Sacred Influence (2 page)

She’s probably going to ask another guy.

And when you want to know how you, as a wife, can encourage your husband to become more involved at home, grow in his Christian walk, or lose some bad habits — like looking at pornography or losing his temper — doesn’t it also make sense that you might benefit from a man’s perspective?

Many excellent books have been written by women to encourage other women in their marriages. Stormie Omartian, Linda Dil-low, Dr. Laura, and many others have blessed women with wise advice and well-written books. But as you study your man, might it not also be helpful to get a guy’s perspective on how to move another guy? My publisher and I thought it long past the time for you to hear from a brother in Christ who can give you some male insights into your husband’s thoughts and feelings.

God’s Heart

As I began the writing process, one morning in particular gave me an entirely new enthusiasm for this book. While praying, I began to get a sense of God’s heart for what I believe he wants to do in these pages. I realized that if I could truly understand God’s heart for his daughters, if I could but glimpse the passion he feels for you and the tears he cries when you cry — how he feels each slight that you feel and how he hates the condescending tone with which you often get addressed — then I might begin to realize why God would care about a book like this and why he might put it in my mind to write it. He doesn’t want to leave you alone in relationships that bring you less than what he designed.

In fact, God sees and hears everything taking place in your life and relationships. He knows the many wives who suffer in loveless marriages. He knows how men tend to look down on women and act condescendingly toward their wives. He knows that men can provide great strength, nurture, comfort, and security, but also that they can be frustrating, terrifying, demanding, and selfish. He sees the women who feel trapped in difficult marriages, as well as those who enjoy relatively good marriages with men who still occasionally act selfish, thoughtless, or distant.

But he also knows the holy ways in which a woman can profoundly move a man!

That’s good, since my wife and I have heard more horror stories than we can count:

the man with eight children, his wife pregnant with number nine, who says he wants to quit work, go back to college, earn another degree, and make a career change;

the husband who becomes more obsessed about achieving a single-digit handicap in golf than about the emotional state of his children;

the man who models risky and immoral behavior in front of his children, including substance abuse, violation of the law for financial gain, and the like;

the man more eager to build a huge congregation than to nurture and care for the family who waits for him at home;

the man who complains that his wife is “cold” in bed but who is himself mechanical, selfish, and in a rush during intimate moments.

These, of course, are the extreme cases. Far more often, a husband remains involved, caring, and even sacrificial — but still, you might wish you knew how to help redirect your man down an even better path.

I’ll be up-front with you: you can’t
change
a man. But you
can
influence him or move him — a far subtler art. And that’s what we’re going to discuss in this book.

Hope for the Hurting

I believe God has heard your prayers, and I
know
he sees your pain. I further believe that, since he designed marriage, you should look first to him about how you can best encourage, inspire, challenge, and appropriately influence the man you married. God wants you to feel loved, to be noticed, and to be cherished. He didn’t create you and cast you adrift on a sea of happenstance or circumstance. He has watched you every day, and he is watching you even now, catching the tear you might be shedding this very moment at the thought of a God so involved in your life that he put your thoughts on paper for you to read.

But be forewarned! Your husband isn’t the only imperfect person in your relationship. You also contribute sin every day. We are all sinners, and you can be sure that God desires to work on your own heart every bit as much as he desires to have greater influ-ence in your husband’s life. In keeping with this perspective, this book will present some serious challenges for
you
to be moved as well — closer to God and closer to your husband.

As you make your way through these pages, I long for you to see God’s care and concern between every line. He truly loves you. He really is intimately familiar with your situation. He wants to give you guidance on how a woman can create a sacred influence. It may surprise you to learn about the many biblical personalities you may have read right over — such as the widow of Zarephath — not realizing the powerful lessons their lives offer. I also pray that you’ll see how contemporary women like Catherine, Diana, Pat, and Jo found a way to lovingly redirect their husbands at crucial crossroads.

You can do more than wring your hands and hope for the best. You can learn to inspire your husband, profoundly influence him, encourage him, and eventually help him to move in the right direction. One day in the not-too-distant future, I pray that you’ll wake up in bed, look at the man lying next to you, and finally experience
hope
. A woman who commits herself to God and who learns to act with his wisdom is a fully empowered woman who is embarking on an exciting and life-changing journey. I trust in the reality of God’s presence in our lives. It may sound like a cliché, but it’s still a biblical truth:
With God
,
all things are possible
.

Let’s get started.

Part 1: Your Marriage Makeover
Begins with
You

Chapter 1: The Glory of
a Godly Woman

Understanding Who You Are in Christ

I
laughed out loud when I saw it. While waiting in line at a grocery store, I read the cover of a leading women’s magazine and just
had
to write down the title of one of its articles: “Why so many smart, good women put up with snarly, dreadful men.”

You know what made me laugh? I can’t even
imagine
a leading men’s magazine — say,
GQ
or
Esquire
— with an article titled “Why so many honorable, decent men put up with conniving, manipulative women.” It would never happen. Nor will you ever see books titled
Men Who Love Too Much
or
The Men-Haters and the Men Who
Love Them.

There’s a good reason for this. Historically, neurologically, socially, and even biblically, I believe one can make the case that women tend to be more invested in their relationships and marriages than are men. As my friend Dr. Melody Rhode, a psychologist and marriage and family therapist, puts it, “Women are bent to their husbands; we just are.” This reality has its roots in the very first family.

Back in Genesis 3, following the fall, God tells Eve, “Your desire will be for your husband” (verse 16). Respected Old Testament commentators Keil and Delitzsch suggest that the Hebrew language here evokes a “desire bordering on disease.”
¹
It comes from a root word connoting a “violent craving” for something.

Some women exhibit more of this than others. I recently listened to a talk program in which a woman described how her husband had carried on a secret affair for more than four years. The husband had acted cruelly on many fronts. He had introduced his mistress to his wife, for example, and in his wife’s absence he had brought the mistress home. In fact, he even took his mistress into his wife’s bed. The illicit relationship ended only when the mistress died.

But do you know what most surprised me about the call? The wife seemed more concerned about losing this despicable man than she did about facing a life without him! Even though he had disrespected her as deeply as possible, trampled on their marital intimacy, and offended their marriage bed, she felt more afraid of waking up without him than of waking up next to him. In fact, she really wanted to find out more about the mistress! What did she look like? What kind of personality did she have? What did her husband see in her?

Contrast this with a recent question-and-answer article in
Sports
Illustrated
, in which a number of professional male athletes were asked if they would ever take back a “runaway bride,” a woman who left them at the altar and embarrassed them in front of their family and friends. Not a single athlete said he would. One of the men responded so vehemently and colorfully that I can’t even print his answer in this book.