spring I got in a bind with too many jobs going on at once. Andrew, my oldest, came down between graduation and leaving for his summer internship and bailed me out. This summer my 13 year old, Jon, has come in, to save my back, time and again. My boys learn how to work hard and also that labor = pay, something that eludes those who just see money appear.

In hard times my boys will tell me not to pay them, that they “just want to help.” It is humbling for a man to have his children help support the family, but I believe it is good for them and for me.

So what if you aren’t self employed? Can you do more than “take your kid to work day?” Is there work to be done around the house? If it is like mine there is always work still to do, so do it together. Children can start helping out almost as soon as they can walk. Do you live in a condo with a maid and cook? Volunteer to work at a Habitat for Humanity site. Cook for the rescue mission. Cut the church lawn. Help someone move. There is always work to be done -- do it together. Outside work is especially good for boys, so see where they can participate. One of the reasons we chose to live on a farm is to provide our kids with opportunities to sweat as they care for the animals and land.


Tools for Teaching Work

Stories are a powerful teaching tool. I don’t mean to discount plain instruction, but stories make learning painless. There is a series of books that teaches the principles of work and business better than any other I have run across. Ralph Moody wrote a semi-autobiographic series with the hero “Little Britches.” Set around the turn of the last century, “Little Britches” grows up in rural Colorado, moves back east, and returns to the west again. He learns from his dad in book one, becomes “the man of the family” after his father’s death in book two, and so on. Geared primarily for boys, the girls also play an important part in the supporting of the household. These books are great for read aloud.

Another excellent book for teaching children about work is Created For Work by Bob Schultz. I'll try to post a review of that book at some later date.