Becoming Your Spouse's Better Half (11 page)

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Authors: Rick A Johnson

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According to pastor and author Will Davis, when a husband and wife pray together daily, their marriage has a 99 percent or greater success rate, compared to the 50 percent national average rate.
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I know that when Suzanne and I pray together consistently, our relationship is so much closer and more intimate. In fact, entering into fellowship with God together is one of the most intimate activities you can do with another person. That is one reason it is important not to pray with someone else of the opposite sex without the presence of your spouse.
Prayer acts as a shield. It shields those we love from those things that would enslave or destroy them. Can I prove that my prayers have protected my wife and children in situations where they could have been harmed? No, but I believe with all my heart that my (and others’) prayer coverage over them did in fact protect them. There are too many situations in life that we as men have no control over, so we must intercede on our family’s behalf for the Lord’s intervention and protection. If you’ve ever experienced the helpless feeling of having a child go through a surgical operation, you know what I mean.
Guarding Virtue
 
When men do not live up to the responsibilities of their most important roles in life—when they abandon or abuse their wives and children, for instance—it sets up generational legacies or cycles that are virtually unstoppable. John Connolly describes perfectly what this looks like in his novel
The Unquiet
:
Tranquility Pines was filled with screwups, many of whom, curiously, were women: vicious, foul-mouthed harridans who still looked and dressed the same way they did in the eighties, all stone-washed denim and bubble perms, simultaneously hunters and hunted trawling the bars . . . for ratlike men with money to spend, or muscle-bound freaks in wife-beater shirts whose hatred of women gave their temporary partners a respite of sorts from their own self-loathing. Some had kids, and the males among them were well on their way to becoming like the men who shared their mothers’ beds, and whom they themselves despised without understanding how close they were to following in their footsteps. The girls, meanwhile, tried to escape their family circumstances by creating families of their own, thereby dooming themselves to become the very women they least desired to emulate.
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Again, a man’s presence in the life of his wife and children can protect them from these generational cycles that are devastating to a family’s lineage. And his example and the model he sets by his presence is capable of breaking previously passed-down cycles. I call this man a “cycle breaker.” He’s a man who either comes from a broken background and family or enters into a broken family lineage but who turns around and stands firm, doing everything in his power to break that generational cycle. His influence can break hundreds of years of brokenness and wounded spirits. He protects the future of his family.
It’s a man’s job to guard his wife’s virtue. It’s a father’s job to protect his sons’ and daughters’ sexual purity, their integrity, and their character. This is not easy and often requires a strong dose of “testicular fortitude.” Because his wife is affiliated with him by association, he should be careful that none of his choices compromise her virtue, integrity, or character. In other words, a man’s actions reflect on his wife’s reputation, just as a wife’s actions reflect on her husband’s.
Leadership
 
Maybe more than anything else in life, men feel a duty to protect those under their charge. Men were created to be the leaders and guides of their families. God held Adam responsible for Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden. And today God holds each man responsible for the things he does or doesn’t do with regard to leading his wife and children. God gave him authority and headship over his family, which requires him to actually lead his wife and children.
Since God holds men accountable for their leadership, whether they do it or not, how can we best summarize what healthy leadership looks like? There are thousands of books on leadership with about as many definitions for the term. The definition I like best is from speaker David McLaughlin, who says a leader is one who “makes it possible for others to achieve their maximum potential.”
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Leadership contains two parts in order to function properly: authority and servanthood. Authority is given or delegated by someone in a higher position. God gave a man the authority to lead his wife and family. The best way that a man carries out that directive is by serving his wife. When he doesn’t, it leaves a vacuum in the relationship.
Leaders can delegate or even abdicate authority, but they can never delegate responsibility. They are still accountable for their responsibilities, even if they try to hand them off to someone else.
The primary role of leaders is to carry the weight of responsibility. Leaders accept responsibility by making decisions and not blaming others when things go wrong. Some men are reluctant to make decisions because they are afraid of being wrong. But we all make mistakes—no one is perfect. Making a bad or wrong decision is better than not making any decision at all. Since God holds men accountable for their choices—or lack thereof—in leading their families, they may as well take their best shot and make a decision. Men, understand that not making a decision counts just as much as making a decision—sometimes even more.
Frankly, many men feel their wives have unrealistic expectations of them. In fact, most men are confused as to what exactly
is
expected of them. This confusion plays into a woman’s complaint that her husband will not lead the family. Truthfully, men are capable of leading their families, but many choose not to. Why? Because of criticism about the way they lead. It’s easier just to let their wives do it than to always be second-guessed on their decisions. Rather than risk failure, it is easier just to quit or let someone else do it.
 
When women understand this important need in a man’s character—the need to protect what is his—it explains many of his behaviors and attitudes. He operates in this mode as a fundamental part of his character. It is so strong that men often act on it unconsciously. What may sometimes seem like draconian measures or hard-line decisions might just be a man acting on an unconscious warning that urges him to protect his family. That being said, men need to temper this desire to protect with the need to serve others so that they are able to grow and achieve their full potential in life.
 
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
—Love the fact that God made him so different.
Being a protector is one of a man’s main functions in life.
A man was created to be protective of his family—it is not being controlling.
Men provide not only physical protection but emotional, psychological, and spiritual protection as well.
A man can frequently detect and judge poor character in other men easier than a woman can.
God holds men accountable for the way they lead their families.
 
Get inside His Head
My wife does not understand how vulnerable she really is.
If I am unable to protect my wife and children adequately, I am less of a man.
It’s almost impossible to protect someone who will not let me.
 
Words Have Meaning
 
Words That Heal
“Thank you for always looking out for me and the children.”
“It makes me feel safe to have you home.”
“You are such a big hunk of a man.”
“I love the way you lead our family.”
 
 
Words That Hurt
“You are so controlling sometimes.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me.”
“I’m not helpless, you know.”
“If I had to depend on you, we’d all be in trouble.”
Men’s Mode # 6
 
Connection with God
 
My Life Matters in the Universe
 
 
 
I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.
Leo Rosen
 
 
T
here’s an old joke that says as long as there are math tests, there will always be prayer in school. But the truth is we all have a built-in, innate desire to be close to God. Even when we run from the “hound of heaven” or deny his existence, we know, deep down in our soul, that God exists. (If you have not read the poem “The Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson, I encourage you to do so. I am not big on poetry, but this one is awesome, especially if you understand Thompson’s background.)
Before becoming a Christian at age forty, I had many encounters with this paradox. I remember being in a near automobile accident once. As time slowed down while the accident was about to happen, my mind automatically, without any conscious thought from me, cried out to God to save me.
When I was younger, a friend of mine and I were driving around after drinking one night. As is likely to happen, we were driving too fast along a winding country road. He lost control, and as we flew over the ditch into the adjacent woods, I could hear him crying over and over, “God, please save me. God, please save me!” When the car stopped rolling and we realized we were not harmed, we started laughing in relief. As we finished laughing and sat trying to control the shakes from the adrenaline surge, I said, “I never knew you believed in God.”
“I don’t,” he said.
“Then why were you yelling for him to save you?”
“I was?”
Here was someone who never acknowledged the existence of God, yet his subconscious knew of the presence of a higher power in the universe when he faced a life-or-death situation.
In June 1981, two months before Suzanne and I were to be married, my little sister Julie, who was scheduled to be a bridesmaid, was killed at the age of seventeen in an automobile accident with a drunk driver. Fifteen years later my stepfather (her biological father) visited and asked if we would go with him to the mausoleum at the cemetery where her ashes were interned. He has never been a religious man and in fact appeared to scorn anyone who believed in God.
As we approached the urn where Julie’s ashes lay, my stepfather suddenly broke down and blurted out, “Would someone please pray?” I was so shocked at his unexpected request that I could barely stumble my way through a prayer of condolence. It was so out of character for him that it confirmed even deeper to me the fact that our unconscious knows there is a God despite what our consciousness may say. My stepfather’s reflexive need in time of great grief was for the solace and comfort of an almighty, sovereign God, even in the denial of his existence.
If you doubt that intrinsic knowledge of God, offer to pray for someone in deep need. Even the most atheistic individual will accept your prayers and be grateful.
God’s Sacrifice
 
Even after becoming a Christian and studying the gospel of Jesus Christ, I never really understood the sacrifice that God made to have a relationship with us human beings. A thought came into my head one day at church that might come as close as I am capable of to really understanding that concept. I was watching a young father hold his newborn child. The baby was so pure and innocent to my eyes, and the father’s love was greatly evident in the way he cooed at and tenderly touched him, kissing his head and marveling over his tiny fingers and features. I then thought,
What if that new father were to willingly give his tiny baby to a group of men who would brutally torture and eventually murder the infant by crucifying him—nailing him to a wooden cross?
Think of the suffering of that tiny baby. Think of the suffering of the father as he watched that brutal scene.

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