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Do you know what can happen if you don’t encourage your mate? Wives: If your husband doesn’t hear you cheering him on, he’ll feel continually discouraged and defeated – and then he’ll seek the applause somewhere else. Husbands: If you don’t appreciate and encourage your wife, she will turn elsewhere to get her needs met. If encouragement isn’t a steady part of your wife’s diet, she’s starving for it.
-- A woman has a larger than life need for her husband to whisper, declare, and shout to the world that she is the most important person in his life.
-- It’s not enough to appreciate your wife – you have to tell her!
-- Understanding your wife’s personality and character will help you tailor encouragement specifically to her.
So what does encouragement look like for your spouse? It’s different for every person, but generally husbands and wives see encouragement differently. If you want to grow in your ability to encourage your spouse, practice several of these suggestions
How to Encourage your Wife
Understand her wiring. The next time you see two women talking, watch them and listen to them. Notice how connected they sound. For a woman, this kind of connected conversation acts as a stress reliever and even a kind of therapeutic release. While your wife’s friends are important to her, it is absolutely vital that your wife gets this kind of support from you – her husband and best friend. At the end of a long day she wants to be able to share her feelings with you. She’s not looking for solutions. She wants to share her intimate thoughts so that her burdens can be lifted and her emotional ties to you strengthened.
Give her first place. When your wife isn’t first place in your life, she feels overlooked and unimportant. Sometimes what you give first place to may seem so important that you don’t even recognize what you’re doing. It doesn’t matter how you justify it, nothing is more important than your wife or your family. Would you ever think of starving your wife of the food she needs to sustain her physical body? No! But you could be starving her of the very encouragement she needs to survive.
Point out her potential. Affirm the truth about your wife’s abilities. We see with human eyes, of course, but all of us can remind each other of our God-given potential. Do this for your wife. Focus on her strengths, not her weaknesses. Try to see her the way Jesus would see her.
Appreciate her contribution. Take advantage of moments to brag about your wife. In both private and public ways, you need to let your wife know how much she is appreciated. Nothing will encourage your wife more than for you to recognize her sacrifices and affirm her love and devotion to your family. Praise your wife for who she is.
We want to challenge you to find out what encourages your mate – whether it’s a kiss and hug at the end of the day, a word of appreciation when they’ve done something well, or just a note that says ‘I love you.’ Then take what you learn and encourage your spouse frequently, positively and authentically. Your mate needs to hear the voice of God leading and sustaining him or her and your mate also needs to hear you encouraging and believing in him or her!
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All of this sounds so simple, but it takes so much effort. I pray that I can take these tips and apply them to my marriage. What I have to realize today, is that it is hard to get out a a difficult spot in the marriage, if these encouraging traits have not been exhibited in the marriage for a long period of time. The things I underlined above are definitely the things that I have to work on as a husband. Although, I think that I appreciate Carla and think she's the most awesome woman in the world, I lack in my ability of showing her that. And since I have lacked that for so long, it's going to take time for her to trust that my encouraging attitude will last more than three days after a fight.
"Lord help me as I walk this journey. I thank you that I am not alone, and that you have placed godly men around me to support me as I walk the most challenging road in my life: becoming one with my wife."
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