"So that no one will malign the word of God!"

Does your husband feel confident you love him? Does your husband feel free to always be himself around you both on good days and bad days? Does he feel inspired by you; does he feel relaxed around you?  Or, does he feel like he is always failing, always trying to keep up to impress you and always trying to find ways to make you happy? Questions that a wife should care enough to ask herself of a regular basis.

 To look at myself in the mirror and answer these questions honestly I know many times I fail. There are so many times I am sure that my actions towards my husband do not always show him love, they are not always kind and uplifting or encouraging. Many times I find myself degrading him, telling him what he did wrong and focusing on the things that I wish he would do better.  I say that I am just trying to help him become a better person. But in reality I just need to love him where he is and let God work his way into my husband’s heart. God has a nice way of convincing people where they need to grow and improve on their own, he doesn’t really need our help.

When reading through second Timothy this morning I got stuck on the following verse; 3-5 “likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to too much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.” This last part really stuck out to me. Even though I don’t have a ton of older women in my life encouraging me on a daily basis to be this way I still know that I need to be this way towards my husband and even my children. 

The goal and purpose of acting this way is actually at the end of the phrase, “so that no one will malign the word of God.”  Yah I had to look up malign just to make sure I understood the full meaning of this phrase.  Here are some other terms that came up when I googled the word; evil in nature, slander, defame.  So the meaning here is that we are to love our husbands so that those around us, including our children and husbands, will see Christ in a good and loving light from our actions.  That our actions and love and subjection to our husbands be honoring and glorifying to Christ so that it will not give those around us who do not know Christ a reason to slander our God or bad mouth him in anyway.

How cool is that! If we as Christian women constantly loved our husbands, stood beside them and were truly subject to them, showed much more self control than most of us do, were truly kind always, we would be awesome lights for Christ!  We are to start by loving our husbands whole heartedly. We are to love them even with the flaws we see in them, be submissive and care for them and our children.  Talk about a pretty easy mission for reaching others for Christ. To start with our actions towards our husbands to encourage them, lift them up, and pray for them daily without cutting them down and trying to do God’s job.  We are too be building them up to affirm them for who they are in Christ so that they know that just as much as we love them for who they are all the time, so does God.  Our pure love for our husbands comes only from the one who first loved us, but we must learn to love them with the same kind of love Christ has shown us!

Let's love our husbands with God's love so that we leave no room open to let others in this world slander our God!