Pastor Greg Laurie on How to Get a 'New' Husband
Pastor Greg Laurie of Harvest Christian Fellowship spoke on how a marriage can be revived, restored and resurrected, and especially how wives can have their own husbands become new men. Laurie also interviewed his wife, Cathe on the wife's role in marriage and how women are different from men.
"Before you can convert your husband into a new man, maybe you need to think about becoming a new woman," Greg Laurie said in his message, which was part of the Home Sweet Home series.
The Bible talks about the role of the wife in marriage, he added, and read 1 Peter 3:1-4, "Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives, when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. Do not let your adornment be merely outward — arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel — rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God."
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Laurie then shared three things the wife can do to get a new husband.
One, be the best version of you that you can be, he told the women.
A girl should want to be godly, and to "become a virtuous virtue," he explained. But virtue doesn't mean weakness; it means purity, strength, force and value, and speaks of a balanced woman who is good in every way, he clarified. "She is beautiful on the outside, also inside."
However, the focus of culture today is only on the physical part of beauty, the pastor continued. But a godly woman would be more attractive even after losing some of her outward beauty due to age, he said.
"The godly woman focuses primarily on the internal, but does not forget the external," Laurie stressed, explaining that the Bible does not forbid women to look attractive, but she should not be preoccupied with it.
Two, respect your man, the California pastor told wives, and quoted Ephesians 5:33, "However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."
"Wives need love and husbands need respect," Laurie said, and explained that a woman needs to be affirmed that she is loved and appreciated.
"When a husband feels disrespected, it is especially hard to love his wife. When a wife feels unloved, it is especially hard to respect her husband," Laurie quoted from Dr. Emerson Eggerichs's book, Love and Respect, which also says that when a wife feels unloved, she tends to react in ways that feel disrespectful to her husband, and when a husband feels disrespected, he tends to react in ways that feel unloving to his wife.
"Here's what you need to do. Just do your part," Laurie told the congregation.
Three, submit to the leadership of your husband, the pastor said, and remarked that nobody wants to submit to anyone in the "narcissist, me-first" culture today.
However, he added, we are all called to submit to God, and husbands and wives are called to submit to each other in the reverence of God. Men and women are equal, he underlined, and added that the roles of men and women in marriage are different though.
"The husband has the God-given responsibility to provide for, protect and lead," just as the Lord does to the Church, he explained. "The wife is to submit graciously to this servant leadership the husband provides, just as the Church willing submits to the headship of Christ."
But there can be situations where a higher law supersedes a lower law, so a woman is not supposed to follow her husband when he demands something that is immoral or illegal, and nor is she required to submit to domestic violence or abuse, Laurie cautioned.
The pastor then called his wife, Cathe, to come on stage and they sat next to each other. He asked Cathe, are boy more like dogs and women more like cats?
Cathy said, "Women are interdependent… And guys are more independent… We're the weaker sex, I think, that is mainly physically weaker… But we have strengths that guys don't have."
She added that social life and friendships are very important for women, and therefore they are more like dogs and men are more like cats.
We don't need to see women as weaker as they can bring strengths and perspectives, Cathe continued, and added that women are very observant and have a higher emotional IQ.
On the husband's leadership role in marriage, she shared that in their 42 years of marriage, only rarely has Greg had to say they disagree on a particular issue and that he is deciding to do what he thinks is right.
"By and large, he asks my opinion, we discuss things together, we make compromise and consensus," she concluded.
