As husbands and wives, Ephesians 5 tells us our duties. But how can each make it easier for the other to fulfill their God-given roles? In this session, Justin Dillehay will give biblical and practical encouragement on how to make marriage easier for your spouse.

Open your Bibles please to Ephesians chapter 5. We're not going to read the whole text, but I will be reading portions of it. It's the classic passage on marriage. I didn't get to hear Brother Carlton Wynne's sermon last night, but when I saw his title I thought there could be some overlap here, but I don't know. You'll be able to tell me.

But the title of our talk is Making Marriage Easier. I want to begin with prayer. And now, Heavenly Father, come and help us. Fill us with your spirit that our marriages might more accurately reflect the great marriage between Christ and his church for the sake of the world that they might see a living example of the gospel. In Jesus' name, amen.

Question, and don't answer this out loud, just think about it. Is marriage supposed to be easy? It's not quite as simple a question as it might sound at first, but let me start with a simple answer. The simple answer is no. No, marriage is not supposed to be easy, and if you think it is, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

For example there's a popular idea in our culture today that Brad Wilcox refers to as the soulmate myth And the soulmate myth says that if you marry your soulmate, otherwise known as the one, then marriage will be easy. And if your marriage is not easy, if you find instead that it takes work, more work than it seemed to take when you were dating or more work than it seemed to take in the honeymoon phase of your marriage, then that probably means you married the wrong person and you should move on and look for your true soulmate. Now it shouldn't have taken expensive sociological studies to demonstrate that the soulmate myth was a bad idea that would lead to more divorces. Nevertheless, expensive sociological studies have been done demonstrating that the soulmate myth is a bad idea that leads to more divorces. And why?

Well because it leads to wildly unrealistic expectations. It teaches people, especially wives I would say, it teaches people to look at routine, maintenance level marriage challenges and say loving someone shouldn't have to be this hard. It shouldn't have to be this hard. My soulmate would never leave his socks lying around. My soulmate would never get bored when I'm telling this non-stop story about my best friend's mother.

And so it leads people to give up on marriages that with just a little bit of willingness to work could have become happy marriages and instead they become divorces. So no marriage is not supposed to be easy. Just like the Christian life in general is not supposed to be easy. But neither is it supposed to be a yoke of slavery? In Matthew 11 verse 30, same book in which our Lord says that the way that leads to life is hard and we need to take up our cross and follow Him, same book Our Lord Jesus famously says, take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is what?

Easy. And my burden is light. Now clearly, our Lord does not mean there, My yoke will never challenge you. My yoke will never restrict you. My yoke will never require you to put someone else's desires before your own.

That's not what easy means. But it clearly also does not mean my yoke is heavy and oppressive. Instead, if you look up that word easy in BDAG's lexicon you'll find that easy there means morally good and benevolent. When Jesus says my yoke is easy he means it's a yoke designed for our good. A yoke designed not to strangle us but to fit who we are as image bearers of God and especially as born-again, spirit-filled image bearers of God.

And the same thing is true with Christian marriage. The Bible says, he who finds a wife finds a good thing, not a ball and chain. Marriage may be life long, but it's not supposed to feel like a life sentence. Marriage is like the Sabbath. It's made for man.

It's made for our good. But we can make it a burden, just like the Pharisees made the Sabbath a burden. We can make marriage difficult by binding up and tying heavy burdens around each other's necks and then not being willing to lift them with one of our fingers? And guess what? When you tie up a heavy burden around your spouse's neck, guess who else's neck you're tying it around?

Your own neck, because husband and wife are one flesh. So the question now is, how can we avoid doing that? How can we avoid making marriage more difficult than it needs to be? And what are some practical ways we can do that? Ways that as a husband, I can make marriage easier for my wife, ways that you as a wife can make marriage easier for your husband.

And I want to approach that question through Ephesians 5 22 to 33. And in this classic well-known passage, God is reminding each spouse of our basic duties, and they are couched here as duties. The most basic duty God lays on husbands and wives is love for the husband. Verse 25, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. And submission for the wife, verse 22, wives submit to your own husbands.

So love and submission which are then paraphrased or restated in verse 33 as love and respect. Notice verse 33. Let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Those are the basic duties. And normally I would tell each spouse to read this passage and focus on your own duty, not the other person's.

Because our sinful tendency is to read a passage like this and think, I hope my wife's listening to this. I'm glad she's here for this sermon because the Lord really needs to work on her or vice versa. I don't want you to do that this morning. Instead, what I want you to do is I want you to hear God's command to your spouse and ask, how can I make it easier for her to do that? How can I make it easier for him to do that?

So instead of saying I'll start loving her when she starts respecting me, I want you to ask how can I make it easier for her to respect me? Same thing with wives. Instead of saying, I'll start respecting him when he becomes respectable or I'll start respecting him when he starts loving me, I want you to ask and send. How can I make it easier for him to love me? We can't free our spouse from their responsibilities.

We can't do their job for them. Galatians 6 5 in this vein tells us that each person will have to bear his own load. When you stand before God on the final day, it's going to be you and God. And He's going to be dealing with you personally. And to the degree that your spouse failed you or sinned against you, they will answer to God for that.

What you and I are going to answer for is how we fulfilled the duties God gave us. And we should all beware of desiring a stricter judgment for our spouse than we do for ourselves. Because the Lord warns us, with the measure you use, it'll be measured to you. Matthew 7 verse 2. So again, we can't free our spouse from their responsibilities.

That's the yoke that the Lord Jesus has placed on them and it's one that they volunteered for when they agreed to marry you. But we can help make the oak easier and the burden lighter. The question is what are some practical ways we can do that? And as we think about these ways that we can lighten the other's load, what you're going to realize pretty quickly is they're really just practical ways to bear our own load. They're ways to do our own duty.

The ways for you to make it easier for her to respect you are ways to love her. The ways for you to make it easier for him to love you are respecting him. So there's nothing particularly original about any of this. I'm just adjusting the angle slightly to give you a constructive way to think about your wife's or your husband's responsibilities. And just to head off some misunderstanding here, I'm not trying to give you some three steps or some money back guarantee that if you do these things your husband will treat you like a princess or your wife will be eating out of your hand.

No, there are some husbands who are so churlish that no amount of respect will make a dent. And there are some wives so contentious that all the love in the world would be like casting pearls before swine. However, for every person who actually has a spouse that bad, there's probably 25 more who think they have one that bad, but really don't. In reality, most of us do far more to aggravate our spouse's flaws, to throw gasoline on our spouse's flaws than we would like to admit. The happy flip side of that is that we can contribute far more to improving our marriages if we would simply repent and take responsibility for our side of the street and stop worrying so much about theirs.

So I'm not saying if you do this they will do that. I am saying help her help you. Help him help you. Marriage isn't always easy but we can at least make it easier for each other. So let's think about some ways we can do that and since Paul goes ladies first in Ephesians 5, that's what I'm going to do too.

So wives first. Wives, raise your hand if you're a wife in this room. Excellent. Wives, you have a very high calling, one that the Lord Jesus honors even if the world does not. Submitting to, respecting, following a fallen imperfect man is not for the faint of heart.

But your husband also has a difficult calling. It's analogous to what Jesus did when he laid down his life for us. You can't remove that weight from him. He wouldn't want you to, but you can make it easier for him by not throwing anvils on top of an already heavy load. And the practical ways you can do that center on this idea of respect.

Verse 33 of our text says, let the wife see that she respects her husband. Now, God is commanding here to each spouse's need. As the weaker, the reasons that he says what he does, the reason he says wives should respect, husbands should love. As the weaker, more vulnerable vessel in the marriage, the wife needs sacrificial, protective, nurturing love in a special way. And as the head and leader in the marriage, the one bearing the brunt for providing, protecting, and overseeing, the husband needs respect in a unique way.

Even for Aretha Franklin, when it came to respect, all she was asking for was just a little bit. Your husband probably needs more though than just a little bit because he's a man. God is commanding to each spouse's need but second as many have pointed out he's also commanding to our weakness. He's commanding to our weakness. He reminds wives to respect their husbands because it's often the thing they find easiest to neglect and the hardest to do.

Same in reverse. And the reason Paul's command for wives here centers on respect is because respect is the primary fuel that most husbands run on. There are lots of other additives and supplements, but none of them will make up for a steady diet of disrespect or a steady lack of respect. So let's think for a few minutes about how wives can make marriage easier for their husbands by showing them respect and most of this is going to focus on your words Because it seems to me that's where the Bible focuses often. And I think it's because for most men how their wife speaks to them or about them matters a great deal.

It matters far more than whether or not you daydream about us while we're away at work. I mean suppose I could somehow know as I was driving home that my wife Tilly had barely thought about me all day long. Nary a thought. Am I gonna walk in the door and be like, hey really? Nary a thought?

I thought I was like number one in your life. I'm feeling loved, deprived, I'm not feeling very cherished here. I'm not gonna do that. It's not gonna cross my mind. But if I walk through the door, and if I walk through the door 15 minutes late, and she acts like I'm not there, and she waits 10 minutes to show me she's irritated with me, And then she says something like, so I guess someone forgot what time dinner is.

Well in that case I'm gonna feel like I've been slapped across the face and so will most of your husbands because I'm gonna feel that as disrespect because it is disrespect. The Proverbs speak about this a lot. The Proverbs refer to this person as the quarrelsome wife, or the contentious wife. Let me read you a few examples. Proverbs 27-15 says, a continual dripping on a rainy day and a contentious life are alike.

Proverbs 21-19, it's better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman. Proverbs 21 9, it's better to live in a corner of the house top than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife. The picture here is that of a wife who makes her husband wish he were somewhere else, anywhere else, on a house top, in the desert, at the office down at the bar in the garage anywhere to escape the continual dripping. Now I know firsthand this does not describe all wives, so I'm not presuming that this is any of you. I don't know you ladies from Eve.

But it never hurts to ask yourself, is this me? Like, could this be me? Because here's the thing, the contentious wife in Proverbs, she's like the fool in Proverbs. The fool in Proverbs doesn't know he's a fool. That's part of what makes him a fool.

And the contentious wife in Proverbs, she doesn't know she's contentious. She could read these verses and assume they're talking about somebody else. She might even have two or three names in mind that she thinks it describes. She doesn't know she's contentious. That's what separates her from the merely imperfect wife.

If you ask the contentious wife in Proverbs to talk about her marriage, You know what she would talk about? She would talk about all the things her husband does wrong. She would complain about her husband, including the fact that he's always up on the housetop, and doesn't want to come down and spend time with her, Because she wouldn't be connecting the dots at all about why he's up there. Or she would say something like, me? I'm just feisty.

I have a strong personality. That's one way of putting it. Now, I'm not saying that if you've ever described yourself as having a strong personality that this is you, but I would say you're a good candidate. If you're the kind of woman with a strong personality, you're at least a good candidate, so you ought to examine yourself, because often what you refer to as a strong personality, others would refer to as something else. And non-Christian women are often far more frank and shameless about this than Christian women are.

One thinks of a women's bumper sticker that says powered by witch dust, only it doesn't use the clean word. I read that and I think well at least she's honest, but I also sort of think she's also more shameless. It's like it was like to be like a man's bumper sticker that said if you need me I'll be watching porn. It's like at least he's honest, but He's also more shameless. Christian wives are not likely to be that blunt about it.

And they're more likely to say, I just have a strong personality. Choosing to call it that might raise fewer eyebrows but it's not going to make your marriage any easier. Your husband's already a sinner. He's already got the same flesh to contend with as you do. If you want to make it easier for him to love and cherish you, not harder, use your words to convey respect, not disrespect.

Use your words to build him up and not to tear him down. It doesn't just help him, it helps him help you. Just like verse 28 says, he who loves his wife loves himself because they're one flesh. Same thing is true here. She who respects her husband respects herself.

She who honors her husband honors herself, but she who tears down her husband tears down herself and her household with her own hands. Common ways of disrespecting husbands would include things like rolling your eyes at him, dismissing his ideas, telling him what to do, telling him how to drive, comparing him to other men. That hurts. Constantly second-guessing his decisions, Criticizing him in front of other people. Offering unsolicited advice or helpful suggestions.

You're just trying to help in areas where he's more knowledgeable than you are. And if you don't know whether there are any areas like that, that's a red flag. Maybe we need to change the oil. Or correcting unimportant details in his stories during conversations. You ever seen this happen?

When I see this happen part of me wants to just interrupt and say you know we don't really care if it was 125 when you got there and not instead of 130 just let him tell the story. I don't say that but that's what I'm thinking. If you regularly talk to your husband in these ways, he may not articulate it as, my wife just doesn't respect me. He may think of it more like, my wife doesn't trust me, she thinks I'm an idiot, and she treats me like a child. But whatever he calls it, it saps him.

It inhibits his growth, it dampens his initiative. He's like a car that's low on gas and someone keeps pouring water in. And one of the most heartbreaking things about this is that you as his wife, the one person in his life whose opinion matters more than anybody, you can become his severest critic while others see him very differently. Emerson Egriks tells the story of a wife who had no respect for her husband. He wasn't a bad husband and she knew he wasn't a bad husband, but she had no respect for him.

Behind his back She constantly put him down, made fun of him. And one day while she was shopping, she thought it would be interesting just to stop at his office and just see where he worked or whether he worked. And so she called him on her cell phone. Apparently, she'd never done this before. And she called him and said, can I come up and see you at the office he's surprised he says yeah yeah sure absolutely it's so I'm a little busy right now but but come on up so she comes on up and sure enough he is busy like She has to sit there for like 15 minutes and wait while he's dealing with lots of things and putting out fires?

And from where she was sitting she could tell that her husband's co-workers gave him a lot of respect. His boss gave him respect. His secretary gave him respect. She overheard an older man reporting to her husband and she couldn't explain why but her stomach churned just a little bit when she heard the older man address her husband as, yes sir. Then his secretary came by gave him some papers and the wife felt shame.

She even felt a little nervous at the way this secretary looked up to her husband and showed him respect. When she got back to the car, she burst into tears, filled with shame because she had been given a brief opportunity to see her husband through the eyes of other people. And it was gut-wrenching. Because she realized how disrespectful she was by comparison. She realized how poorly she would fit in that environment.

If she was just transplanted into that office and acted like she normally act, everybody be like what's with you? And while if she asked the question either their way off or I am, in her case she seemed to know what the answer was. I told this story to some people in my congregation. I had a lady say I had the exact same experience. I went to work with my husband and I saw how the others respected him and I cried.

If you can't think of anything, I don't know what your situation is, if you can't think of anything to respect your husband for, ask yourself, how would your life change or your lifestyle change if he died tomorrow? You might be able to think of a few things that he does for you that make your life easier and better that you don't often think to say thank you for. Here's another thought experiment that I read somewhere. If you can't think of anything to respect your husband for, imagine you were the one who died. And in due time, your husband were back on the dating market.

What things about him do you think other women would find to respect, single women would find to respect if he were back on the dating market? That might be a way to ask, what am I missing right now? What if I died? And then wake up and realize I'm not dead. I've still got my wife in front of me.

I still have the opportunity to make my marriage better. Look for ways to communicate respect to your husband. 1 Peter 3, 6 tells us Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him Lord. What's fascinating about that is when you look up that story, you find that she's not even calling him more to his face in that text. In the context this is actually something she's saying under her breath about him when he's not even there.

Even when she's in private, even her own musings, She's speaking respectfully about her husband because that's how it works. What we stew on in private, what we think, how we think about our spouse in private, that's what eventually comes out, our mouth in public. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So start with your heart, start with what you're rehearsing there and ask God to help you change that script. Because if you're if you're calling him loser in your mind, that's that's going to come out in your in your treatment.

He's gonna feel like a loser or that you think he's a loser. This is how Sarah spoke about her husband and God holds her up to us as a model. I'm not suggesting that you just copy and paste her method of respecting your own marriage and go home and start calling your husband Lord today. That would probably be weird even for him, but you're smart. You can do this.

Find ways to translate this to your situation so that he knows that you think of him as something closer to Lord and farther from loser. Cultivate sympathy. There'd be another thing. Cultivate sympathy for your husband. Remember, realize that just as he doesn't know what it's like to be you, you don't know what it's like to be him.

You don't know what it's like to carry the load that he carries. There's a scene in this movie called Cinderella man where two wives are sitting talking to one another. Their husbands are out of the room and their husbands are struggling to provide for the family because it's like the height of the Great Depression. Everybody's out of work. In fact, they're sitting in a living room with no furniture because the husband has just had to sell all the furniture to make ends meet.

So man imagine how you would feel about that time. And one of the wives looks at the other wife and with great sympathy in her voice she says this, I don't know who it's harder on, them or us. We have to wait for them to fix everything, and every day they feel like they're failing us. For every husband who thinks that he's God's gift to women and that he's entitled to his wife's unceasing adoration and praise, there's about ten more husbands who just feel like they're failing. And he were just starving for a little bit of encouragement and respect.

And wives, there's nobody in the world whose opinion and respect matters to him more than yours. Help him help you by showing respect. Husbands, Husbands, you too have a very high calling. Loving and laying your wife down for an imperfect woman is not a walk in the park, but your wife also has a very difficult calling. It's analogous to what the church is supposed to do for Jesus, submitting to Him, Obeying Him, believing in Him, honoring Him, except that you're nowhere as good as Jesus.

She's way more like the church than you are like Jesus. And yet, she's still commanded to submit to you, to honor you, to respect you, and knowing all that she was still willing to say yes to you when you ask her to marry you. Brothers, if that doesn't humble you just a little bit, If that doesn't give you some gratitude for your wife, I can tell you what part of the problem in your marriage is. Our job may not be easy, but it's easier than our awards was. We've never had to bear the wrath of God and the curse of God for our wives the way he did for us.

Jesus has done the heaviest lifting for us already. So, Jesus, he's greater than us, and yet he does not despise our role as husbands. He honors our role. It's the role that matches His. Jesus created this part that we're playing and then He cast you in this role.

He's like, you get to play me. Think on that, brother. Think on that when the daily grind of husbandry grinds you down. Just turn your thoughts away, turn away from what the world thinks, from what your wife thinks. Turn away from your never-ending to-do list and just turn your eyes upon Jesus Christ and what he thinks of you and what he wants to do with you in your marriage.

Start by being grateful that you have a wife. Most of the time, the husband dies before the wife. In the last 10 years, we've had like six husbands lose their wives in our church. So male widowhood is an ever-present reality in my life. Start by being grateful that you even have a wife when others have lost theirs or never found one to begin with.

Start by cultivating sympathy for her. You know what it's like to be married to her. You don't know what it's like to be her married to you. And you never will. But you don't know what it's like to be her married to you.

And you never will. But you don't know what it's like to sit in the passenger seat of the marriage while you drive and you're not able to switch seats. I like driving myself and I get nervous in the passenger seat. The least we can try to do is make things easier for them. So let's think of some examples.

First, make it easier for her to respect you by being reasonable instead of hard-headed. James 3.17 says the wisdom from above is open to reason. It's easy to be entreated. So if you have this wisdom that means your wife can approach you and talk to you without always walking on eggshells. Having to choose her moment just right because she's not sure what kind of mood you're in today.

Much as we admire Queen Esther's courage, brothers, our wives should not need the courage of Esther to come and bring problems to us. I hope he lowers the scepter this time. It shouldn't take that much. To see a bad example of this, all you got to do is go read 1st Samuel chapter 25. There we find that one of the greatest wives in the Bible had one of the worst husbands in the Bible.

The wife's name was Abigail and the text says she was discerning and beautiful as she had it all. But her husband, well his name literally meant fool. That's what his name was. Why would anybody name their kid fool? I don't know, but it turned out true.

And you probably know the story. Nabal almost gets himself and a lot of other people killed by being unreasonable, by being unkind. He mistreats David, he pays him evil for good, and then he tops it off by insulting him. Now David for his part, he also responds sinfully, he's like strap on your swords boys, if any of these guys are alive in the morning it won't be our fault, right, he's about to go kill people. Nabal is such a fool he doesn't even realize what he's done, doesn't realize the danger that he's in.

But the men around him do. They know what's happening and in the revealing thing is that they don't go to Nabel with the problem, they go to Abigail because they know it's a waste of time to talk to him. The text says, one of the young men went to Abigail, tells her what happened and then he says to her, consider what you must do for harm is determined against our master and against all his house and he is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him. The fact that he feels comfortable saying that to the guy's wife speaks volumes, right? It tells you He knows she knows.

If you want to make it easier for your wife to respect you, just ask yourself, what would Nabal do? And then don't do that thing. Nabal may have thought, my wife doesn't respect me. Or just as likely, he may have thought, my wife never complains. My wife never brings problems to my attention my wife she never points out sins in my life which just shows what a great leader I really am actually enable it just shows you're impossible to talk to.

So she doesn't bother. So the question is, does your wife know that she can speak to you and you'll listen? Does she feel free to bring problems to you? Or even to respectfully confront you when you're wrong. And I know from experience that can be done respectfully.

It can be done. Make it easier for her to respect you by being reasonable instead of hard headed. Second, make it easier for her to respect you by being reasonable instead of hard-headed. Second, make it easier for her to respect you by being kind instead of harsh. This is similar but it's different enough that it warrants a different point.

Make it easier for her to respect you by being kind instead of harsh. In the parallel passage, Colossians 3.19, Paul says, husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them. When he thinks the opposite of love, he thinks harsh, harshness. Love is patient, kind, it's not arrogant or rude, it's not irritable or resentful. Husbands love your wives, don't be harsh.

Once again, he's commanding to our need here. He's commanding to our weakness. He's addressing a specific tendency that we often have as husbands. This tendency to be harsh, irritable, impatient, temperamental. This is one of the besetting sins of my life as a husband.

It's just being low-level irritable too often. Of course, any is too often, but too often. And more than once in our 14 years of marriage, Tilly has had to respectfully say to me something like, I love you, I want to follow you, I just wish you could learn to say that in a little kinder tone. Just don't be a jerk. Don't be harsh.

Now sometimes we're tempted to be harsh because we feel like we've been disrespected. Maybe we have, maybe we haven't. And so we respond to the perceived disrespect with harshness, which, guess what, provokes more disrespect in her, which provokes more harshness in us, and on and on, and what one writer called the crazy cycle, downward spiral. Being harsh in response to disrespect is understandable, just like her getting angry with your harshness is understandable. The Bible says a harsh word stirs up anger.

And when we stir up anger in another person, we bear some responsibility for the anger we stir up. It doesn't mean they don't bear any, but it means we bear some. The Proverb does not say a harsh word often precedes anger in a totally unrelated coincidence. It says a harsh word stirs up anger and both spouses including us husbands bear responsibility for what we stir up. But brother, the only way to break the crazy cycle if you feel like you've been disrespected is to respond like Jesus did, who when he was reviled did not revile in return.

When he suffered he did not threaten but entrusted himself to God. So look your wife in the eye, give her a calm, firm, gentle answer in a voice that's not raised, that's not irritable, the voice of a man who's in control of himself. And guess what? You'll have made it easier for her to respect you. Third, make it easier for her to respect you by cherishing your differences, not resenting them.

The running joke between me and Tilly is that her mind is like spaghetti. There's all these unconnected noodles, you know, that you can grab one. Or I would say her mind is like, it's like a Google Chrome where there's about 20 tabs open at the top and you just click on anyone at any given time and they're totally unrelated but you can access them at any time. So for instance we'll be sitting there and she'll say something out of the blue and I have no idea what she's talking about. No idea what she's referring to because she's picking up on a thread from like three days ago in a conversation which I've forgotten about.

So I'm thinking what is the word it referred to in the sentence she just used? What's the antecedent for that pronoun? Now There's two things, at least two things I can do with that kind of difference. I can learn to love that about her, appreciate it, lean into it, laugh about it with her, or I can be a jerk. Babe, why don't you just say what you mean?

Why don't you be clear? When are you going to learn to talk where I can understand you? What's the deal with women? You can be a jerk. And in 14 years of marriage, I've done both things.

One builds respect, the other destroys it. One is love, the other is not. If you look at your wife and wonder why does she have to have this strange, foreign way of thinking and feeling that's so different from mine, the simple answer is, because you married a woman. So when we get irritated over these these kinds of differences, it's like what we really want is for her to have a man's mind in a woman's body, a sort of gay marriage mentally, just not physically. That's not God's design either, right?

And it should be just as undesirable. Love your wife verbally, openly, in all her differences. Tell her you love her. Tell her what a good wife she is. Tell her how much you respect her and are thankful for all the way she serves you day in and day out.

Don't assume that she knows because you told her like eight months ago. I mean if your wife chose to voice respect for you every eight months would you be like oh it does I'm still running off that eight months ago thing. Or would you think, I could use a little more. She's not that different from you in this way. Tell her, don't assume that she knows.

Tell her you love her. And if Gary Chapman is to be believed, there are at least five ways to express love to someone else. He calls them the five love languages. You can use words, spoken or written, a little note on the counter before you leave, or on the sticky note on the steering wheel. You can give her a gift, something that says, I love you, you're special, I cherish you.

You can touch her in a tender way, and not just when you're wanting something. You can serve her in acts of service, or you can spend quality time with her. That tends to be my wife's main most fluent love language is the quality time thing. If you don't know which of these means most to your wife you need to find out. Ask her.

She'll tell you. Don't assume she's the same as you, or you'll end up talking past each other, or you'll be like, man, I bought her the gift and she didn't appreciate it. Well, maybe that's not her thing. Well, everybody getting to know her. As Peter says in 1 Peter 3, live with her in an understanding way.

Cherish your differences. Finally, make it easier for your wife to respect you by taking initiative. This is where many of us, I would say myself included, have to work harder. Some of us are not so much prone to be overbearing as we are to be passive and withdrawing. Being the head means taking initiative.

It means having goals for yourself and your family and following through on them. And this is a key way of being respectful. If you don't like her pushing you, push yourself. My wife is far more likely to push me if she doesn't see me pushing myself and therefore she thinks the only way he's ever gonna move or make progress is if I push him. Unless I take him in hand and make him my project, he's not going to get better.

That doesn't work well. She's far more likely to take initiative on family devotions if she doesn't see me doing it. One area this has sometimes caused friction for between me and Tilly has been the area of health and exercise. As a full-time pastor, I tend to lead the sedentary life, and that matters more now as I go into middle age. And so here's the thing, I know she would like me to exercise more.

She doesn't nag me about it. She's not mean about it. But I know that's what she wants and I know that she knows that I know. It's an understood thing. And it's not because she wants me to look like Chris Hemsworth or Matthew McConaughey.

It's because she would like me to be able to play with my kids without getting out of breath. She would like me to not die when I'm 50 years old of a heart attack. It's a reasonable desire. It's not like she's wanting me to buy diamonds for her once a month. So when she sees me not taking initiative with myself on this, or when she sees me not following through on these things, it erodes respect.

It makes it harder for her to respect me in that. Because at the end of the day she knows that she ought not to have to be the one pushing me and I know that too. I know it too and in many cases our anger as husbands stems not so much from their nagging as from the fact that their nagging reminds us of what we know we ought to be doing and we're not doing. So make it easier for her not to push you by pushing yourself. There's a, I grew up listening to country music and there's a country song by a group named Montgomery Gentry called She Don't Tell Me Too.

And it's about this kind of thing. It's not a perfect Christian song, but it's similar to this. It starts, every now and then on my way home, I stop at a spot where the wildflowers grow, and I pick a few. She Don't Tell Me Too. I go out with my friends, and most of the night I call it a night before they do but she don't tell me to.

Sunday morning I'm in church and my back and my necktie hurt but I'm in the pew, she don't tell me to. And then the chorus says, any other woman I know would have tried to control me and it would be over. Blame it on my going my own way attitude, but all that stubbornness melts away when I wake with her head on my shoulder and I know I've got to love her until my life is through, but she don't tell me to." And so in the song there's this, on the one hand, she's not nagging him. One of the reasons he does the things he does and is supposed to do is because she's not telling him to and not nagging him about it, but one of the reasons she's not telling him to is because he's doing it. If you only go to church and sit in the pew because you know your wife wants you to, that's failure, brothers.

We go to church, we pray, we do these things because we're men before God and we know what He wants from us and while yes we have a helper to help us with these things we don't need her pushing us and telling us what to do on these things we need to get right with God ourselves and yes want to please her as well. The bridge in that song says she don't even know that she keeps me looking for the next right thing to do because she don't tell me to. Make it easier for her to respect you by taking initiative. Brothers, I'll close. We've been given a great gift.

We've been given a chance to show the world a living picture of the love and respect that exists between Christ and His church. And Christ has a personal stake in helping us do this well. He knows it's not easy. He knows we're not going to do it perfectly and he has grace to cover our failures as well as grace to power our obedience. So husbands, wives, let us all lean into His strength.

Let us turn to Him for grace and let's make marriage easier for each other. Let's pray. Now Heavenly Father, cause these words to sink down into our hearts. If I've said anything amiss, I pray that you would pluck it away. But Lord, what is true and good and beautiful and fruitful, don't let the devil pluck it away.

Water it with your Spirit and cause it to bear fruit in the lives of these husbands and wives. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.