How to love your wife: what you’re always teaching your kids.

How to love your wife is an important topic. When we ask dads, “What’s the biggest challenge facing you right now?” We often get marital struggles that pop up. We hear things like:

• “Facing the reality that I’m not trying to save my failing 25 year marriage, not setting an example for my 3 sons, not treating my wife with the respect she deserves and needs; not respecting myself, my health…spiritually and physically.”
• “Communication as a couple.”
• “How to show my kids that I respect their mother.”

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” —Genesis 2:24

Brad Rhoads of Grace Marriage is our guest interview over at Father On Purpose. Hopefully, over the next few weeks, you’ll get to know this ministry. If your church needs marriage help and resources, Grace Marriage is the ministry for you. Over the next few weeks, we’ll talk about where fatherhood and marriage connect. What follows is some of the tidbits from Kent’s interview with Brad pulled out for to help you this week with how to love your wife.

How to love your wife: Don’t separate being a godly father and husband.

Sometimes the temptation is to separate being a godly father and being a godly husband.

Brad says,

“It’s impossible to separate the two. A primary role of a father is to model how to do life. If you’re not modeling how to love a woman well, if you’re not modeling how to be a godly husband, if you’re not modeling how to do romance and creativity and all of these things, you’re doing your son a disservice because you’re not showing him how to do life. We typically repeat what we see.”

How to love your wife: model marriage to your kids.

This is so simple—yet profound: We learn life by what we watch our parents do. Sons will likely love their future wife like you’re loving yours. I don’t think anyone reading this would disagree? But, do we live like this? Do we model this?

For dads of daughters, we’re teaching our daughters what to look for in marriage. Brad continues,

“You should want to love your wife like you hope someone treats your daughter someday. Don’t do anything toward your wife you would not want someone to do toward your daughter. She will hold her husband to the standard of how you treat their mom. Reality is, you’re setting up their future based on the atmosphere of the marriage you set now with your wife.”

How to love your wife: Be like Jesus.

You can’t separate being a husband and father because being a father is showing your son how to do life. We do it all the time. But that doesn’t make it right. We separate husbandry and fathering, our work-life from fathering, our work-life from being a husband, we try to segment things so much in our lives. These things simply aren’t segment-able. It doesn’t work.

I’m grateful Brad reminds us dads what Scripture says, “Whatever you do in word or deed do it in the name of the lord Jesus christ”. Brad says, “Either you’re abiding in Him and producing fruit of Galatians 5 of love, peace, patience, or you’re not.” Man, truth hurts huh? It takes growing closer to the Father, communing with Jesus, being at peace—so when you’re with your wife, she feels nourished by the love of Jesus. She’s brought peace and patience when she’s around you because you have Christ in you.

Wow, thanks for stepping on our toes, Brad! Seriously, we need to hear this. Maybe you don’t have a troubled marriage. But, are we providing that life-giving presence to our wives? What about at work? With our kids? If we are, people have the benefit of having an encounter with Jesus when they connect with you.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” —Genesis 2:24

You can’t rip flesh apart without doing damage. The more secure in your marriage relationship, the more lively, the more vibrant, the more secure it is—the more secure your kids are going to be. If there’s an insecurity in husband and wife, you’re not getting along, you’re not spending a lot of time together, it’s stagnant and cold—it does something to the inside of a kid you don’t even realize. When you’re having a blast together and you have an amazing atmosphere—it does something to your kid you don’t realize on the positive side. We have to make sure our kids see that our marriage relationship is primary and we can’t love our kids well without loving our wives well.

Now, there’s guys who are divorced and single for various reasons. Don’t tune out today or over the next few weeks. God is in the business of redeeming everything. We’ll dive into more in the coming weeks. But be encourage dads—to lead in your marriage. It’ll change everything.