My Husband Is Passive — What Can I Do?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | It is heartbreaking to read emails from disheartened wives like this one from a
00:00:08.480 | listener named Stephanie. Hello Pastor John. Thank you for this edifying podcast.
00:00:12.920 | In reference to episode 1301, "Prioritizing Marriage Over Work" and the
00:00:18.760 | older episode about husbands leading their wives, "Oh how I long to be led by
00:00:23.200 | my husband in the ways that you describe, but he's not there." I have hoped and
00:00:28.760 | prayed for it and asked of it from him for many years now. I want to pray
00:00:32.600 | together regularly, have husband and wife meetings, spiritual goals, and many other
00:00:37.840 | important things involved in stewarding a family, but I feel like I'm pulling a
00:00:42.440 | ship up a mountain. He wants to take life easy and enjoys TV and sports. I long for
00:00:47.760 | deeper things. I recognize it's not my job or in my control to change him. I've
00:00:52.560 | been married for 14 years now. What would you say to me, Pastor John, a waiting wife?
00:00:58.200 | It's really significant when Stephanie says, "I realize it's not my job or in my
00:01:07.680 | control to change him." Now, mainly I want to agree with that, but not entirely. So
00:01:16.440 | let me give the qualification and then circle back to agree with her. My
00:01:20.560 | agreement is that she's right. In the end, only God can go deep with her husband
00:01:28.880 | and awaken the kinds of longings and passions that she is eager to see. I
00:01:35.640 | think her impulse is right that efforts to change a husband usually backfire
00:01:42.920 | because he may so easily interpret your efforts as making him a project or
00:01:48.920 | treating him like a child or oppressing him with endless disapproval, none of
00:01:54.320 | which produce what you long for. But it's not quite right to say, "It's not my job
00:02:02.000 | to change him." And the reason I say that is because 1 Peter 3 1 2 say, "Wives,
00:02:09.200 | be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the Word, they
00:02:15.440 | may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your
00:02:20.760 | respectful and pure conduct." So Peter is telling these wives to make it their hope
00:02:26.480 | and aim and prayer to change their husbands into believers. That's what they
00:02:31.080 | want. Do it. So that. Live this way so that. Of course, that does not mean that
00:02:40.320 | it lies within a wife's power ultimately or decisively to convert her husband, but
00:02:48.280 | Peter isn't talking about what's ultimate and decisive. He's talking about
00:02:52.040 | what's secondary and possible, causes that really matter. God may use a wife's
00:02:57.360 | humble, godly, loving, supportive behavior to change a husband's willingness to
00:03:02.160 | hear the gospel and be safe. Now I think the same principle holds with regards to
00:03:07.320 | a husband's sanctification as well as his initial salvation. May God grant
00:03:12.800 | repentance. 2 Timothy 2 25. That's the initial and ongoing. God does
00:03:19.360 | it, but he uses means, and one of the means is how a wife lives and believes
00:03:24.720 | and loves to awaken him up. He may or he may not do it. God may grant repentance.
00:03:33.320 | Now, Stephanie, however, is mainly right to be very cautious about thinking of
00:03:42.640 | her relationship to her husband as primarily calculated to change him. Her
00:03:49.240 | position is analogous, I would say, to a single woman who would like to be
00:03:54.200 | married, but her focus in life should be on living a productive, Christ-honoring,
00:04:01.720 | single life rather than turning every situation into an effort to win a man.
00:04:07.760 | That backfires. And so do marriages where the spouse thinks of every situation as
00:04:15.400 | calculated to bring about change in the other spouse. When Paul tells us how
00:04:21.080 | to love in 1 Corinthians 13 verses 4 to 7, he mentions 15 things that love
00:04:31.160 | does toward the beloved, say the spouse. Not one of them includes changing the
00:04:37.880 | other person. Here they are. Count them. Love is patient and kind. Love does not
00:04:44.240 | envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is
00:04:54.000 | not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with
00:05:01.080 | the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
00:05:09.160 | endures all things. So let me be really sober-minded with Stephanie having seen
00:05:18.560 | marriages now for 70 years. I think you should go deep enough in your own soul
00:05:27.800 | and in the Word of God to realize your husband may never be the deep,
00:05:35.600 | spiritually strong leader you want him to be. You need to reckon with that. I think
00:05:42.600 | frankly that is the way most marriages go. 10, 20, 30 years in, you realize it's not
00:05:51.520 | turning out according to my dream. She or he isn't all I wanted, hoped for, or even
00:06:01.160 | think is right. It's just not happening. That's where most marriages are, I would
00:06:05.920 | say. This means that God's purpose for you is to refine and deepen your faith,
00:06:13.680 | your holiness, through the disappointing parts of your spouse's personality. I'm
00:06:20.840 | going to say that again. God's purpose for you is to refine and deepen your faith and
00:06:28.000 | your holiness through the disappointing parts of your spouse's personality. The
00:06:35.920 | fight of faith is to treat your spouse better and better out of the resources
00:06:44.360 | that you find in Christ. Paul said to the church in Thessalonica, "We urge you
00:06:50.800 | brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be
00:06:57.800 | patient with them all." And it's very likely that the idle, the faint-hearted,
00:07:04.760 | and the weak were married. That's the kind of spouse people had in that
00:07:14.160 | church. And if you meditate on those three words, especially in the Greek
00:07:19.480 | "idle"—undisciplined, disorderly, lazy; faint-hearted, small-souled, incapable of
00:07:27.640 | feeling large and great things with any attraction, easily discouraged, content
00:07:32.320 | with insignificant experiences; weak, vulnerable to something incapacitating,
00:07:37.960 | debilitating, limitation—could be physical, could be mental. And Paul gives little
00:07:43.600 | indication in that verse that these kinds of people are going away. They will
00:07:50.200 | always be with us in the church, maybe in a family. We pray, we hope for growth. Not
00:07:58.480 | wrong. In fact, I think essential. We pray, we hope for growth. But the word to us is
00:08:05.200 | "be patient with them all." Love suffers long and is kind. How long? Well, the
00:08:16.480 | marriage vow says, "For better or for worse, as long as we both shall live." God
00:08:24.680 | will provide every grace you need to make your marriage the most fruitful
00:08:30.560 | place for growing in godliness. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for writing in
00:08:37.200 | this very difficult email, Stephanie. We appreciate that you're so honest with us
00:08:41.240 | and vulnerable with your email. Well, we are back on Friday to field a question
00:08:47.600 | about one of those really hard texts where Jesus talks about who will be
00:08:51.140 | excluded from the kingdom of heaven. Those are always difficult texts, very hard texts,
00:08:56.200 | those kind of texts that get right in your face. That's coming up on Friday.
00:09:00.000 | Until then, you can find now over 1,300 of our past episodes in our archive at
00:09:04.720 | our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. I'm your host, Tony
00:09:10.360 | Reinke. We'll see you back here Friday.
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