Last Sunday, we concluded our services with the song “I Will Honor You.” We originally unveiled it at our Epworth Night of Worship and I heard so many encouraging words. It was a perfect way to end our services on how husbands are to love their wives.
While the wives’ song had 6 verses to use, this song for husbands only had one verse to guide our content which presented a challenge.
We used just the fellas to lead this song obviously, and Eric Bryant does such a great job singing it. It is a regular occurrence that someone asks me, “Hey, who is that guy at North Side that sings like James Taylor?” Eric. Eric Bryant. And this song furthers that compliment.
The Scripture
7 You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.
Our Pastor Jeff mentioned last Sunday that God never calls a man to understand all women. He calls us to understand just one – the one to whom we are married. Understanding that she is different (that even in some ways, she is weaker), will allow us to love her better.
Giving her honor means making her a heavyweight. Her desires and needs should carry significant weight in how you make decisions. While she many be weaker in some ways, she is still a fellow heir of the grace of life. She is not demeaned. She is not insignificant. She was just made by her Creator to need her husband to love in her in specific way.
The scary thing about this passage is that God says that many prayers have been hindered because husbands have failed to understand this.
How to Understand Your Wife
Jeff mentioned in his sermon how men desire to be that knight in shining armor that comes in and rescues the damsel in distress.
He mentioned how, throughout the course of his marriage, he has heard the voice of his wife alarmed by impending danger. Thinking it to be a problem of dragon-size, he has rushed in to save the day only to find that the cause of alarm was not a dragon (at least in his mind). In his mind, the trouble was of mouse-size rather than dragon size.
One of the things he determined to do was to treat any threat in his wife’s eyes as serious and address it as so. Even if it was a mouse in his eyes, he was going to attack it like it was nothing less than a dragon.
The point is a man needs to understand who his wife is to be able to love her completely.
That’s why this song meant so much to our group. I had worked on it and then brought it to the group for some additional tweaking. I wanted it to display a man committed to his marriage. If all else fails, a man of God is still called to honor his wife. If everything he tries doesn’t seem to work, he is still called to honor her.
“When I don’t know what to say, I will show you grace, when I don’t know what to do, I will honor you.”
We are releasing the live worship album on January 26th, until then though, you can listen to the recording of it from last Sunday at church.
Travis Agnew serves as the Lead Pastor of Rocky Creek Church in Greenville, SC. His most recent book is Just (About) Married.
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