Chapter 13

God Says: Be Worthy of Respect

WHAT KIND OF woman does God want you to be? Outspoken and at the same time supportive, the woman who offers her husband the truth and love makes for an unbeatable combination. Examine the following examples and you’ll get a clearer picture of what God is looking for in your life.

Now, That’s a Woman!

• Sarah, who was so far past conventional childbearing age it wasn’t even funny, trusted God to give her a child. She assertively spoke her mind with her husband, Abraham, and remained at Abraham’s side through many trials and painful circumstances.

• Miriam was tough enough to speak directly to Pharaoh’s daughter and offer to get a nurse for her baby brother, Moses. That nurse was her—and Moses’s—mother. Miriam helped lead Israel as a key aide to Moses.

• Rahab hid the Israelite spies, right under the noses of the Jericho authorities. Because of her faith in God and desire to protect her family, she risked everything.

• Abigail was a strong, intelligent woman who was married to the worthless, evil Nabal. She prevented the slaughter of her household by going behind her husband’s back to supply provisions to David and his men. With clear, persuasive words, she convinced David to back away from violence. She not only helped God’s man, but she also had the guts to tell Nabal what she had done.

• Deborah ruled Israel with wisdom, strength, and decisive action. She did not hesitate to tell her chief general, Barak, what she thought of his weak response to God’s battle command. She went to war and brought peace to Israel for forty years.

• Ruth endured the loss of her husband and— refusing to stay in Moab—remained loyal to her mother-in-law, Naomi, and to God.

• Esther risked her life to stand against evil and save her people, the Jews. It wasn’t her great beauty that defined her, but her character and her courage.

• Mary, the mother of Jesus, was caught in a crisis situation that was not her fault. Squeezed by tremendous pain and stress, she did the right thing. She did what God asked her to do and gave birth to the Savior and raised Him.

• Mary Magdalene loved Jesus with her whole heart. She didn’t let her past sins or the criticism of others stop her from serving her Lord faithfully.

• Priscilla, the excellent wife of Aquila, was a prominent member of the early church and worked alongside the apostle Paul making tents. She also risked her life for Paul. And along with Aquila she confronted the orator, Apollos, and corrected his teaching.

Wow! These women were amazing, weren’t they? Strong. Courageous. Assertive. Dignified. Women of character. Women of influence. Women of action. Women who were warriors in God’s army. Women who spoke the truth without fear and without apology. Women who were willing to take a stand for themselves and for their God.

As I reviewed their stories in the Bible, it struck me that these dynamic women shared one essential quality: respect. They earned the respect of everyone who knew them, particularly the men in their lives. Such respect gave them the ability to influence others in positive, godly ways.

Likewise God wants you to have the kind of respect these biblical women possessed. When you have respect, you will have what it takes to implement my Husband Transformation Strategy. You will get your husband’s attention and keep it, impact his life, and motivate him to change. And stay changed.

Be a 1 Timothy 3:11 Wife

First Timothy puts into words what these biblical heroines had and what God wants you to have:

In the same way, their wives are to be women worthy of respect.

—1 TIMOTHY 3:11, NIV

In this verse Paul was speaking to the wives of church leaders. Just as these wives needed respect to serve effectively in the local church, so all wives need respect to serve effectively in their marriages. Let’s look at some practical ways you can be a wife worthy of respect.

Confront an Abusive Husband

Do not ever tolerate abuse from your husband. Ever. To allow yourself to be treated with such lack of respect is dangerous to you and your husband. You suffer a loss of dignity and emotional trauma. You will feel depressed, worthless, and be unable to carry out your biblical role in the home. By submitting to abuse, you are failing to give your husband the opportunity to stop the abusive behavior.

It is not God’s will for you to allow behavior that harms you, your husband, your relationship, and your children. I recommend—and God requires—a strong, tough-love response to abuse. Abuse is sin and therefore must be confronted head-on the Matthew 18 way:

If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

—MATTHEW 18:15–17

If your husband has physically abused you in any way, such as hitting, kicking, or shoving, take your kids and leave the house— immediately. Call the police and take out a restraining order against him. Press charges of domestic violence and force him to face the full extent of the legal consequences of his actions. While I recognize this is easier said than done (especially if you fear for your life), believe me, you won’t break the pattern of violence any other way. Staying with a man who has been physically violent is not only enabling him, but it is also dangerous.

If he is involved in an affair and refuses to stop when you confront him, get him out of the home. Kick him out! With the help of a few friends, pack up all his clothes and personal items in garbage bags. Call him at work and say, “Until you stop your affair, confess, repent, and prove real change, I don’t want you living in this home. I have packed all your stuff; it’s sitting in the driveway. Come and pick it up. You’d better hurry—it looks like rain.”

Maybe your husband is psychologically abusing you. Are you living with an alcoholic? A man addicted to drugs? A man who flies into rages and screams at you and the kids? A man who regularly criticizes your weight, housekeeping, mothering skills, or other areas of your life? Shun this kind of a man. Don’t talk to him. Don’t have sex with him. Don’t do his laundry, cook for him, or run errands for him.

You do not submit to sin and enable it. As God makes clear in Matthew 18:15–17, you are to resist sin. Confront it, fight it, and pull away from it. These biblical actions will protect you and your children. God doesn’t want you to be destroyed by your husband’s sin. In addition, your “tough love” may get his attention and motivate him to come to God and change

While God’s goal is always restoration of the marital relationship, that can happen only if he changes. And as I have said throughout this book, he won’t change unless he has to. When he realizes he has lost you, maybe he will break and do whatever it takes to win you back. If you do nothing, your husband won’t suddenly wake up one day and change. You know what he will do? He will keep on abusing you until there is nothing left of you, the children, or the relationship.

Four Steps to Correction

Are you living with an abusive husband? If so, you need to take four steps:

1. Stand up and demand to be treated with respect.

If you are used to passivity, this may take a while. Get angry with a righteous anger (Eph. 4:26; Eccles. 3:5, 8) and stay angry until you have taken these four steps. It’s amazing to me what some wives put up with from their husbands. I am saying—and I fervently believe God is saying—that you don’t have to put up with it any more.

2. Pull back from the man emotionally and physically.

Stay back until he genuinely changes. Forget his promises. He has promised to change a million times and always returned to his sin, hasn’t he? This time require consistent action over time. This time require Christian counseling and serious spiritual growth.

3. Follow the Matthew 18:15–17 steps.

Confront him one on one, then go back with one or two witnesses and confront him again. Next go to the leaders of your church and ask them to do an intervention. Finally, if he still refuses to repent and begin a program of change, shun him in your home. Ignore him and act as if he doesn’t exist. If shunning doesn’t work, then make plans to physically separate.

4. Reach out and get the support of family and friends.

You can’t do this alone. It is too tough. Tell the secret. Tell your support team exactly what your husband is doing. When your supporters know, you get help and it will put pressure on the abuser. (For a complete, detailed description of how to apply Matthew 18:15–17 to a sinning spouse, read my book What to Do When Your Spouse Says, I Don’t Love You Anymore.)

Steps to Respect

Even if your husband is just a basic intimacy avoider and not guilty of abuse, it is still important to be worthy of respect. You need to command respect as a wife. Without your husband’s respect he may not abuse you, but he will mistreat you. He won’t be attentive or open up and talk personally with you. He won’t meet your needs. He won’t love you the way you want and need to be loved.

When respect goes down, love deteriorates. If you behave like a doormat, the finest man in the world will wipe his feet on you. The crazy part is, he won’t even know he is doing it! It is human nature!

Here are three ways to earn the respect of a nonabusive but still an IA husband:

Love yourself

God considers it important that you love yourself (Matt. 22:39). Base this love on God’s love for you and a confidence founded in Him (2 Cor. 3:4–5). However, that can be difficult. There is an epidemic of poor self-esteem among American women. One reason is the nonstop cultural attack on women’s self-image. If you are not an unbelievably thin glamour queen who juggles an amazing career with husband and kids with ease, society says you don’t measure up; you are a failure. Wrong! The truth is, culture sets up a false, unrealistic standard. No woman, anywhere, can be that good. (Even the Proverbs 31 wife had her bad days.)

Another deeper reason for women’s poor self-esteem is a poor relationship with their fathers. I see so many ladies in therapy struggling with a negative self-image. Ninety percent of these females have unresolved issues with their fathers. Ninety percent! That is the bad news. The good news is that 100 percent get better when they face the truth about the pain related to their father problems and work through them.

To learn how to love yourself, you first need to develop a close relationship with God and one other person. God gives you the power to change. A close female friend gives you human support, love, and accountability. Your relationship with God may be limited in some ways because your issues with your human father will transfer to your heavenly Father. Still, you can create a solid bond with God as you work—with His help—to heal from the pain your father caused.

With God and your close friend on your team (and, if necessary, a Christian therapist), you need to look honestly at the past. In fact, you will do more than look. You will relive your pain, losses, and what happened between you and your father. It will hurt—a lot. But it’s also going to heal you. I will describe this process in more detail in chapter 15.

Get a life

To put it bluntly, every wife needs a life outside of her husband and family. While your husband and children are your priority, they are not everything! Go out and get a life. You are not just a wife or mother. You are a person! God has some valuable things for you to do outside your home.

In the first part of many marriages (including mine), the husband’s career is the focus. It is all about him and how well he can do in his occupation. Your job is to support him, raise your children, and keep the home base healthy. This is normal and OK. The marriage and family need a solid financial and emotional foundation. However, in your thirties and forties, this approach needs to change.

Now, wives, it is your turn. You are still a good wife and mom, but you should start developing your own personal life. Build a deeper relationship with God. Use your spiritual gifts to serve in the local church. Cultivate a best friend of the same sex. Pursue a hobby or interest that you enjoy. This activity is yours and yours alone. Your husband may not like the interest you’ve chosen. Whatever! Remind him it’s not about him. You may get involved at a nonprofit agency or parachurch group as a volunteer. You may go back to school. You may go out into the workplace and get a part- or full-time job.

My Sandy, who has passed fifty (she will kill me when she finds out I have written down her age), has spent the last ten years creating a life of her own. With all the kids finally in school, she has had the time to think of herself and do things just for her. I will never forget the day almost ten years ago when we dropped off our youngest child, William, for his first day at kindergarten. After shouting, screaming, and dancing around the parking lot for fifteen minutes, Sandy said to me, “Honey, you have no idea how happy I am right now. I love our kids, but I need a life. So look out, world, here I come.” I said, “Go ahead, baby, you’ve earned it.”

Sandy has built some fantastic friendships with several women in our church. They have breakfast together, walk in the mornings, talk on the phone, and go to the mall and movies together. Sandy also leads the middle school Sunday school class at our church. She loves serving as a camp counselor several weekends a year and two weeks in the summer. She sews up a storm. She cares for families who have special needs and is involved in evangelism. Sandy is still a terrific wife and mom, but she is also a healthy, developing individual.

Speak your mind

As I have already mentioned in detail earlier in this book, you need to always tell your husband the truth. You will do it in love (Eph. 4:15), but you will do it. Whenever your husband—whether he means to or not—treats you with a lack of respect, verbally point it out. If you are angry, hurt, offended, or insulted, go to him and tell him. Express the truth in the one-way communication style I described in chapter 10. Be brief. One or two sentences will get the job done.

The balance of respect is critical to your marriage. Telling your husband every time he crosses the line of respect will keep your system clean and you healthy. It will keep you from resenting him. Most importantly it will cause him to respect you. When he respects you, he will love you and treat you well. A man can truly love a woman he respects. She is his equal. She is a challenge. She has a powerful influence in his life. She can change him.