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Life in the fast lane: What women wish men knew about women 20th Sunday after Pentecost, September 28, 2008
We’re continuing our look at life in the fast lane this week by taking some time to look at, and listen to, the responses the ladies in our congregation filled out regarding what they need the men in their lives to know. Again, whether you are married or not, these messages and especially the responses many of you gave in the inserts in our bulletins the past few weeks, speak volumes to us as we live and interact in the fast lane with people of the opposite gender. So today, this message is for the men here as we talk about the ladies in our lives; the wives, the daughters, the mothers and the sisters God has given us. Last week we looked at Ephesians 5:33 noting especially, “Wives respect your husbands.” Today we are looking at 1 Peter 3:7. 1 Peter is the 21st book in the New Testament, so the order goes, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – the Gospels that tell about Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection; then comes the book of Acts that tells about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; then come the Epistles, literally the letters. In light of Jesus’ ministry, and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, how shall we live? The order goes Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1st & 2nd Thessalonians, 1st & 2nd Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James and then 1st Peter. It might actually be easier to turn to the end of the New Testament and go backwards from the last book. Then you begin with Revelation, then Jude, 3rd, 2nd and 1st John, 2nd Peter and then 1st Peter. 1st and 2nd Peter were both written by the Apostle Simon Peter, one of the inner 12 disciples of Jesus. This is the same Peter who walked on water, denied He knew Jesus, and was the first disciple to call Jesus the Christ. According to tradition, Peter was put to death for being a Christian by being crucified upside down. Again, we are going to 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 7: “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.” First, before anyone gets upset over the wording, let me explain something. The phrase “as the weaker partner” refers to physical strength, not mental or emotional strength. Let’s face facts, 9 times out of 10 men are physically stronger than women. What the Holy Spirit is saying here is for men to respect the women in their lives and not lord it over them that they are stronger, either through physical intimidation or abuse. It is not showing respect to someone when you physically manipulate or hurt them. Even though you may be physically stronger than the ladies in your life, you don’t use that as a bargaining chip or a means of getting what you want. As important as just that alone is, what we want to focus on today with this verse is the first part – “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives…” If we get that straight, everything else will follow. Again, whether you are married or not, the implication is the same: men, be considerate of the females in your life. We also need to get to the original Greek on this to fully understand what’s being said here. The phrase, “be considerate” means ‘to know well’, to grow in knowledge of your wife, of the women in your life. How, men, do you come to know well the ladies in your life? You become a student of them. It’s a sad thing, men, but many of us don’t know the ladies in our lives as well as we think we do. Many of us can rattle off statistics of our favorite sports teams; we can quote line after line of our favorite movies; we can repeat every word of every song on every album of our favorite artist, but we don’t know what our wife’s, our daughter’s, our mother’s, our sister’s favorite color is. We don’t know what their favorite movie is; who their favorite artist is. Let’s be honest, if you were to go to a restaurant with the ladies in your life after church today, and they said to you, “Why don’t you order for me”, would you know what to order for them that they would like? I tell you, men, based on the responses so many of the ladies here turned in, they don’t believe that you could; the answer would be ‘no.’ It’s a symptom of living life in the fast lane. When we live and spend our time there, our relationship with our Savior is fractured and splintered, and once that relationship is out of whack, the relationships with the people in our lives are affected, too. The thing is, men, God gave us the ladies in our lives; they are a gift from God. While you’re keeping a finger or a piece of paper for a bookmark in 1 Peter, will you flip all the way to the beginning of the Bible with me, please? Let’s go all the way to Genesis, the first book in the Bible, to chapter 2, verses 18 to 24: The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 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 and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. God looked at Adam alone in the Garden of Eden and said “It’s not right that man is alone.” And then He had Adam do what seems like a strange thing: He had Adam name the animals. Why did God do that? Is it because the God who created the universe and all that’s in it had used up all His creative juices and couldn’t think of the name ‘cat’ for the cat, or ‘dog’ for the dog? No! Adam naming the animals wasn’t because God couldn’t think of names, it was because God wanted Adam to come to fully understand what God already knew – “for Adam, no suitable helper was found.” You can make a note of this in the margins of your Bible: the words ‘suitable helper’ here in the Hebrew means a ‘complete-ment.’ God saw Adam wasn’t complete in and of himself, and so He made a ‘complete-ment’ for Him. Man alone is not complete, so God gives us the women in our lives to complete us, and this is seen in its ultimate filled state in the marriage bond. In fact, ladies, if you came with a man today – husband, father, son, brother, whatever, turn to them right now and say, “I complete you!” Notice something else. Between Adam and Eve, who gave to whom, first? In other words, who was the first ‘giver’ in the relationship? It was Adam, he ‘gave’ a rib, and then gave a pronouncement, a compliment to Eve. For Pete’s sake, the man broke into poetry: “This is bone of bone and flesh of my flesh.” Adam gave first, and Eve received first, and that started the cycle between men and women. Here’s the point with this: men, some of the ladies in your lives are still waiting for you to give yourself to them. They complete you, and yet so many of us men don’t give them all of ourselves. We hold back, play games, dangle compliments like gold nuggets in front of the ladies in our lives, waiting for them to do something we have determined they need to do (whether we’ve told them what that is or not) before we will give a little of ourselves to them; before we will give them life-affirming words and attention they crave. One response said it very plainly, “A word of love, compliment or appreciation goes a very long way.” Men, we are called to be students of the women in our lives, to know well those ladies God has given us who complete us. So what do the ladies here at LCC, the wives, the mothers, the daughters, the sisters, have to say about what they want us to know about them? Like I did last week with the responses from the men, I organized the responses from the ladies into general themes. Overwhelmingly men, the ladies in your life want to know they are special to you. They are not looking for us to break into poetry like Adam did when he saw Eve, but they are looking for, and craving, our attention, our love. When they walk through the door, they need to see on our faces and hear in our voices that we are happy to see them, that we understand our complete-ments just came home. They want to know we love them and think about them. Little gifts given for no other reason than you love them and were thinking about them; a phone call or text message or e-mail in the middle of the day just to say, “I was just thinking about you and wanted to let you know” – these are small ways we can reach out to the ladies God has given us, and let them know we understand and recognize them for the gift they are. “We need to feel valued”; “We need positive reinforcement”; “We need to be complimented and receive common courtesy from you” are the words and phrases repeated over and over again from the ladies sitting around us this morning. The ladies are deeply desiring your love and recognition of them as your complete-ments. They are living in the fast lane, too, gentlemen, and are looking for you to be the one person they have in their lives that will tell them and show them they are loved and valued beyond measure. One response put it very simply, “Remember the woman you fell in love with. She’s still there.” Another thing that came shining through in these responses is the desire to be listened to. We talked about this a little last week when we mentioned men are do-ers and not necessarily ones who will talk or relate about something. Men, the ladies here have made it clear in their responses – they need you to listen to them when they talk, without necessarily jumping in or interrupting and trying to ‘fix’ whatever it is they are bringing to you. “We talk to verbalize our feelings, and need men to listen” said one response. Listen, not ‘fix.’ Listen, not take over and run away with the conversation. Remember the great question I mentioned last week that I learned to ask of Stacey: “Are you telling me this for me to do something about it, or for me just to listen?” It’s the easiest thing, men. How will we come to know well the ladies in our lives? By simply listening to them, by being considerate of the ladies God has given us. If we do, we will hear them tell us about their stresses, their loves, their dislikes, their heart. If we do, we will be communicating our love to them, and letting them know we value them and do not disregard what they feel. If we do, something as simple as going to a restaurant and knowing what the ladies in your life would like to eat would not have had the gut-wrenching affect the thought of it just did for some of us. Now there was one response that was mentioned by a few different ladies that, I’m sorry to say and confess to you ladies my ignorance of you, really surprised me. I simply never thought about this, I never saw this one coming. But, since this was mentioned a couple of times, it shows this is something that is important to many, not just one person: the ladies here said, basically, they want to raise their own children; they don’t want to raise additional children other than the ones they gave birth to. From that one point, there are a couple of things that we men can come to understand. One is the ladies around you do not want to be a ‘mother’ their entire life, or to be a mother to children that are not theirs. Young people, understand this well – know your mother well – your mamma don’t wanna raise your baby. You have a baby, you take care of the baby. You don’t have a baby, give it to your mother, and then go on with your life like nothing happened. Your mother raised her children. This doesn’t mean she doesn’t love your children, or enjoy and delight in her grandchildren. What it means is she wants to be a grandmother, not a mother. As I was thinking about this and pondering my own ignorance and why this surprised me as much as it did, I realized something. The other thing this reveals, men, is something that is not said, but is something we need to be aware of: we need to stand up for the ladies in our lives and protect them from being taken advantage of. We need to remember they are a gift from God to us, and be willing to stand up and tell everyone, including your children and grandchildren, “you mess with my woman, you mess with me.” Whether you are still open to 1st Peter or Genesis 2, you can write this reference in the margins of your Bibles, it works well with either passage: Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wife the way Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” I’m not trying to get all ‘macho’ here, but we are called, men, to protect the ladies in our lives. Remember what we just read in 1 Peter, ‘respecting them as the weaker partner.’ We stand up for them, regardless of who that means we are standing up to: our children, our parents, our best friends, our coworkers, our bosses. If we, as husbands, fathers, brothers, sons are not willing to defend the ladies in our lives and protect them from all harm and danger and being taken advantage of, who will? Jesus loves the church so much He gave His life for it. Jesus loves you so much, He gave His life for you. Men, do the women in your life know without a doubt you would give everything for them? Even up to, and including, your own life if needed? Because here’s the thing, if we blow this, if we do not protect the ladies in our lives from others – or even from ourselves when we get in a bad place, mood, or make and continue to make bad decisions – it will be very hard for them to trust us in the future. One response put it like this, “it can take a long time to trust again”; and there is a fear of repeated bad behaviors and inconsideration. Once this happens and a pattern is established – once the man stops giving positively of himself and instead gives negatively or not at all – it is hard for the ladies to know what to do, how to respond, if they can trust themselves to the man again. Fathers, understand this well, how you treat your wife and daughters will have a big impact on the kind of man your daughter marries. Our actions affect not only this generation, but the generations to come. Two final things. The first is in the area of Spiritual Leadership. Over and over again, the ladies here are asking that the men be Christian leaders in the home. This doesn’t mean ruling the home with an iron fist. Remember, the ladies in our lives are ‘partners and heirs with you of the gracious gift of life’ as it says in our verse from 1st Peter today. They are looking for you to be partners with them, but partners who will take the lead in the home as it relates to the relationship with Jesus. This can be tough for men, admittedly, and I will confess to you I personally have not always been real successful in this. Often men feel like we don’t know enough to take that role, or we’re uncomfortable praying out loud, or reading our Bibles or devotions out loud with the family. With all due respect, gentlemen: too bad. Get over it. You have been called to do this by God, and the ladies here want you, need you, to respond to that calling, especially as our lives swirl in the fast lane. They are looking to you to be in love with Jesus, and let that love overflow into your life and theirs as you live in, and lead, the home in the way of Christ. You don’t have to pray long, elegant prayers, you don’t have to pontificate for hours on a Bible passage, but rather simply live the Christian life in your home. Pray with the people in your home; spend time in devotions with them, even if that’s something as simple as reading the daily readings that are published in our newsletter every month. Finally, as it relates to intimacy, we mentioned last week that men and women are wired differently. Gentlemen, the ladies around you want to know they are loved and valued for who they are, not for how they can meet your desires. On almost every single response turned in, the same words were basically said, “We need to be touched and held,” and not always in a way that communicates “are you ready to consummate our wedding vows” (with all the children here, are you guys understanding what I’m talking about?) The ladies here want you to know they need those touches of affirmation, of affection. Hold her hand when you walk through the parking lot after church today; put your arm around her; give a peck on the cheek; just sit back and let lean on you as you watch TV. This communicates your love for her, and helps her to feel more closely connected to you. This doesn’t mean that the ‘consummation’ isn’t important to your wives, rather it means that the ladies want to, and need to, know that it’s not just about that, and you, men, are interested enough in how they feel and are wired, to make an effort to reach out to them at a level they will identify with. It’s the life in the fast lane. These past two Sundays we’ve looked at what is called in Theological terms, ‘the horizontal realm.’ That simply means the world we live in and relate with other people in. Next week we’re turning our attention to ‘the vertical realm’ – the world of our relationship with Jesus. Again, hopefully this message today and last week can begin the process of communication and reaching out and growing closer to one another as Christians living in the fast lane.
Amen. |
