Intended for Pleasure by Ed Wheat M.D. & Gaye Wheat

Author:Ed Wheat M.D. & Gaye Wheat
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012050, HEA042000, SEL034000, Sex in marriage, Sex instruction, Marriage—Religious aspects—Christianity, Family—Biblical teaching
ISBN: 9781441241344
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

10

The “Perfect” Wife

by Gaye Wheat

This will not be one of those very serious lectures on how to become the perfect wife! I don’t want to imply that I have somehow attained that state or that it is possible for you to get there by following ten easy steps and putting forth a little effort.

The chapter title with perfect in quotation marks should suggest that we will be using perfect in a somewhat different manner than that which the dictionary decrees with its list of lofty definitions:

“Without blemish or defect.” (Who, me?)

“Completely skilled.” (Hardly!)

“Thoroughly effective.” (Maybe occasionally.)

“Having all the qualities necessary...” (Well, no.)

But then that last definition gives pause for thought: Having all the qualities necessary ... to assure your husband that you’re the perfect wife for him. There it is! Exactly what this chapter is about.

We know we aren’t perfect wives. And our husbands know it too. But it is possible to keep them so happy that they think of us as perfect, because in the details that matter most to them, we have learned to please them! Now I am not talking about devious dealings or cute manipulations designed to befuddle our husbands into adoring us. They are not that easily fooled. And, more important, there is a better way to please thema way that God can honor, because it is rooted in the New Testament principle of servanthood: “Ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2Cor. 4:5).

Of course this does not mean that we are to behave like menials around our husbands. To serve my husband for Jesus’ sake does not demand that I be servile and abject like a Babylonian slave or an eighteenth-century washerwoman. It begins with the attitude of thinking about him, instead of being preoccupied with myself. It includes looking for ways, all the time, to help him and please him. In the words of Proverbs 31, this kind of wife will do her husband “good and not evil all the days of her life.” The behavior that pleases him flows out of an inner attitude that I have already chosen for myselfthe attitude that my husband is the king of my household and the king of my marriage. Next to the Lord, he is the one I want to please the most. He is my top priority, right after Christ. So it is my joy and privilege to treat my husband as my “lord.” And here I am in good company, for Peter in his first epistle instructs the Christian wives to adapt themselves to their husbands, their beauty “the unfading loveliness of a calm and gentle spirit, a thing very precious in the eyes of God” (1Peter 3:4 Phillips). He goes on to point to Sarah as a good example: “Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord” (1Peter 3:6).

The rewards of this attitude have been mentioned earlier but they are worth repeating: The more you please your husband, the more he is going to be eager to please you. The more he

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