Open Letter to Husbands
_____,
My concern is that you might be more interested in saving your marriage than you are being renewed in your experience of Christ (which is your most critical need). Saving your marriage is a good goal, but it begins with you learning how to be renewed in your experience of Christ. Two unhealthy, unhappy persons cannot have a healthy, happy marriage.
The evidence that a husband is experiencing Christ will be his
- commitment to his own health,
- unconditional love and care for his wife,
- commitment to be an advocate for her health and happiness needs,
- kindness and gentleness in his interaction with her,
- love and care for her children,
- willingness to set her free, to stop trying to manipulate, restrict, or control her - including her
- finances,
- purchases,
- where she wants to live,
- travel or movement to come and go,
- etc.
You are her advisor and advocate but not her boss. You have no authority over her life except what she freely chooses to give you. You will make your wife miserable and lose her if you try to control her, but you can gain her appreciation and respect if you set her free. Evil attempts to control. Christ sets us free.
As an assignment, I recommend that, for at least the next 6 months, you take extended time daily to read 1 Corinthians 13, John 3:16-21; John 15:1-8, and Ephesians 5:22-33. (These passages are on our website.)
Don/GraceRenewal
_____,
I don’t know how well your wife is doing at the moment with you being back in the home. If she is okay and remains okay, that’s fine, but if you have pushed through the door without her consent, not giving much thought to her needs or to the recommendations I have suggested to you, while thinking everything will turn out okay anyway, then my counseling to you is not accomplishing the goal I have for couples with broken marriages - in which case you might benefit from finding different counseling to help you survive the unhappiness in your relationship.
Much care for you,
Don
_______,
1) My support for you is for you to confess that,
- when you married _______, you did not understand your Scriptural role and responsibility as a husband (Neither did I when I first married!), that
- the failure in your marriage is primarily your failure, also her parents, her first husband, and perhaps others, that
- it is not primarily her failure, and that
- it is not God’s failure because he has provided
- Christ to you, through your experience of him, to be the support you need so that you can be competent as a husband, and he has also provided you
- a counselor to support you for being increased in your growth to a fuller measure of Christ each day (which is your greatest need).
2) I am not a referee to help you and ______ learn how to get along. (That's a different kind of counseling.)
3) Before I schedule you again you will need to
- read and reread and agree with the information I gave to you on your first visit, especially “Grace Concepts That Guide our Marriage Counseling,”
- agree to live secluded from _______ for an extended period of time until she opens the door to you, which I hope she will not do until she is confident that God has made you competent for the ministry of a husband - which means you
- stop identifying her as the problem,
- begin loving her unconditionally regardless of what she says or does, and
- stop attempting to control her.
4) I encourage you to enroll in our
- Online Institute for Studies in Grace Concepts or in our
- Weekly Grace Concepts class.
Much care and concern for you,
Don
