Honor Your Spouse

Hello beautiful people of God, it’s a new day and a new week and a very perfect opportunity again to share the truth of the word of God. I thank God that this is a day He alone has made and we shall rejoice and be glad in it. In today’s post I will be sharing another practical issue in marriage and I pray that by the special grace of God we will leave this blog with a better insight than before we visited it.

There is this lady who has a deep love for her Bible but her husband isn’t so much of a committed Christian. The issue between them is that the husband feels his wife is taking this religion thing a little too far as she does not seem to have any free space for fun. His problem with his wife is that she does not socialize and her dressing just does not seem presentable enough as the other women or wives he sees outside. The situation gets so bad that sometimes he will seize her Bible and hide it because of this singular complain.

What can this wife then do? Can she forfeit her love for God for the desire of her husband or how can she blend her husband’s socializing with her pursuit of holiness in Christ without which no man can see God?

This is what I will say by the grace of God and with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; this is a situation you cannot handle without prayers. The story that comes to mind that appears similar to this is the story of Sarah, Abraham and Abimelech in Genesis 20. In this story Abraham had instructed his wife Sarah to claim to the people of Gerar that she was his sister in order to avoid death; and this eventually led to Abimelech king of Gerar taking Sarah in as his wife. But by divine intervention, Abimelech had not defiled Sarah till the Lord warned him to return Sarah to her husband Abraham or face God's wrath. We read from the Bible that Sarah obeyed.

I thank God that in our story today, the wife said that her husband sometimes seize and hide her Bible, but not that he totally prevents her from reading it. I also thank God that this husband has not forbidden his wife from praying and so there is huge hope.

The first thing that I want you to do is to pray very hard about this situation. Now if you read your Bible as well as I want to believe you do, then one of the things you should have learned from the Bible is to submit to your husband as unto the Lord. As a matter of fact, 1 Peter 3:1-2 says it is through your submission to your husband through the purity and reverence of your life that your unbelieving husband will be won over to the Lord. So rather than disobey your husband hiding under the canopy of loving the Bible, the second thing I want you to do is to submit to him.

Find out what he wants and do it in a manner that will not affect your relationship with God. Find out what interest him and get interested in same in a manner that will not jeopardize your relationship with God and also do it prayerfully. Whatever sport he likes, develop a likeness for that sport too so that you two can watch it together and laugh together. And if your husband likes a particular mode of dressing, please find love for that mode of dressing too; as long as it does not translate to indecent dressing. If he likes for you to make up, please take a make-up class and satisfy him with it.

Remember the story of Queen Vashti in the book of Esther 1. The sin of Queen Vashti was that she refused to oblige her husband the pleasure of showing off her beauty before the princes and nobles of the provinces over where he ruled. That singular act of disobedience to her husband led to her dethronement as queen. 

But who knows if your husband just wishes to show you off as his queen? It will be wrong for you not to oblige him that one longing of his heart in the name of loving the Bible. We see it as loving the Lord and living holy, but God sees it as an act of disobedience to your husband and so an act of disobedience to him. When you submit to your husband and obey him, and you prayerfully do so, you will win him over to God without words but with the purity and reverence of your life.

Some weeks back I did a business transaction that fetched me some money. Not so much, but enough to go by and support with the demands of the home as I don’t earn income. I told my husband about the business transaction and how much I got from it. My husband decided to have a very large chunk of the money and left me a very small amount.

This didn’t bother me because in truth I was willing to give it all to a man who has been taking care of me when I made no dime. But the issue was that I made a pledge to God and if I pay my pledge and tithe from what I had left, I would have nothing left on me. So I told my husband that I had to fulfill a pledge to God and pay my tithe. And he told me that this time around you won’t pay tithe or pledge with this money, just do as I have asked you with it. To this I had to obey. 

  

Number 30:1, 3-8

Moses said to the heads of the tribes of Israel: "This is what the Lord commands:

When a young woman still living in her father’s house makes a vow to the Lord or binds herself by a pledge and her father hears about her vow or pledge but says nothing to her, then all her vows and every pledge by which she bound herself will stand. But if her father forbids her when he hears about it, none of her vows or pledge by which she bound herself will stand; the lord will release her because her father has forbidden her.

If she marries after she makes a vow or after her lips utter a rash promise by which she binds herself and her husband hears about it but says nothing to her, then her vows or pledges by which she bound herself will stand. But if her husband forbids her when he hears about it, he nullifies the vow that binds her or the rash promise by which she binds herself, and the Lord will release her.

It was based on this scripture that I had to obey my husband even when it felt like contravening the law of the Lord. But in truth I am not committing any sin by not paying my pledge; I am in fact just obeying the word of God. But this is not a license to stop paying tithe or pledges, but there are some exceptions that the Lord permits and this is just a case of divine exception.

When you prayerfully submit to your husband in everything, you honor God, and when you honor God, He fights for you and make you enjoy His divine peace.