When Your Husband Isn't Walking With You In Grace

Barb grew up in a healthy home where her mom and dad were obviously in love. Her dad was an elder in their local church and her mom taught the young couple’s class in Bible Study. “When the doors were opened, we were there,” is the way she has sometimes described her experience.

Due to the way her own family always functioned, Barb took it for granted that a Christian husband does certain things. First and foremost, he takes his family to church every week. She thought that’s a given in a Christian home. There were other expectations she held about what a Christian man does at home too. Basic things like saying the prayer before meals, leading the family in a daily “family altar” time where the Bible is read and they pray together, talking about life in terms of spiritual realities – these weren’t monumental acts to her. They were the normal and routine things that Christian families experienced under the leadership of a godly man.

Barb met Zack during her sophomore year in college. He was playing the guitar and leading choruses at the Young Life meeting being held on campus. She immediately was attracted to Zack. He had a good sense of humor. He seemed comfortable with his faith and related easily to the people around him. Zack was the son of a pastor and, it seemed to her, had grown up pretty much the way she had.

Zack asked Barb to go to a Christian concert with him for their first date. Over the next two years, they were inseparable. It didn’t take long until they both realized that they wanted to spend their lives together and so they began making wedding preparations. A few months after graduation, on a warm Saturday afternoon in June, Zack’s dad performed the ceremony.

Barb’s dreams were immersed in and inseparable from her new life with Zack. She saw nothing but bright days ahead. Zack had begun a new career in a sales position with a successful company. It didn’t take long until he was breaking sales records and distinguishing himself in exceptional ways through his sales skills.

Barb was proud of him. The bonuses and progressively increasing income were great. Then there were the trips Zack had won at work through his achievements. Barb had certainly enjoyed those.

After eighteen months, Barb found out that she was going to have a baby and they were both thrilled. One thing that had happened though bothered Barb and she thought it was important to discuss it with Zack since they would soon have a child. The thing that had happened had been what Barb thought was a gradual decline in the area of their spiritual lives.

Because of Zack’s demanding work weeks, he had often said that he was too tired to go to church on Sunday and wanted the two of them to just rest and enjoy the day together. Although Barb wasn’t completely comfortable with missing church, after having been taught all her life about the importance of attending, she did enjoy those relaxed Sundays together. Now things were different though. In her mind, since they were going to have a baby, changes were needed. “We need to get back in church,” was the way she talked to Zack about it.

She couldn’t have been more surprised by his response. “Barb, I understand your concern but I’m in a different place now than I was when we were first married,” he explained. “You know my spiritual life is real to me, but God has put me in the place where I need to provide for you and for our coming baby. My work is demanding. I’ll do the best I can but I may need you to step up on the home front for a while when it comes to spiritual things.”

For the first time in their marriage, Barb began to be afraid about the spiritual condition of her husband. Being the spiritual leader as a husband wasn’t optional in the world of her childhood and now she was hearing Zack delegate this important responsibility to her.

For the next few years, things continued to evolve. Their baby girl was born and less than two years later, they learned that a son was on the way. Barb and Zack continued to be deeply in love but by the time the two children were beginning school, Barb felt that Zack had totally abandoned all responsibility for spiritual leadership at home. She was the one who said prayers with the children at night. She took them to church alone most of the time. She felt like the only spiritual influence her children ever saw at home was from her and it bothered her – greatly.

By the time I met Barb, they had been married ten years. She was discouraged and wondering aloud with me about what to do. “I don’t get it,” she said. “I grew up in a godly home with a godly dad. Zack grew up in a godly home. He knows better than this. I’ve talked and talked and talked to him about it but it does no good. I’ve prayed about it but nothing changes. I’ve wondered why God won’t change Zack. If He can, why won’t He? Sometimes it seems like I care more about my husband’s spiritual condition than God does.”

I knew Barb didn’t really believe that, but I also knew that she honestly felt that way at times. She wanted to see God’s Spirit move in Zack’s life and change him. She had prayed for that for a number of years but nothing ever happened. It wasn’t unreasonable that she could wonder if God really cares. She wondered if she was destined to spend her life being the spiritual leader, married to a man who didn’t care much about that part of life anymore.

I’ve shared Barb’s story with you for one primary reason and that’s to let you see how much your story may be like hers. The details may differ but the underlying story is so often the same. I hear it all the time. She marries him. She envisions that they will grow spiritually together but after awhile he seems to lose interest in spiritual things.

Maybe your marriage scenario is similar. In the next chapter, I’ll discuss the challenge for women who married a man that never showed any spiritual interest but for now I want to speak to the one whose husband seems to have grown cold in his walk with God. What’s a wife to do? It’s obvious that talking about it doesn’t work. Pleading with him to step up and lead spiritually doesn’t work. In fact, that sometimes seems to cause a man to pull back even more. So what is the answer?

The answer may surprise you. It’s this: Stop trying to change him. Giving him CDs with preaching from your favorite speaker and telling him all about what’s going on at church and trying to entice him to catch your enthusiasm isn’t working and chances are that it’s not going to work.

Here’s an important principle to understand that could help you avoid delaying the very thing you want to see: It’s a natural human reaction that when we feel like somebody is crowding into our personal space, we will automatically and usually unconsciously step back. It’s a defense mechanism built into all of us. None of us like to have other people push in to our space. If we invite them, that’s one thing, but when they intrude into an area that we haven’t invited them it is an uncomfortable situation that seldom has a positive outcome. If it’s somebody we don’t care about we may push back, but if it’s somebody we do care about we will typically just step back and try to reestablish our personal space in as benign a way as possible.

This you-push-in-and-I’ll-step-back reflex is true in your marriage too. You may mean well by stepping into the space reserved for your husband and his God but it’s not a space where you belong uninvited. I don’t mean to suggest that husbands and wives don’t share their walk with Christ together. What I’m suggesting is that you cannot force intimacy between your husband and Christ like a religious matchmaker who is trying to create a love-connection because you see its value. He has to see it too and only the Holy Spirit can make that happen.

Depending on your personality and your relationship to your husband, it’s possible that you could use your influence with him to elicit a greater level of religious behavior from him, but would that really accomplish what you want? If he did the things outwardly that you think he needs to be doing but his heart wasn’t in it, would there be real value in that? Don’t think that at least your children would benefit because, in the long run, they would not. Children have finely tuned ability to distinguish what’s real from what’s artificial when it comes to this sort of thing.

There are far too many religious families who go through the motions without an authentic and vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ. You don’t want your husband to be that kind of man nor your family that kind of family. You want Christ to be real in your home and for that to happen, you’re going to have to wait until He is the One who brings the result you long to see.

So give up in thinking that you’ll be the one to make something happen. Your Heavenly Father loves your husband even more than you do and, despite all external evidence to the contrary, He hasn’t forgotten about him. Your Father is acting in your husband’s life at this very moment, working out things in his heart and head that you don’t know anything about. In fact, your husband may not even be aware of what God’s Spirit is doing in his life right now. That’s okay. Unlike us, God never gets hyped up about a matter and acts out of panic. He does His thing – quietly, consistently and miraculously – until that which He has decreed happens. And it will happen; you can be assured of that fact. Nobody wins a tug-of-war contest with Almighty God, not even your husband. It doesn’t matter how stubborn he may seem. God always wins. That’s a big benefit in being God.

So be patient and put your eyes on your Father instead of your husband. I know that’s easier said than done but it is essential that you understand the wisdom of this. It’s not incidental that it is in the very first chapter of this book that I lay out this prescription for frustrated wives. It’s the nature of the flesh in all of us to become control freaks over things we care passionately about, and I know you care passionately about your husband’s spiritual well being. So does God, so let Him be who He is to your husband. He will do it in His own way and in His own time.

Maybe you’ve tried enough things to change your husband to see that you can’t do it? If so, then stop trying harder to make something happen and simply trust Him to work it out based on His plan and power. Your Father can do what you can never do. He can get in your husband’s head. He can stir up his heart. He can control his external circumstances. He can move heaven and earth to get the result He wants.

You want to see your Heavenly Father change your husband, but is it possible that He may want to change you too? Is it possible that before the change comes to your husband’s life, He may want you to give up any effort to be the facilitator of this situation and simply surrender your husband into His loving hands?

I’ve spoken plainly here about the need for you to resign your position as coordinator of your husband’s spiritual condition because I assume you want the truth enough that you don’t mind me stating plainly what the most important thing is first. To keep first things first, it’s important for you to internalize what you’ve read in this chapter and appropriate it to your life. You don’t have to feel like doing it to do it. You just need to see that it’s true and respond in faith to what the Holy Spirit is showing you. You can’t change your husband, so stop trying. It’s that simple. Not easy, but simple. Why not pray right now and ask your Father to enable you to entrust your husband to him? That simple act of faith may have more impact on your situation than you could possibly imagine right now.