One of the main reasons I married Margie is that she is a girl! She looks different than me, smells different, acts different. She prefers gentleness to harshness, communicating in “paragraphs” and not “mono-syllabic grunts”, she enjoys eating off of plates instead of from a can…ya know….girl stuff.

If you are like me in this regard…then we must ask ourselves: “why do we spend so much of our time trying to make our wives more like us?” (Don’t get me started on the wife that tries to feminize her husband, we will look at that soon enough) Can we expect her to think like us, handle situations like us, even parent and discipline our kids like us?

In our effort to “Make a Wife” we looked yesterday at “PROVIDING FOR HER” and “STUDYING HER”. Two more principles that will help you have a marriage that is BUILT TO LAST are…

3. ACCEPT HER. Along with all of the gifts, abilities and talent that you married her for, she also has the shortcomings, blind spots and issues she came with. When you said “I DO”, you were accepting the responsibilty to fuel her talents, smooth out the rough spots and tackle her weaknesses. BY THE WAY: her preference for a clean house, food in the pantry and emotional intimacy is not a weakness … it is something to be accepted and nurtured and, dare I say it, EMBRACED!

REMEMBER: You get the good and the bad (the richer and poorer, the sickness and health..etc) By the way….she got both good and bad with you! Ephesians 5:28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

4. GIVE HER A SAFE PLACE TO BE HERSELF.(emotionally, physically and spiritually) One of the surest ways to create an UNSAFE place for your wife is to allow SARCASM roam freely in your home.

It will absolutely pollute your marriage and your family in a sinister way. Sarcasm allows us to “say anything we want and not be held accountable”. You can make a sarcastic comment about your wife’s appearance, temperment, issues, family, decisons, etc… and cover it all with “JUST KIDDING”. Then when she responds with hurt feelings, you blame her for being too sensitive. Can you see how few things in marriage are more destructive than that!1 1 Peter 2:17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.

from The Bible Study Series, “Things They Did Not Tell Me About My Faith” – Hixon Frank 2007