Husbands, Are Your Prayers Hindered? Do You Understand Your Wives?

I have heard this numerous times among men. With a chuckle of knowing resignation one may tell another what his wife does that doesn’t make sense to him. “There’s just no understanding women,” they might say.

Is this right?

In a larger passage about being subject to each other, Peter writes:

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3:7 ESV)

Peter admonishes Christian husbands to understand their wives and live in accordance with that understanding. Not only is it possible for a husband to understand his wife, it is commanded. Husband, you study cars, sports statistics, politics, or whatever else you are interested in. Yet you refuse to study your wife to know her better? Study her like your life depended on it.

The effect is that the wife of a Christian husband will be honored. Perhaps you don’t want to honor your wife. Why did you marry her if you didn’t want to honor her? You show yourself to be a fool for an honored wife will glorify her husband. (1 Cor 11:17)

Ultimately, however, the result of not doing this is that the husband’s prayers will be hindered. I said study her like your life depended on it. If you’re prayers are your connection with the One who gives you life, then your life indeed depends on understanding your wife and living like it.

Christian husband, an amazing way to fulfill this is to pray for your wife. You should be doing this anyway, but I know that many do not. I have seen miracles happen in marriages where husbands pray for their wives. The next miracle could be for you.

Busy Summer - Recent Thoughts

I know I haven't posted much lately. For those of you who don't read my Xanga, I did recently post about my recent camping trip with Mark Sherrill and Adam and Matthew Hatcher. This has been a busy summer, however, on a number of levels. For one, we're in full swing at work. I work in the laboratory furniture industry and this is the time of year when colleges and universities are especially inclined to renovate or build new labs. For another, my wife and kids are in Venezuela and we're all a little homesick. We've been blessed with the technology to be able to talk every day and lately my wife and I have taken to typing sweet nothings to each other into the wee hours of the night. 3 weeks and a day and we'll all be reunited in Venezuela.

I was able to catch up on my online reading yesterday and found a few unrelated items of interest.

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Because of the absence of my wife I've been particularly enjoying PaPaTevia's musings about marriage on his blog recently in the wake of his 25th wedding anniversary.

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If you're like me and find archeology interesting, you may like models of ancient sites. Here's a rather large one of ancient Jerusalem.

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Here's a humorous video from repentandtrustdotorg on YouTube. "8 Reasons I Don't Share My Faith" - do you identify with any of these reasons?

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There were also a couple of interesting posts about genetics. On Answers in Genesis, they report that scientists have found another layer of complexity in the genetic code. Scientists have found, much to their astonishment that a single gene can produce more than one protein depending on what enzyme "reads" it. This is a form of information compression that make zip files look like child's play. On Triablogue they have a humorous "report" about the discovery that humans share 50% of their genes with bananas.

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On a theological note, Strange BaptistFire posted an article about the Glory of God.

“Glorify” is the verb form of the noun “glory,” which translates the Hebrew word kabod, meaning “weight” or “heaviness.” This word speaks to heaviness in terms of dignity, and indicates a radically humbling emotional impact on any who encounter true glory; as seen, for example, in the experience of the Prophet Isaiah, who, when encountering the glory of God, began to call down curses upon himself for his sin (Isaiah 6).

Consider that God already has "glory" and we can give Him no glory that He doesn't already have. When we glorify God, we don't give God more glory than He already has. Instead, we recognize His glory and align ourselves with Him.

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In Him,
-Jim