Episode 1. Women Need to Feel Cherished
Men – have you ever noticed how your wife wants to describe her day in minute detail? And women. Have you ever noticed how men talk in dot points and executive summaries? Let’s see how that one …
Men – have you ever noticed how your wife wants to describe her day in minute detail? And women. Have you ever noticed how men talk in dot points and executive summaries? Let’s see how that one profound difference can be a blessing and not a curse.
The word cherish is an interesting word. Often you’ll hear people talking about cherished memories, perhaps from their childhood or the early years of their marriage but let me ask you this, how often do you hear a husband talking about how much he cherishes his wife? Huh?
Husbands one of the things our wives need more than anything else is to feel cherished. You remember over these last few weeks on the program we’ve been chatting about how to have a fantastic marriage which is what every marriage should be but most marriages aren’t.
I got the inspiration for this series from a great book that I’ve been reading called Kiss Me Like You Mean It by Dr David Clarke, really worth a read. It’s a book that’s made me laugh, it’s a book that’s confronted me and made me think and it’s a book that’s made me change some of the things that I do in our marriage, Jacqui’s and mine.
So if you’re a husband how much do you cherish your wife? Most of us blokes are a bit, well you know, we’re more rough and tumble than our wives, a bit harder, we Australians would call it ‘blokey’. And so maybe we don’t even know what this word cherish means, so what does it mean?
Here’s what my dictionary tells me:
To hold someone or something dear, to protect and care for someone lovingly, to keep hope and ambition in our minds.
So according to that definition, men how much do you cherish your wives? It’s easy in a busy life to become pretty transactional in our marriages. It’s about going to work and bringing up the children and dealing with a million mundane details that seem oh so important in keeping it all ticking over.
It’s easy to one day wake up and wonder, ‘What happened to the passion in our marriage? What happened to the wonder and the joy and the fun in our marriage?’ Which are the sorts of things we’ve been chatting about these last few weeks on the program. If you missed any of those messages we’ll let you know a little bit later how you can catch them up.
And in all that mundaneness we husbands find it particularly easy to forget to cherish our wives. To forget to hold them dear, to protect them and to care for them lovingly, to hope in them and to hope for them and for the future of our relationship of our marriage.
Instead we roll over the top of them and crush their feelings. We forget to listen to them, to hear their anxieties and their pains, to feel their pain, to hold them and to love them unconditionally. Any of this sounding just a bit too familiar? Just a bit too close to the bone?
I want to share with you today some wisdom from the Bible about husbands cherishing their wives. Have a listen to this, 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 7:
Husbands in the same way show consideration for your wife in your lives together, paying honour to the woman as the weaker vessel since they too are also heirs of the gracious gift of life so that nothing may hinder your prayers.
Now remember this was written a couple of thousand years ago in a time and place that women, pretty much, had no legal rights. They couldn’t own land or property, only men inherited things not women. Women at this point of time were very much second class citizens and they were totally dependant on men, on their fathers or their brothers and then their husbands for a home, for food and for everything. That’s just the way it was back then.
And understanding that context makes God’s Word here about the way husbands regard their wives even more poignant, even more powerful. Husbands, sure you’re the one with all the money, you’re the one with the job, with the power, with the legal rights, that’s what it’s saying, so in all of that show consideration for your wives.
Interesting the word that Peter the Apostle who wrote this particular letter in the New Testament, uses there. The word we have translated for us into the English word consideration, the original word kind of means, look knowing everything you know about love and compassion and grace and mercy from God, being someone who gets that use that wisdom and knowledge in living together with your wife.
Use the wisdom and love of God in the way that you treat your wife and in doing that show her honour, in other words value her, cherish her even though in this society as it was back then she is the weaker vessel. Now of course physically most women aren’t as strong as men although mentally and emotionally we know that women can be and indeed are very strong.
Emotionally though and physically my wife is much more delicate and beautiful than I am. It’s as though she’s like a precious delicate vase or figurine, the sort you might have up on your mantel piece, the sort that you value and you enjoy.
Treat that figurine or vase too roughly, knock it down on the floor and it’s going to break but that’s why you treat it gently and enjoy it and you treat it with consideration and you value it.
That’s the sense the Apostle Peter is saying here about how men should treat their wives and that guys is how we should treat our wives, with great honour and respect, with gentleness, with kindness. Not rolling over the top of them and crushing their emotions and telling them that how they feel doesn’t matter at all. Treat your wife with the wisdom of God. Show her consideration even though you may think that you’re stronger than her.
You know this is such precious advice. Women need to feel cherished, protected, safe, loved, valued. That is such a deep need for them husbands and we ignore that need at our peril. Let me tell you, a wife that doesn’t feel cherished by her husband isn’t going to be passionate, madly head of heels in love with her man because one her deepest needs is not being met.
Men it’s time for us really, I mean really to put our wives on a pedestal in our marriages, to value her more than any other human being, more than any experience, job or career or thing to do on our ‘to do’ list or possession, more than anything in our lives.
Because when she knows that her husband truly cherishes her, when she feels that she is on that pedestal in her husbands heart, well that makes her feel safe and it makes her marriage feel complete and right, the way somehow it was always meant to be. What about it husbands? Are you ready to cherish your wife?
Over in Colossians chapter 3, verse 19 the Apostle Paul writes:
Husbands love your wives and never treat them harshly.
There are three different original Greek words used in the New Testament which we translate into the English word love. The particular one that’s used here comes from the root word ‘agape’ which means to love unconditionally, to welcome, to entertain, to be fond of, to love dearly, to be well pleased with, to be contented with. That’s the definition and if we love our wives like that it’s impossible isn’t it to treat them harshly?
Down through the ages men have treated women harshly because of their brute strength, because of their possessions or relative power in society and culture simply because they could. What a terrible, terrible indictment on a man to treat his wife harshly but many of us do, unwittingly perhaps but that doesn’t make it any easier for her.
Harshness it seems to me is the precise opposite of cherishing her. It’s one or the other and so seriously does God take this that the command to show wives consideration, unconditional love and honour comes with a sting in the tail. Do this so that your prayer may not be hindered.
This is something that God takes very, very seriously.
Comments
EndiJo
I wish I could show this to my husband without him feeling annoyed and rolling his yes. At least it helps me know that my hurt feelings are not ridiculous.
Tina Taplin
Wow! That was so true as to what happened in my marriage. After 26 years I left and have now met the most wonderful man who does all those things and I know he cherishes me without having to ask him. Thank you we are on the road to a very long happy relationship together.