It is heartbreaking to read emails from disheartened wives like this one from a listener named Stephanie. Hello Pastor John. Thank you for this edifying podcast. In reference to episode 1301, "Prioritizing Marriage Over Work" and the older episode about husbands leading their wives, "Oh how I long to be led by my husband in the ways that you describe, but he's not there." I have hoped and prayed for it and asked of it from him for many years now.

I want to pray together regularly, have husband and wife meetings, spiritual goals, and many other important things involved in stewarding a family, but I feel like I'm pulling a ship up a mountain. He wants to take life easy and enjoys TV and sports. I long for deeper things. I recognize it's not my job or in my control to change him.

I've been married for 14 years now. What would you say to me, Pastor John, a waiting wife? It's really significant when Stephanie says, "I realize it's not my job or in my control to change him." Now, mainly I want to agree with that, but not entirely. So let me give the qualification and then circle back to agree with her.

My agreement is that she's right. In the end, only God can go deep with her husband and awaken the kinds of longings and passions that she is eager to see. I think her impulse is right that efforts to change a husband usually backfire because he may so easily interpret your efforts as making him a project or treating him like a child or oppressing him with endless disapproval, none of which produce what you long for.

But it's not quite right to say, "It's not my job to change him." And the reason I say that is because 1 Peter 3 1 2 say, "Wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the Word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct." So Peter is telling these wives to make it their hope and aim and prayer to change their husbands into believers.

That's what they want. Do it. So that. Live this way so that. Of course, that does not mean that it lies within a wife's power ultimately or decisively to convert her husband, but Peter isn't talking about what's ultimate and decisive. He's talking about what's secondary and possible, causes that really matter.

God may use a wife's humble, godly, loving, supportive behavior to change a husband's willingness to hear the gospel and be safe. Now I think the same principle holds with regards to a husband's sanctification as well as his initial salvation. May God grant repentance. 2 Timothy 2 25. That's the initial and ongoing.

God does it, but he uses means, and one of the means is how a wife lives and believes and loves to awaken him up. He may or he may not do it. God may grant repentance. Now, Stephanie, however, is mainly right to be very cautious about thinking of her relationship to her husband as primarily calculated to change him.

Her position is analogous, I would say, to a single woman who would like to be married, but her focus in life should be on living a productive, Christ-honoring, single life rather than turning every situation into an effort to win a man. That backfires. And so do marriages where the spouse thinks of every situation as calculated to bring about change in the other spouse.

When Paul tells us how to love in 1 Corinthians 13 verses 4 to 7, he mentions 15 things that love does toward the beloved, say the spouse. Not one of them includes changing the other person. Here they are. Count them. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast.

It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. So let me be really sober-minded with Stephanie having seen marriages now for 70 years.

I think you should go deep enough in your own soul and in the Word of God to realize your husband may never be the deep, spiritually strong leader you want him to be. You need to reckon with that. I think frankly that is the way most marriages go. 10, 20, 30 years in, you realize it's not turning out according to my dream.

She or he isn't all I wanted, hoped for, or even think is right. It's just not happening. That's where most marriages are, I would say. This means that God's purpose for you is to refine and deepen your faith, your holiness, through the disappointing parts of your spouse's personality. I'm going to say that again.

God's purpose for you is to refine and deepen your faith and your holiness through the disappointing parts of your spouse's personality. The fight of faith is to treat your spouse better and better out of the resources that you find in Christ. Paul said to the church in Thessalonica, "We urge you brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all." And it's very likely that the idle, the faint-hearted, and the weak were married.

That's the kind of spouse people had in that church. And if you meditate on those three words, especially in the Greek "idle"—undisciplined, disorderly, lazy; faint-hearted, small-souled, incapable of feeling large and great things with any attraction, easily discouraged, content with insignificant experiences; weak, vulnerable to something incapacitating, debilitating, limitation—could be physical, could be mental.

And Paul gives little indication in that verse that these kinds of people are going away. They will always be with us in the church, maybe in a family. We pray, we hope for growth. Not wrong. In fact, I think essential. We pray, we hope for growth. But the word to us is "be patient with them all." Love suffers long and is kind.

How long? Well, the marriage vow says, "For better or for worse, as long as we both shall live." God will provide every grace you need to make your marriage the most fruitful place for growing in godliness. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for writing in this very difficult email, Stephanie.

We appreciate that you're so honest with us and vulnerable with your email. Well, we are back on Friday to field a question about one of those really hard texts where Jesus talks about who will be excluded from the kingdom of heaven. Those are always difficult texts, very hard texts, those kind of texts that get right in your face.

That's coming up on Friday. Until then, you can find now over 1,300 of our past episodes in our archive at our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here Friday.