Last week’s column looked at 17 things husbands should stop doing
in 2017 (and beyond). Today’s column suggests things husbands should
start doing to help strengthen their marriages. You can read archived
Family Matters columns, including last week’s, on the Marriage &
Family page of the FCFchurch.com website under “for the family.”
Ask God to give you an opportunity to become more
detached from secondary things. Give something away that
you are attached to. Share your car, your home, your time,
your money, or your possessions with someone this week.
Notice the feelings that arise in you when you think
of giving something away. Spend time talking to God
about how attached you are to your things.
Walk through your home, office, or some other significant
place in your life, and in your mind give all you have
to God. Tell Him that you could live without the things
you see. What is this time of prayer like for you?
Think this week about where in your life you need Christ’s
spirit of detachment. Where do you need grace to pray,
“Not my will but Yours be done?” Talk to God
about what it means for you to pray this sort of prayer.
1. If your wife is a stay-at-home mom, her job is far more strenuous
and harder than yours. Acknowledge her for this sacrifice.
2. Keep your roles in their proper perspective. When you get home
from the office, your workday is just beginning. You’re replaceable
at work; as a father and husband, you aren’t!
3. Future generations are depending on your spiritual leadership.
If you’re not there, get there!
4. Take an active role in the training and disciplining of your children.
5. Connect emotionally with your wife. Remember when your team
won that big game? Your wife longs for that level of emotional
energy from you.
6. You are the leader of your home; be a servant leader. No one
demonstrated servant leadership better than Christ. He’s your
model.
7. Esteem your wife in front of your kids, friends, and in public.
No one should be a greater advocate for your wife than you.
8. Replace the “D word” with the “C word.” Don’t even joke about
divorce; instead remember the commitment you made.
9. Use your size, strength, and energy to protect and provide for your
family, not intimidate your wife and kids.
10. Take control of your eyes and mind. You can’t help noticing a
beautiful woman; you can help it if you allow your eyes to linger.
11. If you want to joke at someone else’s expense, make it at your
own. Self-deprecating humor is funny; sarcasm is just mean.
12. Start noticing all the things your wife does well and offer her grace
in her mistakes.
13. Be open with your wife about your finances. If they’re a mess, take
Financial Peace University together and fix them!
14. Old flames on Facebook? Don’t engage with them; un-friend them
if necessary.
15. Pitch in around the house. She’s your wife, not your maid!
Register in the lobby, online,
or write
on your communication card.
1 John 2 (15) Do not love this world nor the things it offers
you…(16) For the world offers only a craving for physical
pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our
achievements and possessions… (17) And this world is fading
away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone
who does what pleases God will live forever. (NLT)
Colossians 3 (1) You were raised from death with Christ.
So live for what is in heaven, where Christ is sitting at the
right hand of God. (2) Think only about what is up there,
not what is here on earth. (ERV)
1 Peter 2 (11) Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents
and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage
war against your very souls. (NLT)
Psalm 37 (4) Seek your happiness in the Lord, and he will give
you your heart's desire. (5) Give yourself to the Lord; trust
in him, and he will help you… (GNT)
1 Corinthians 2 (9) But as the Scriptures say, “No one has ever
seen, no one has ever heard, no one has ever imagined what God
has prepared for those who love him.” (ERV)
1 Peter 1 (4) Now we wait to receive the blessings God has for his
children. These blessings are kept for you in heaven. They cannot
be ruined or be destroyed or lose their beauty. (ERV)