Hey RaisingRices community Darren and I are super excited to tackle this topic of Spiritual Leadership together, we pray you will be blessed and encouraged.
Darren and I had an amazing weekend away in Bend, just the two of us! High Five to our amazing family for blessing us by watching the kiddos (all 5 of them)! During our time away we had a great chance to engage in deep conversation, vision casting, fun, and rest.
One amazing opportunity we had was to meet up with Isaac and Angie Tolpin who are dedicated to full time ministry through Courageous Parenting and their local church body, and you guys this was so LIFE GIVING! One of the conversation we got to talk about together is how to support your spouse as a Spiritual Leader and How to RISE to the calling of being a Spiritual Leader.
In true gentlemen like nature we are going to do “Ladies First”
Ladies First
Here are a few helpful ways we as wives and work toward the encouragement of our husbands leading.
- First things first, as wives who desire for our husbands to lead, we NEED to be in PRAYER for our husbands. We need to find ourselves on our knees because the enemy of our soul knows that when men start spiritually leading CHANGE is coming! My challenge to myself and I hope you would join me is as we pray for our husbands to lead spiritually and pray for their protection against the spiritual warfare that will be coming.
- As a leader our husbands, can be heading into a unknown battle, the more information they have the better equipped they can be as a leader. What information can we help them with?
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- The heart status of the kids, this is helpful to know how to instruct, redirect, encourage, and guide to righteousness.
- Any key events of the day, a quick play-by-play with room for quick questions
- And your (wife) emotional/spiritual state, this is important for your husband to know too
- Lastly, we must remember that we need to give our husbands the information and then TIME FOR PRAYER AND PROCESSING. If we don’t allow them to prepare their hearts then they could be walking into the home with a “get-it-fixed” mentally instead of an “I am here to lead” mentality.
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- As a mom and wife I will be the first to admit that I can forget that my husband has also been working all day. Ok, I know that sounds silly but when I am at home working hard as a stay-at-home momma (you know cleaning, cooking, hugging, changing poopies, schooling, laundry, kissing scraps and bruises) I can sort of forget that my husband is working hard at his job too. And when he gets home I can feel the urge to do the “handoff,” you know the please take the baby I need a break. And while this is completely fine, we are a team, I need to also realize WE ARE A TEAM BOTH WAYS! My husband needs the time to prepare himself to lead spiritually.
- In addition, these mentality adjustments are crucial.
- If you want him to lead, then we as wives need to make room for him to lead. This isn’t permission to nag, or “convince”. This means to be the one who stand beside your husband, not in front.
- Slow to speak, quick to listen. This has been my kryptonite, and I would go out on a limb to say I am not the only one out there who is quick to talk and slow to listen. One element I would encourage the wives out there to do with me is to work hard to provide wait time before speaking so that it gives our husbands a chance to share what is on their heart, and time to process. This has been a revolution to me, that in general terms, a woman will use 10 sentences to explain something where as a man uses just one, because he has processed and condescend his thoughts down to one.
- Provide time for spiritually leading. If there are other moms and wives out there like me who “take-charge” of the calendar scheduling I would like to give another encouragement (anyone else notice these suggestions come out of life lessons). My encouragement would to be PROVIDE REST TIME, this will encourage family time, togetherness, and the ability to give a chance for spiritual leadership. When we have so much planned we neglect our most important mission: Building HouseHolds That Serve The LORD!
- Another reminder to us all as biblical wives, that as we desire our husbands to lead our families spiritually we must also remember we must be in the WORD of GOD! Daily pursing Christ! Please know though this personal relationship is essential to our growth however it also can be intimidating to our husbands when we “appear” to have all the answers. It is hard to lead someone who, “knows it all.” Now the is a touchy issue, because I am NEVER suggesting, lying or acting dumb, (because that would just be dumb). What I am suggestion is that as a couple you ask deep thoughtful questions to purse Christ together. Questions for example like these:
- How do you think _______ (this bible character) feel during this _______ (bible event.)
- Since everything in the Bible points to God and his redemptive plan through Jesus. In this passage how does this relate to Christ?
- Would you pray for me I am struggling with this _________?
We are all on a journey in pursuit of holiness. And as our church always says, “Come as you are but leave more like Christ.” As we walk through this crazy thing call life lets remember to have grace, pray tons and work to spur each other towards righteousness.
GUYS TURN
Men, it is our role to rise to the Biblical call to be spiritual leaders of our households. Here are some areas that I know I am growing in and I want to challenge you to assess your own habits consider your spiritual growth in these areas as well.
- The first step in spiritual leadership is ensuring that we are on a path of personal growth in our walk with Christ through reading the word prayer and allowing time to listen to God. It is impossible to lead on a journey that we are not willing to take.
- We must take seriously the Word of God as truth. Not just in knowledge but in action, in heart change, in repentance, in transformation of the way we think and act. It does us no good if we read Deuteronomy 6, where the scriptures talk about making the commands of God prevalent and constant in our households, and yet continue to go day after day allowing the business of life to overshadow the glory of God. These things, whatever they are that take time away from the discipleship of our children and leading of our wives can become Idols, taking the rightful place of God in our lives.
- We must love our wife as Christ loved the church. Ephesians 6 is very explicit about this. This means men that as we lead our wives spiritually we must lead them in love, and as a servant as Christ loved the church. So as we lead, we must not disregard our wife’s wisdom, concern, or emotions, but rather listen to her wisdom, or lead her gently back to scripture as needed as we shepherd her heart towards Christ.
- As the leader, in coordination with our Wife (who I know many, including mine, manage a lot of the calendar) WE are responsible for building and prioritizing rhythms in our household. Rhythms of studying the Word, prayer, discipleship and rest.
- Be open with our wives, we must be explicit in the ways we could use their support in our leadership. God made our wives to help us, but they can not help us well unless they know what we are struggling with. As the leader with an awesome helper we must communicate what we are feeling, what emotional or cultural forces are pulling us away from leading well, and how the enemy of our souls is trying to prevent us from leading.
Men it is a battle out there against the enemy of our souls, we must recognize that without spiritual leadership in our households they are vulnerable to the enemy. We must take seriously the the design of our Creator in our families and the significance of choosing what is at the head of our life.
