Part II: It’s An Honor To Give Honor

Part II of the series Discovering Your Husband As Your Greatest Ally

Part I: Becoming Your Husband’s Advocate (READ FIRST)

In part one of this series we learned about becoming a safe place for our husband to grow by aligning ourselves with Jesus as our mate’s advocate. It is the foundation that must be laid before our spouse can begin to trust us to be on his team. It takes us out of the way of what God wants to do in our husband’s life and removes our burden to be his “holy spirit”.

And change begins … with us first.

Part II: It’s An Honor To Give Honor

Regardless of what men say, I think we women are pretty predictable. I realize I’m about to spout off several generalizations, but it’s my blog so I get to say what I want.

Little girls want to grow up, get married, and have babies. We dream of our wedding day. We all have expectations of what married family life will look like. We marry boys who have not given it much thought, and now we get to tell them what we expect. And when they don’t get it, we push harder until we either rule as king of the home, or we continue a daily battle with our spouse for the position.

When we girls get together, the conversation will inevitably begin with our pregnancy and birthing stories. We won’t agree on our birthing methods, but we will compete for the “hardest possible labor” prize. Once a winner has emerged, the rest of us will concede by moving on to a new competition.

We will share stories of dirty socks left on the floor, the husband who works too much, the one who has time management challenges and can’t seem to make it home on time. We will all agree that the man we chose for ourselves is severely flawed and seem to laugh at our own misfortune. One story will be told after the other, and each time we tell our own, we will try to outdo all the others.

In the presence of our friends, sometimes our children and often in front of our spouse, we begin to strip our husband naked with our words. We expose his weaknesses and emasculate him until we have won the competition. The prize we are awarded is a man who, realizing he can never please the woman he married, gives up trying. He loses his drive and can’t seem to get ahead anymore. He is afraid to take a chance, so he never gets the big promotion. He stops using his gifts and stops growing. He stops reaching out because who is there to talk to now that all of his friends know what a failure he is?

We have a great laugh at our husband’s expense, but we got so much more because our words lingered in his ear until they produced a harvest of weeds, choking out the future of our marriage and successes of our family. The words have suffocated the affections he once had, and we can’t stop wondering when he lost that look he use to get in his eye when we walked into the room. But we won.

“The wise woman builds her house but the foolish one tears it down with her own hands.” Proverbs 14:1

Here’s how God showed me how to build my house.

If Jesus, the son of God, couldn’t do great things in his own hometown, saying “A prophet has no honor in his hometown,” then our husband, who doesn’t happen to also be God, won’t be able to do great things in his home without HONOR either. But what could he do with a little (or a lot) of honor?

I know that honor is said to be man’s greatest need, but I had to ask myself, “ What the heck is honor anyway?! And how do I give it to my husband?”

I had been on this amazing ride with Jesus for a while prior to my pursuit to win back my husband’s passion for the Lord and for me. So when I asked the Lord about honor, He was able to show me how my relationship with Him had been a demonstration of what honor looks like.

Everyday I enjoyed being in a relationship with Jesus. Everyday I asked Him about my day before it began. I had grown to trust Him so completely that there wasn’t anything that I didn’t ask Him about. And I knew that there wasn’t anything that He would ask me to do that I would regret doing. I saw His ways as higher than my ways and I esteemed Him by listening to Him and [gasp] by obeying.

Ephesians 5:21, “ And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.”

This is the part where we all start to freak out. We think of the mean, controlling, chauvinistic men who abuse weak women, and we don’t want to be weak. We know we are smart. God gave us a good brain to use, and we don’t need to answer to some man, right?

There I go making generalizations again. But before you click back to your Facebook page, at least hear me out. Let me tell you how this amazing, offensive way of the Bible has brought me everything my heart had ever hoped for in my marriage. By the end, you may even think it’s worth reposting.

I don’t think I would have been able to honor my husband in the way God was calling me to if I had not already grown to trust my Lord with such assurance.

I had a big decision to make. It was weighing heavy on me, and I didn’t really believe that Travis could help me make it, but I trusted that if I obeyed God in submitting to my husband, He would cover me even if Travis was wrong.

I knew Travis wasn’t used to me listening to him, so it made it easy for him to spout out from emotion his opinions. Slightly angry, I pointed my finger at his face and said, “I want you to know that I am going to be asking your advice on some things and you had BETTER hear from God before you answer because I am actually going to listen!!”

I don’t remember him saying anything, just that his jaw dropped a little. There were no words that could be spoken. I’m not even sure if he believed me, but soon he would see a complete turn around.

It was so humbling submitting my life to him, and then submitting my will to God’s will and honoring Travis’s ways above my own ideas. Secretly, I was setting out to prove God wrong. He would soon see that this would NEVER work! OK, I obviously had some more growth that needed to happen in the area of trusting God. I was driven in the beginning by this stubborn resolve that I was going to do exactly what God and Trav told me to do until everything was a mess. Then they would have to agree that everything was much better when I did things my own way.

I discovered that God is more stubborn than me.

He kept bringing about such good fruit in my life every time! I began to see God’s protection literally shielding me from dangers. I saw how many of my relationships were realigned. I saw how when I listened and followed my husband’s advice, I was less stressed out trying to do things I wasn’t meant to be doing. He asked me to lay some big responsibilities down so that I could focus on the things that would make my own dreams come true.

He started caring about my dreams coming true! He has been and continues to be my biggest supporter, honest encourager, and even acts as my personal agent at times. He believes in me more than I believe in myself and pushes me past my limits all the time.

I have seen how my husband’s shoulders broadened to protect me. His heart has turned towards me. And his eyes now light up again when he sees me. I don’t feel invisible to him anymore now that I can clearly see he is passionate for me.

He esteems me highly. It’s what I had wanted all along, but couldn’t get him to see in me what there was to prize. He started inviting me into his world and sharing his heart with me. Even now he asks me what I think and agrees with me. The way he listens and repeats the things I say to him like it is treasure honors me and makes me feel like the most special woman in the world.

1 Peter 5:6, “So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor.”

So many women I know are scared to enter into the kind of relationship with her husband where he is a bigger part of her decision-making process. They are afraid of what he will say. They aren’t confident that he really believes in them or truly understands what they need. But, generally speaking again, they deeply desire to know him as their greatest ally.

I can promise you that the perspective your husband will offer you is going to be very different than what your girlfriends are going to tell you. I can promise you that he will say things that stretch you and sometimes even hurt a little because the truth hurts sometimes, but it frees us.

I can promise you that opening yourself up in such a vulnerable way to your spouse is going to be one of the hardest things you have ever done. And I can promise you that if you choose to submit yourself to him as unto the Lord, you will see your husband’s heart flourish with passion for you, for the Lord, and with hope for the things he can accomplish.

You may be like I was when the Lord first asked me to honor my husband in submission. You may have to trust that if the Lord asks you to do something, He is going to cover you and come through for you when you obey God. And even in my stubbornness to prove that this was a mistake, I am thankful that it was God’s pleasure to prove me wrong. He was delighted to show me that His ways are higher than mine and that in spite of my pride, I was still able to see the blessing of the Lord on my marriage because I gave it my best shot, swallowed my pride, and honored my husband anyway.

Honor bestows honor. Let change begin with you.