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Awhile back I did two posts that were inspired by the book Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll. They were entitled 8 Ways We Are Selfish Lovers and 4 Tips on How To Be A Servant Lover. I was thumbing through the book again when a chapter caught my attention. Chapter 4: The Respectful Wife. Seeing how I believe respect is one of the biggest things that make marriages work I started reading through this section of the book to refresh myself on what the Driscoll’s had to say about it.
They first say we must know what respect means. Well that makes sense! On page 66 it states:
To respect is “to notice, regard, honor, prefer, defer to, encourage, love and admire.”
That makes sense to me! Now how do we go about noticing, honoring, encouraging and loving our husbands with our whole body? There are three ways. This includes having: heads of respect, hearts of respect and hands of respect.
Heads of Respect: This is where respect starts. In our mind and our thoughts. This is also where disrespect can start taking place. What we have in our head starts to play out in our hearts and then in our words and actions. It is crucial that we take control of our thoughts regarding our husband for this reason. I believe we can’t necessarily control what enters our mind, but we can control what we entertain there. If a negative thought comes into our mind about our man we must dismiss it and replace it with a positive thought. We control what thoughts we focus on. To start respecting our lover we must have our heads focusing on the good, the positive, and the affirming things!
Hearts of Respect: If our hearts are respecting our husbands our actions and words will then follow. We can check if our heart is full of respect by the way we respond to our man, how we talk about him in public and evaluating if we tear him down or pick him up. It is important for us to remember we do not change our husbands, but instead a he must change himself. Having a heart of respect includes remembering that we can’t change them, but instead praying for them to be molded into who God has designed them to be.
Hands of Respect: If we have heads and hearts of respect it will be much easier to have hands of respect. God made woman to be man’s helper and that we should do respectfully as well. With our hands we can provide for our husband physical things like cooking, cleaning, and intimacy. But also we are to use our hands to pray for our lover and delve into the Bible.
I love how this section in the book ends with using our hands for prayer and Bible study. To me that puts us right back at the beginning. When we are in the word and praying we are more likely to have heads of respect. Which we know then leads to hearts of respect and hands of respect. It all goes together! So if we are wanting to change how we respect our husbands I believe prayer and the Bible are a great place to start!
What is a way you show respect to your husband?
Until Next Time- Truly Love,
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