How to Honor Your Husband: If You Want to Be Strong, Abide

0:00Welcome to this moment of hope. I'm Jen Houston joined by pastor David and Marilyn Chadwick. We're continuing in our series that we've been calling how to honor your husband. Marilyn, we share with us today about how if we as wives want to be strong, we need to do what we need to abide. And you know that word is not familiar for some people. So I'm going to talk about it a little bit. But we've been talking about all these important things like pray like you mean it and fight for our husbands and wage peace. But this might be the real secret of all of you want to be strong in your marriage and also be honorable and learn how to honor your husband. Probably the best thing that you can do of everything is to learn how to abide. A young mom wants to ask me if there was anything I'd do differently if I were just starting out in my marriage. And after giving it some thought, I responded that I'd be even more intentional about abiding in Christ. That's the key. Where do you abide? You abide in Christ. I've come to believe that abiding and that just means really developing that ongoing

1:02connection with the Lord is the secret to a lasting strength and marriage. And this is on the part of husbands and wives. David, a while back, you might not even remember that you made this comment. But you said something like this. You said, I really like it that you're not needy. He said, I can tell you're not looking to me for your identity. And then you went on to say, because if you're relationship with the Lord, you come to our marriage with a full cup. And I know you're not going to drain me dry. I'm intrigued that all these years later that comment still sticks out in my mind. We even kind of had a name for that kind of marriage. What did you call it? Like a slurpy marriage. A slurpy marriage. And we know we all know we've all been that way at points. But I've thought about it further. And I think obviously, David, you know my weakness is better than anybody. And you have walked me through more fears and tears than I can count. And yet you still felt like and feel like you can consider me strong. And I think that's probably because you see a strength in me that I don't even see in myself. And it's really a strength that only comes from the

2:04relationship with Jesus. So, Jan, what do you think about this? Do you think abiding is like a magic pill you swallow and then bang your in? I think it's work. I think we have to choose. We get to choose to submit to the Holy Spirit to let the Lord be Lord of our lives to let Jesus be Lord. And when he is, we are strong. And I think this is the same for friendships too. You know, the word that comes to mind when we don't abide in Christ, first and foremost, every relationship can tend towards codependency. And we can lean into each other in ways that we were never intended to when we can't support people the right ways. And so I think abiding is key for every relationship. That's a good point because we really don't want to get our identity and anything or anybody else but Jesus. And you know what? Our husbands or wives will know it if we're trying to build our identity on them. I'm going to go to John 8 here for an answer to the question that some people may ask is, well, how do I abide? What do I do? And Jesus said, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, then you

3:11will be able to accomplish anything. And I just believe the key to abiding is by knowing the Word of God. Because that word is his character. And as you memorize that word, you stay in that word. It continues to be your strength in your life as you memorize it. You can't abide in Christ. And as you claim those promises, they are secure within you. And you can keep moving forward knowing that Christ will always fulfill his promises that he has given to us. Well, and like Jen said, it's a daily thing. It's a choice. It does require some self-discipline. But I think there were awards are so great that once you start doing it, you'll want to. But let's remind ourselves what God said in marriage. He looked at Adam and said, it's not good for the man to be alone. Something was missing. So he said, I'll make a helper suitable for him. That's from Genesis 2.18. And that word for helper, and we've talked about this, is easier, which means like I was strength, a source of strength, or support. And I've just come to believe that in a very real way, the call to be that strong helper or ease or in my marriage, back to what you were saying, Jen, is a call to a daily walk with Christ. It's saying, yes, when Jesus calls me to follow

4:14him. So yes, honoring my husband means yes to abiding in Christ. You know, I think about the word source, you know, what is our source of life, of encouragement, of everything? And it needs to be the Lord. It needs to be Jesus because everyone else will fail. And he is our source. And if you make Jesus your source, you will never run dry. And you will never be insecure. And it's the source of a good marriage because then the husband knows the wife is not depending on him for her identity. And also it works the other way too, doesn't it? The husband doesn't need to depend on the wife. Exactly. Wow, with a compelling conversation today, David, Marilyn, thank you so much.