Wives Must

Respect!!!

Everyone feels they deserve it. I would have to say I might have known a few people in my life that didn’t deserve any kind of respect at all.

But there is one type of respect that is commanded,

However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife MUST respect her husband.” Ephesians 5:33

So there we have it in black & white God tells us wives we MUST respect our husbands. He doesn’t say if our husband deserves it or if we feel like it that day. God says the wife MUST respect her husband.

I love when God gives us clear commands. There is no question of who He is talking to or of what the wife should do.

This is the Completing Him challenge for the week Respect your husband.

I have spent the last few days (umm…since this post is going up about 4 days late) talking with Jason about respect. And it is amazing how God works. On Tuesday night during our devotional reading it was about wives respecting their husbands. Funny how things seem to work out that way.  But Jason said for the most part he feels respected by me. Of course there are those times of being argumentative and sometimes I do have a problem with wanting to be right, or even an occasional eye roll or really loud sigh. But this week I have really tried to catch myself before doing these things (after all wasn’t it last week that our challenge was to let our husbands lead).

Hearing Jason say that almost always he feels respected by me was a great feeling. And when you respect your husband the natural flow is for him to show you love. That is just how men and women work. The husband wants respect and the wife wants love. I am sure this has something to do with the way Ephesians 5:33 is written with God commanding the husband to love his wife and the wife MUST respect her husband.

If we would all just follow this nice map God has laid out for us there would be a constant flowing happy circle of love & respect (if only it seemed so easy all the time).

I can’t believe next week is the final week in this Completing Him marriage challenge. I am so going to miss this. It has really sparked some great conversations between Jason & me.

If you would like more information about respecting your husband (even one with questionable behavior) Courtney at Women Living Well wrote a great post about it here. And there is also a wonderful book called Love & Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs.