The Influence of Godly Husbands
I was reading The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes by Nancy R. Pearcey (bestselling author of Love Thy Body and Total Truth) and she shared a stunning story that not only put God’s transformative gospel on display, but it also highlighted the power of a godly man and husband.
Nancy explains, “A godly husband takes the lead and says, like Jesus, ‘Follow me.’ If he wants a better marriage, he takes the lead in doing the emotional work and says, ‘Follow me.’ If he wants his wife to have a richer spiritual life, he deepens his own relationship with God and says, ‘Follow me.’ If he wants his children to stand strong against the temptations of the secular culture, he himself models conviction and integrity and says, ‘Follow me.’”
She cites Gary Thomas, the bestselling author of Sacred Marriage, who says a husband’s leadership means taking the initiative especially when a couple faces a difficult task: “If someone needs to get a second job, it’s me. If someone needs to speak up to my parents or in-laws about undue meddling, it’s me. If someone needs to have the painful conversation with a child about who they’re dating, it’s me. If someone needs to say ‘No’ to more requests so that there’s more time for marriage and family, it’s me.”
So what kind of message can this kind of gospel-motivated leadership send? Well, enjoy the following story and revel in the greatness of God’s gospel and the influence of living it out as God designed it to be modelled.
Liz Curtis Higgs was a radio personality who did a stint on the same station as Howard Stern, the notorious shock jock (radio host who specializes in offensive material). To give you an idea what her life was like, one day even Stern shook his head and said, “Liz, you’ve got to clean up your act!” He was referring not to her on-air show but to the risky escapades in her off-air life. As she recounts,
I found myself in Louisville, Kentucky, playing oldies at an AM station and playing dangerous games with marijuana, speed, cocaine, alcohol, and a promiscuous lifestyle. I’m one of those people who had to fall all the way down to the bottom of the pit, until I had nowhere else to look but up.
Her life began to change radically when a husband-and-wife radio team arrived in town to do the morning show at her station. For the first time, Liz experienced genuine Christian friendship. “Simply put, they loved me with a love so compelling that I was powerless to resist it.”
Just four months after the day they met, Liz walked into the church where the couple attended—the first time she had stepped into a church building as an adult. Ironically, that morning the Scripture reading was, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands.” Perfect for a woman who described herself as a card-carrying feminist, right? Liz sat there thinking, "Yup, just the kind of thing I expected at a joint like this: "Get married. Get pregnant. Be a happy little obedient wife." But then the minister read the second part of the passage—the part commanding husbands to sacrifice for their wives as Christ sacrificed himself for his bride and died for her on the cross. It hit Liz: Who is asked to die and surrender and sacrifice? Not the woman—the man. She leaned over to her friend and said with a wry smile, “If I ever met a man willing to die for me, I would marry him in a heartbeat.”
“Lizzie,” her friend whispered, “a man has already died for you.”
That was the crucial turning point. As Liz recounts, “I knew that very day that this was what I’d been looking for all my life—this heavenly love, this gracious forgiveness.”
Today Liz is the author of multiple Christian books, including her bestselling Bad Girls of the Bible, and she is invited to speak all around the country. Hers may be the only conversion in history sparked by the Bible’s instructions to husbands. A husband’s love for his wife is meant to be so beautiful that it draws people to Christ himself. (Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes pp. 66–67. Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)
OK guys, let’s step it up. Our Lord modeled the standard and called us to live it out. Let’s love our wives like Christ loved His church!
Pastor Jeff
“ The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be. God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone. God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.”