Counsel for Wives with Harsh Husbands

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to the podcast.

00:00:05.600 | We're gonna end this week talking about a marriage struggle.

00:00:09.300 | We've talked about many of the struggles

00:00:10.920 | and tensions marriages face over the years of this podcast.

00:00:13.920 | Here's another one of those topics,

00:00:15.340 | one we haven't directly addressed yet.

00:00:17.160 | It comes to us from a young wife

00:00:18.560 | who writes in anonymously to say this.

00:00:21.400 | Pastor John, hello, and thank you for this podcast.

00:00:24.000 | I have a question about your point

00:00:25.240 | that men owe women a special kind of care.

00:00:29.000 | You've made this point several times on this podcast.

00:00:32.200 | In particular, Paul commands husbands

00:00:34.320 | to not be harsh with their wives.

00:00:36.840 | He says this in Colossians 3:19.

00:00:39.800 | You say, quote, "This admonition to men

00:00:42.880 | "is owing to a peculiarly male temptation

00:00:46.000 | "to be rough, even cruel,

00:00:48.200 | "and to a peculiarly female vulnerability

00:00:51.360 | "to that violence on the one hand,

00:00:53.880 | "and to a natural female gladness on the other hand,

00:00:57.140 | "to be honored with caring protection

00:00:59.260 | "and strong tenderness," end quote.

00:01:02.760 | My question is this.

00:01:04.680 | My husband is not violent towards me, praise God,

00:01:08.040 | but he is harsh.

00:01:09.200 | He's just not a gentle man.

00:01:12.320 | How should I approach this topic with him?

00:01:15.120 | - Well, if I'm talking to the husband,

00:01:17.320 | so I need to just say this to get it out of the way

00:01:20.280 | and make sure it doesn't go unsaid.

00:01:23.560 | If I were talking to the husband,

00:01:25.240 | I would have lots to say,

00:01:27.480 | biblically, spiritually, relationally,

00:01:30.720 | about how he needs to deal with his own sins

00:01:34.800 | and personality quirks or weaknesses,

00:01:39.800 | but that's not the question she's asked.

00:01:42.600 | She asked me, us,

00:01:45.480 | how can I most helpfully approach him on this topic?

00:01:50.480 | So that's what I'm gonna talk about,

00:01:53.560 | perhaps with, I think I have five suggestions.

00:01:58.120 | So here they go.

00:01:59.440 | First, I would encourage our friend

00:02:02.560 | to pray both for her husband and for herself

00:02:07.240 | in this matter of his harshness.

00:02:11.280 | Jesus said that we should ask God

00:02:14.640 | that his will would be done on earth,

00:02:16.920 | that would include in our marriages,

00:02:19.740 | as it's done in heaven,

00:02:21.480 | and that includes that his will be done

00:02:25.120 | the way the angels would do it.

00:02:28.080 | Husbands would love their wives

00:02:29.920 | and wives would love their husbands

00:02:31.560 | the way angels obey God,

00:02:33.760 | namely joyfully and fully and without begrudging.

00:02:38.080 | So it's completely fitting

00:02:39.940 | that she would intercede with her Father in heaven,

00:02:44.600 | that her husband would be softened

00:02:47.920 | and moved toward greater Christlikeness

00:02:51.760 | in his demeanor toward her.

00:02:54.720 | And I say that she should pray for herself as well

00:02:57.640 | because even though he bears

00:03:02.280 | his own peculiar burden of responsibility

00:03:06.220 | before God for his own change,

00:03:09.460 | we know from Scripture and experience

00:03:11.840 | that God uses the behavior of husbands and wives

00:03:16.440 | to bring about change in each other.

00:03:19.560 | He uses the people around us

00:03:21.140 | to affect the way we do things and feel about things.

00:03:24.280 | So what God does in her

00:03:27.960 | will have an effect on what he does in him.

00:03:32.440 | So she prays for herself as well.

00:03:36.060 | Number two, in 1 Peter 3:1-2,

00:03:42.720 | Peter says to wives that they should try

00:03:47.320 | to bring about godly change in their husbands

00:03:52.320 | by means of their "respectful and pure conduct."

00:03:57.820 | In other words, Peter underlines

00:04:01.820 | what we know from experience

00:04:04.360 | that a person may be helped in his deliverance

00:04:09.580 | from his own sinning by the godly way

00:04:13.720 | that others behave around him,

00:04:15.480 | especially people close to him that he loves, like his wife.

00:04:19.100 | I would guess that among the kind of conduct

00:04:23.400 | that God might use in the case of a harsh husband

00:04:27.260 | to bring about change would be what God said

00:04:31.120 | in Proverbs 15.1 for the wife, for example,

00:04:34.880 | "A soft answer turns away wrath,"

00:04:39.340 | or maybe "turns away harshness."

00:04:42.020 | Or Proverbs 25.15, "A soft tongue will break a bone,

00:04:47.020 | "the bone of harshness."

00:04:50.220 | In other words, I would encourage her

00:04:53.220 | not to return evil for evil or harshness for harshness,

00:04:57.220 | which will probably only spiral into a worse situation,

00:05:03.880 | but rather to try to win him

00:05:05.900 | toward gentleness with gentleness.

00:05:10.020 | Third, there will probably come a point

00:05:13.140 | where she desires and needs the support of others

00:05:18.140 | in this effort to love her harsh husband.

00:05:23.180 | She will need them to pray for her and encourage her,

00:05:26.980 | counsel her, but I would earnestly caution her

00:05:31.300 | against bad-mouthing her husband

00:05:34.320 | behind his back with other people.

00:05:37.660 | This will almost certainly backfire

00:05:40.520 | in a more hopeless situation.

00:05:43.420 | So then the question is, well, what can she do?

00:05:46.180 | Well, let me illustrate maybe what might happen.

00:05:51.440 | During some of our darkest days of marriage,

00:05:55.920 | Noelle and I both knew, we came to a point

00:06:00.560 | where we knew we needed to have others to counsel us.

00:06:05.560 | We weren't sure yet whether it needed

00:06:09.440 | to be a professional counselor, a Christian counselor,

00:06:12.800 | which it did eventually,

00:06:15.440 | but we wanted some friends to encourage us, pray for us,

00:06:20.040 | where we could unburden ourselves,

00:06:22.880 | be heard with sympathy and yet not naively

00:06:25.960 | as though everything is her fault or his fault.

00:06:29.320 | We wanted others to pray for us.

00:06:32.200 | So we knew we did not want to talk about our problems

00:06:36.320 | just randomly to everybody that came along.

00:06:39.200 | That would have been harmful.

00:06:41.080 | So we asked each other, we just agreed with each other

00:06:44.240 | on a handful of very trusted friends,

00:06:49.240 | and we gave each other the trusted permission

00:06:52.840 | to say anything that seemed helpful to say.

00:06:59.520 | And ask that other couple not to share anything.

00:07:04.520 | In fact, it was interesting,

00:07:06.120 | one of the counselors that we did choose to go to

00:07:09.360 | insisted that we bring with us to every counseling session,

00:07:15.160 | well, not everyone, but most of them,

00:07:18.440 | another couple with us.

00:07:20.840 | Isn't that amazing?

00:07:21.680 | What a strategy.

00:07:22.500 | I thought that's really good.

00:07:24.880 | I mean, it's a huge commitment of time

00:07:27.320 | for the other couple to invest,

00:07:29.760 | but it means somebody else always knows

00:07:32.920 | what you're dealing with

00:07:33.760 | and you can't get away with too much when that's happening.

00:07:36.880 | That requires an enormous amount of trust,

00:07:40.120 | but that was our way forward.

00:07:42.800 | And it kept us from speaking about details of our problems

00:07:46.280 | with just random people.

00:07:48.400 | We trusted each other with those we had agreed upon.

00:07:53.120 | So that's a possible way forward, perhaps.

00:07:56.880 | Fourth, I would encourage this wife to recognize

00:08:00.960 | that very likely part of what she is experiencing

00:08:05.640 | in her husband's harshness is owing to sin,

00:08:09.720 | part owing to sin.

00:08:12.120 | And part of it is probably owing to the,

00:08:16.280 | what should we call it?

00:08:17.120 | The inherited genetic tendencies

00:08:21.440 | embedded in his own basic personality

00:08:24.720 | or in his upbringing.

00:08:27.240 | Now, I'm not excusing any sin by saying this,

00:08:31.520 | but I am being realistic

00:08:34.280 | and acknowledging how complicated human beings are.

00:08:39.280 | I know people whose personality is such

00:08:44.020 | that you wish they would smile more.

00:08:47.560 | You wish that they would oil the relational wheels

00:08:51.440 | with a few more kind words

00:08:53.600 | or forthcoming encouragements or affirmations,

00:08:58.600 | but instead there's almost continual bluntness,

00:09:03.600 | terseness, unemotional communication.

00:09:06.840 | And I have learned over the decades

00:09:11.360 | that in certain cases, this is simply not sinful.

00:09:18.200 | This is a deeply ingrained personality trait

00:09:23.120 | with no ill will.

00:09:24.920 | There's no ill will behind it.

00:09:27.400 | You know this over time.

00:09:28.880 | And it will only make matters worse

00:09:32.720 | if the people around these folks

00:09:34.680 | continually impute sin to them,

00:09:37.760 | where in fact that's not mainly what's going on.

00:09:41.240 | Finally, last point.

00:09:44.600 | When it comes to actual approaching the husband,

00:09:47.760 | here are a few thoughts about how to go about that.

00:09:52.620 | It is perfectly biblical, as you can see

00:09:57.620 | from the way Paul approaches the problem,

00:10:00.640 | say in 1 Corinthians,

00:10:03.760 | to find explicit things that you can say

00:10:07.880 | by way of thankfulness and encouragement and affirmation.

00:10:12.140 | Call them evidences of God's grace

00:10:15.960 | that you see in his life

00:10:18.320 | so that criticisms, when they come,

00:10:22.040 | are embedded in a rich context

00:10:25.540 | of love and verbal affirmation.

00:10:28.940 | In the overall context of your relationship then,

00:10:34.180 | ask him from time to time, perhaps also,

00:10:39.100 | is there anything that your own behavior

00:10:42.720 | or your own attitudes are bothersome to him

00:10:47.340 | or frustrating to him or maddening to him

00:10:50.940 | or annoying to him,

00:10:52.160 | and ask him to point out any ways

00:10:55.280 | that he would like you to make changes.

00:10:58.240 | So I'm saying this in the larger, bigger context,

00:11:00.960 | no artificial way of,

00:11:02.480 | okay, here are three affirmations I'm gonna make

00:11:05.140 | and three vulnerabilities I'm gonna express,

00:11:07.780 | and now here comes my criticism.

00:11:09.680 | It's just a bigger, healthy relationship

00:11:12.720 | that you try to build so that when you broach a problem,

00:11:16.620 | it's not part of an ugly pattern.

00:11:21.040 | When you try to describe to him

00:11:23.200 | what you mean by his harshness,

00:11:25.980 | try not to globalize.

00:11:28.700 | This is something I had to learn about myself

00:11:31.300 | in dealing with my wife.

00:11:33.140 | Try not to globalize.

00:11:35.620 | That is, instead of saying, "You always do this."

00:11:40.620 | You're always saying it that way.

00:11:42.620 | You always do it that way.

00:11:44.100 | I can tell you, human beings do not like the word always.

00:11:49.100 | I mean, if you wanna push somebody away,

00:11:52.540 | make it sound like this criticism is global.

00:11:57.460 | It's all-consuming.

00:11:58.820 | That's all you are, the human being.

00:12:01.320 | Because what that says to the other person is,

00:12:04.260 | there's no hope for you,

00:12:06.220 | that they will feel paralyzed and helpless.

00:12:09.000 | So instead, you give one or two concrete examples

00:12:14.960 | that you wish they did another way,

00:12:17.800 | a different tone of voice or a different way of answering.

00:12:21.880 | And that gives them some sense,

00:12:24.100 | okay, I get that, I get that.

00:12:26.240 | I can see how you would hear that.

00:12:27.920 | I'll try not to do that anymore.

00:12:29.560 | And incrementally then,

00:12:31.480 | who knows how God might be pleased to work.

00:12:35.100 | And then finally, I would say,

00:12:36.880 | if he indicates a sense of openness to talk about this,

00:12:43.800 | then you can explain your feelings more fully.

00:12:47.280 | You can ask for what you long for

00:12:49.920 | and maybe explain why it would be so happy

00:12:53.400 | for the relationship if he would be less harsh

00:12:57.260 | in these several ways.

00:12:59.840 | And if you both feel stuck after a while,

00:13:04.200 | it is perfectly biblical and right

00:13:08.240 | to seek help from close friends

00:13:10.240 | or even if it comes to that from a wise Christian counselor.

00:13:15.180 | - Yeah, thank you, Pastor John.

00:13:16.880 | We have dozens of episodes in the archive now

00:13:19.520 | on marriage struggles.

00:13:20.520 | You can search for them and find them

00:13:21.840 | in our growing archive,

00:13:22.880 | which you can find online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn

00:13:27.880 | or you can just type in askpastorjohn.com

00:13:31.540 | and that'll get you there as well.

00:13:34.040 | We start next week talking about prayer.

00:13:36.080 | Sometimes we say that we are wrestling in prayer

00:13:38.520 | for something.

00:13:39.360 | There are others use that phrase wrestling in prayer

00:13:41.200 | and that phrase wrestling in prayer is a biblical one,

00:13:43.840 | one used by Paul in the book of Colossians,

00:13:46.400 | but it only appears one time.

00:13:47.840 | So what does it mean biblically speaking

00:13:49.520 | to wrestle in prayer?

00:13:52.200 | That's up next.

00:13:53.040 | I'm your host Tony Renke.

00:13:53.860 | We'll see you back here on Monday.

00:13:55.520 | Have a great weekend.

00:13:56.560 | (upbeat music)

00:13:59.140 | (upbeat music)

00:14:01.720 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Counsel for Wives with Harsh Husbands

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