How to Honor Your Husband: Build Him Up

by Marilynn Chadwick

Showing respect is vital to any healthy marriage. But when it comes to honoring our husbands, it helps to understand that no two marriages or men are exactly alike. Words and actions which make David feel honored and respected might go right over the head of your husband.

I can choose to build up my husband or break him down with the words I speak to and about him. I also encourage David’s leadership of our family through my words. For example, the words I speak to our children influence what they think about their dad. Same with outsiders. Careless words can tarnish his reputation in the eyes of others. Proverbs 14:1 reminds us that a wise woman “builds her house,” but a foolish one “tears it down.” As wives, we sometimes forget the weight our words carry. The Bible has much to say about the power of our words.

I have been inspired by what the Bible teaches us about honor. As a result, I’m trying to be more intentional about showing honor to David. However, I’ve come face to face with an important realization: Honor demands far more from me than simply submission.

I fully appreciate submission in marriage as part of the biblical framework of love and respect (Ephesians 5:22). But to truly honor my husband, I have to set the bar much higher than submission. Honor requires self-sacrifice. Humility. It challenges me to bridle not just my words, but also my thoughts. It makes me bite my tongue. Honor confronts me with my sin.

Honor, even more than submission, is an imposing benchmark and a sublimely powerful target. For if I take aim and hit the bullseye of honor, I am probably covering all the other virtues that make for a strong marriage.

So in this way, honor conforms me to the image of Christ. In short, honor requires a strong walk with the Lord. I guess you could say that to truly honor my husband, I must first become honorable.

This series is adapted from Marilynn Chadwick’s book, Eight Great Ways to Honor Your Husband. To download your free PDF copy of the book, please visit our website by clicking here!

How to Honor Your Husband: Believe the Best

by Marilynn Chadwick

Over the years, I’ve discovered that honoring my husband begins in my mind. What I think about David determines whether my words and actions will honor him. Turns out there’s some research to back up this observation. Author and longtime Gallup poll associate Marcus Buckingham surveyed thousands of married couples to discover the traits at the core of good marriages. He found something intriguing. The common thread running through happy marriages was this: In the most successful marriages, each partner rated the other person higher than that person rated him or herself.

Buckingham’s findings, emerging from volumes of data, got me to thinking. As a wife, it’s important for me to value and respect David, believing in him even more than he believes in himself. I realized in that moment that I can choose how I think about my husband.

Do I respect him? Appreciate him? Focus on his strengths and downplay his weaknesses? Do I take time to reflect on the many ways he sacrifices for our family? Am I there for him to support and strengthen him, especially when he feels weak? Do I believe the best about him? In short, am I thankful for him?

Honor may be best expressed through words and deeds, but it begins in the mind. It greatly matters what we think about our husbands. What I think about David determines whether my words and actions will honor him. What we believe about our husbands can make or break our marriages.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a common theme in the marriages I’ve grown to admire. The spouses seem to be intentional about interpreting each other in a positive light. The wives speak about their husbands with respect. The husbands find ways to honor their wives. It’s clear they treasure and appreciate their partner. In short, they believe the best about each other, and it shows.

God’s word is filled with encouragement to honor our husbands, wives, and even families. Why not begin to explore practical ways to act this out on a daily basis.

This series is adapted from Marilynn Chadwick’s book, Eight Great Ways to Honor Your Husband. To download your free PDF copy of the book, please visit our website by clicking here!

How to Honor Your Husband: Are You an Ezer?

by Marilynn Chadwick

When we understand honor as a biblical concept, it sheds light on our God-given roles as husband and wife. In college, I was a spiritual skeptic with strong feminist leanings. After I became a follower of Christ, God’s Word opened my eyes to his beautiful and somewhat mysterious plan for marriage.

The Bible talks about Eve as Adam’s helper. The word “helper,” or ezer, means “to support.” The word conveys strength and is closely related to the word for rock. I honor David when I’m strong like a rock in my walk with the Lord. As wives, we respond best to our husbands’ spiritual leadership when we trust God and his design for our marriage. I hope you’ll see that being a strong woman of God, while also submitting to your husband’s spiritual leadership, go hand in hand.

Everything God created was good. But he looked at Adam and said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” Something was missing. So God said: "I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18 NIV). God created woman from the very stuff of man—his same substance: “So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs …Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man” (Genesis 2:20-22).

Marriage was God’s gift to the humans. Eve was Adams’s companion as well as his helper. In Hebrew, ezer is a combination of two roots: "to rescue or save," and "to be strong." Throughout the Old Testament, the word ezer most often refers to God as the helper, usually in times of danger or battle.

When you grasp what it means to be an ezer, you begin to get an image of your role as a rock, not a doormat. Your challenge is to become strong so that you are a source of strength for a husband who will sometimes be weak.

I’ve learned that an important part of showing honor to a strong husband like David is to be his “rock of support” when everything around him feels like it's crashing down. Think about what it means to be strong like a “rock” for our husbands, families, and communities. Lord knows we need more women who are willing to live strong as ezers in this hurting and broken world.

This series is adapted from Marilynn Chadwick’s book, Eight Great Ways to Honor Your Husband. To download your free PDF copy of the book, please visit our website by clicking here!