“A Chink in My Armor”

A Humble Call for Praying with Your Wife

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.—Ephesians 5:25-27

A little over two years ago, Teresa and I were being interviewed and assessed by the Evangelical Free Church. The interview was going quite well. In fact, I was feeling pretty good about myself. They had asked me all sorts of questions about my spiritual disciplines, and I was getting puffed up about how disciplined I was. Then came the question that humiliated me. They asked, “How often do you pray with your wife?” I responded that I pray for her often. I told them that I also pray with her and our children fairly frequently. They responded, “What we are asking you is how regular your prayer life with your wife is.”

I remember feeling like I had been exposed. I could not answer one of their questions with a sense of self-satisfaction. I now felt as naked as I did in those terrible childhood dreams where I was at school only to find I had no clothes on. I remembered the multiple times Teresa had said we should pray more together. I remember the pride in my heart that led to me not wanting to pray more because she had pointed out that we needed to. Finally, I responded that we don’t pray together regularly enough. I was humiliated!

In my pride, I tried to quickly put that incident out of my mind only to have it brought before me again this week. During our church planting boot camp, one of the trainers said he remembered stumbling over the question of how much he and his wife prayed together. Teresa innocently responded, “That happened to us too.” I was angry. I could not believe she would tell everyone this. I wondered why she would expose my failing in this area. Of course, she had done nothing wrong. She was merely stating a fact. On the way to lunch, I asked her, “Why would you expose me like that?” I continued, “You let everyone see a chink in my armor. At least, you could have let me tell them, so I would look humble as the one confessing it.”

God was gracious enough to let me hear the stupidity and ego-driven nature of my comments. I was not concerned with the fact that I was neglecting one of my duties as a husband. Instead, I was concerned with my reputation. I actually thought I had “armor” that only had one “chink” exposed. (Of course, I knew that others recognized some weaknesses, but they were weaknesses that I had some control over them seeing. This weakness was exposed by another). Immediately after I said this, Teresa and I both began laughing at the sheer arrogance of it.

We are called as husbands to love our wives as Christ loved the church. There are so many different lessons I could extract from this command given by God through His apostle. I want to focus, however, on the necessity of a husband praying for and with his wife. What keeps us from praying with our wives? Why is it that we do not participate in such a simple exercise that has such powerful implications? I think there are three reasons for this.

First, I think we do not pray with our wives because of sheer neglect of the command to love our wives as Christ loved the church. We do not really understand or take seriously our responsibility to be used of God to sanctify our wives. We are happy to call them to submit to our authority. However, we do not care to fulfill our responsibility. We treat our wives as if they are just another person who exists to help us arrange our lives in a manner that makes us most comfortable and self-satisfied.

Second, I think we do not pray for our wives because we do not want to submit ourselves to Christ’s headship in our home. We want to carry out our own will. We want to buy the items we desire. We want to make the decisions that please us. As in every other area of life, we want to be sovereign, rather than letting Christ be sovereign.

Third, I think we do not pray with our wives out of a sheer lack of personal humility. Biblical prayer may be the most humble position we ever take. In prayer, we express complete reliance upon God for everything. In prayer, we recognize that we are completely at the mercy of God. So when my wife tells me we should pray more, I begin to wrestle with doing it, lest I admit my dependency on God. Some may conclude that we can respond in this manner because we do not want our wives to be right. They argue that our response is motivated out of a lack of humility toward our wives. This is true in part. However, the full story is that we lack humility before God. God is using our wives to point out sin, and we struggle with this. We want to come to these realizations on our own. We do not want God to use others to point it out. If we do not come to the realization of our sin on our own, we can become quite embarrassed and angry because this robs us of the pride of figuring it out by ourselves. How perverse we really are!

Men, it is clear that God has called you to be the spiritual leader in your home. However, your spiritual leadership is submitted to the Lordship of Christ. You are to model your leadership after His. His leadership is a completely sacrificial one. His leadership is a radically humble one. His leadership has the sanctification of His church in mind. Our leadership needs to be likewise. We need to sacrifice our lives for our wives. We need to be humble before others, our wives, and before our God. We need to seek the sanctification of our wives. So, let us pray not only for our wives, but also with them. When we humble ourselves before God with our wives, they will see the head of their home whom they rejoice in submitting to!