Marriage
17
"What is it you want, Mary? What
do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word, and I'll throw a lasso
around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the
moon, Mary."
Who does not love It’s A Wonderful
Life? Certainly, none of my readers would be so curmudgeonly. I am quite
sure that each of you will sit down on Christmas Day in your slippers with your
hot cocoa and watch it together as a family. This is the way. But I digress…
When a man loves a woman, there is not
much he will not do for her.
You
can see this clearly and often in Scripture on the negative side. In the Garden
of Eden, at the dawn of time, Eve was deceived by the devil, but Adam was not. (I
Timothy 2.14) Adam disobeyed God knowingly and willfully. Why? The only
argument that makes sense to me is that he did not want Eve to face the
consequences alone. Moving forward a few millennia, we find a couple so
godless, Ahab and Jezebel, that I have never met anyone with either name. Yet,
who was the moving force behind their evil? But there was none like unto
Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom
Jezebel his wife stirred up. (I Kings 21.25) Fast forward again to the time
of Christ, and we see the beheading of a man Jesus said was equal to the
greatest man ever to live, John the Baptist. (Matthew 11.11) What or who
caused the death of this peerless prophet? A woman, Herodias. She urged her
husband to imprison him. (Matthew 14.3) She pimped her own daughter out
to her husband to motivate him to cut off John's head. (Matthew 14.8)
The
point of the previous paragraph is not that women are evil. It is that women
have an inherent ability to move a man in the direction they want him to go.
Why did Jacob serve Laban for so long? Israel served for a wife, and for a
wife he kept sheep. (Hosea 12.12) What motivated the Old Testament slave to
willingly remain in slavery when he could have been set free? And if the
servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will
not go out free. (Exodus 21.5) A man’s love for a good woman is at the
heart of each of these scriptural illustrations as well.
There
is an old saying, "Man is the head, but woman is the neck that turns the
head."
"Sure,
Pastor Brennan. Dream on. I've been trying to change my husband for nigh on
twenty years now. It can't be done."
That
is because you are trying to change him. Men resist being pushed around by a
woman. Instinctively, when a woman overtly seeks to change them, the man sees
it as a threat to his masculinity. Out of pure cussed orneriness, he will
sometimes even move in the opposite direction. Solomon, who knew a thing or two
about a woman's influence said, The contentions of a wife are a continual
dropping. (Proverbs 19.13) Nagging him is not going to move him. It will
only annoy him and build in him an increasing resistance to what you are trying
to get him to do and be.
"Then
explain it to me. You're telling me I have great influence over my husband with
one breath and in the next breath telling me my man will grow more and more
resistant."
The
latter is true if he feels threatened, but the former is true if he feels love
for you. When you as a wife concentrate on your primary responsibilities – to
reverence and submit – your husband responds with his primary responsibility –
love. God designed marriage this way. Each minister to the other and, in turn,
produces what the other needs. Once that love is flowing from him to you, he
will do just about anything for you. Not because you hassled him into it but
because he wants to. Your influence is born out of his love. Up to and
including lassoing the moon.
If
you, as a wife, will dedicate yourself to your primary biblical
responsibilities, you will hold his heart in the palm of your hand. For the
love of all that is holy, do not waste that.
Use
it wisely.
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