Wife, You Have Influence

 

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.