Being a Help Meet

Introduction

Gen 2:18 “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”

One of the most well-known Baptist preachers of the previous centuries was CH Spurgeon, but what many of us probably don’t realize is that CH Spurgeon and his wife Susannah had a epic marriage. Both he and his wife suffered from chronic illness. Spurgeon had chronic gout and deep periods of depression while his wife was unable to leave the house for 15 years do to illness. Yet through all of that, there marriage continued to grow. CH Spurgeon once wrote the following love letter to his wife:

My Own Dear one- None know how grateful I am to God for you. In all I have ever done for Him, you have a large share. For in making me so happy you have fitted me for service… I have served the Lord far more and never less, for your sweet companionship. The Lord God Almighty bless you now and forever!

Later when compiling his notes, Susannah wrote:

I deemed it my joy and privilege to be ever at his side, accompanying him on many of his preaching journeys, nursing him in his occasional illnesses, _his delighted companion during his holiday trips, always watching over and tending him with enthusiasm and sympathy which my great love for him inspired.

Spurgeon knew a great truth that his success in ministry was benefited by having a godly wife and a help meet for him. This type of relationship doesn’t just happen. It is the result of years of living life together where two people live for each other and are dedicated to something greater than even their marriage. Tonights message is only half of the picture. Today we will be talking about what it means to be a help meet for your husband and hopefully give some practical advice. In another message we will focus on the husbands role in the home.

There really isn’t a text that says this is how you be a good help meet. I think this is why in Titus 2 older women are instructed to teach younger women. So I have structured the practical advice for being a help meet around other commands that are given to the wives. The best way to be a help meet is to be the kind of wife God has called you to be.

I. Loving him

There actually isn’t a direct command from God for wives to love their husbands, but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t expect it of them. Some have said this is because women just naturally love better than men. I do think women are better in tune with the romantic side of a relationship and they more naturally relate emotionally than most men (Not all). But love is more than just romance and emotions.

When a couple first get married they have it a little easier because their relationship rides on the coat tails of passion. We call this the honeymoon stage. But passion does not stay the same throughout your entire marriage. It changes forms and expressions. That burning desire that you can’t stand turns into something else.

Unfortunately many marriages lose that flame because of sin. Selfishness, fighting, bitterness, nagging settle in. Sometimes it is chocked out by the business of life. That flame of passion while necessary is not enough to keep you married for the rest of your life. The waves of life will come and beat against your marriage and if it does not have a more solid foundation, it will not survive. This is why Paul tells Titus to instruct the older women to teach the younger women how to love their husbands.

Titus 2:4 “That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,”

The word love here is not agape. This is the love is more basic than even that. This is a love that leads you to enjoy them, find pleasure in their company, like them. This isn’t even a sexual kind of love. One of the best pieces of advice I received before getting married was to marry your best friend. Do you have the kind of relationship with your spouse that causes you to enjoy being around them?

This is acting affectionately toward them, treating them with utmost devotion, being fond of them.

This concept is included in the idea of being a helper. You are a partner in life. You are heirs of the grace of life together.

Loving him is not always going to be easy. Loving him in the way he needs you to love him is going to be even harder.

Practical tips:

Not all of these have a bible verse to go with them though they are consistent with the bible. I am a man so I am not the best one to give this advice. I read a lot from Nancy Demoss Wolgemouth, so if you prefer think of this as her an older woman advising you younger women on marriage.

1. Put Him before the children- notice loving husbands comes before loving children in Titus 2:4 “That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,” Your children are important but they are not as important as your marriage. Your husband came before the children and if your marriage is going to survive, you need to have a relationship with him after your kids leave the home. The best home for children to be raised in is a home where the parents love each other and the kids know it. Don’t keep you love private. Flirting with each other, kissing each other, playing with each other. The kids may yell out gross when they are young, but they will come to appreciate that kind of example later on.

2. Look for ways to keep your relationship fresh and growing. Don’t stop dating your wife. Keep looking for new ways to express love to your spouse. Show an interest in his day and the things that interest him. My wife always says she is grateful that I am not a sports guy because she doesn’t get interested in watching sports, but if I were I know she would take an interest. Text him a love note throughout the day. Learn a new hobby together. Surprise him with gifts for him. Maybe tickets to a game, ect.

II. Submitting to his leadership

Eph 5:22-24 “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.”

This command is given to wives not to all women. This is not a command that all women need to obey anything that a man tells them to do.

Submission means to place yourself under the authority of another. This is a voluntary act of your will. It implies that you don’t want to, you don’t agree and you wish you could do differently; but you are choosing to follow his lead.

There is a limit to this command and it is similar to what Peter told the priests: We ought to obey God rather than man. As unto the Lord implies that your submission to your husband is primarily an obedience to God.

The reason for this submission is not because you are inferior, but because the husbands headship is a picture of Christ’s headship over the church.

Other than the exception of disobedience to God, Paul leaves no other wiggle room: in everything. It might be petty.

A godly help meet is going to helping his leadership Prov 31:11-12 “The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, So that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil All the days of her life.” Especially in our society, men don’t lead and if they do, they don’t know how to lead. We have had atleast two generations of bad examples in fathers. Our culture looks down on leadership in the home as toxic masculinity. The rules for dating and relating to girls have changed accross the board and so men are ignorant of how to lead a home. On top of all that delayed adolescence has allowed men to refuse to grow up.

When your husband begins to see his responsibility to lead in the home, be patient with him. He is going to make mistakes. What he needs is a wife who supports his leadership.

One of the curses in the fall was that there would now be conflict in marriage. The wife would not have a desire to rule her husband. But in Christ, we are free from the curse. The Christian home does not have to be a place of conflict. The husbands role is to lead in love and in a Christlike way; but the wife is told to submit to his leadership.

But what if my husband isn’t where he needs to be spiritually?

1 Peter 3:1 “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;” There can be no less spiritual husband than a lost husband who does not even know the Lord and yet Peter tells the wife of a lost husband to still be in subjection to her own husband. Their godliness and abilities do not determine whether you submit or not. Them being right or not doesn’t determine whether you submit or not. Ultimately submission is to the Lord. You submit because God wants you to.

Peter acknowledges that the testimony of the wife can change the heart of her husband. If you are a godly wife, treating your husband the way you should be, God can use your example to encourage him to do the right thing. In this case, the unsaved husband might come to be saved because of the testimony of a good, godly wife. Its not a promise that things will change, but we do what we do for God.

What if I am the better leader?

A godly husband will acknowledge his wife’s abilities and utilize them. But leadership is still the role that the husband has been given in the home and it is the role he will have to give an account for when he stands before God. Submission does not demean or make you weak. In fact, submission goes against every fiber of your being. Submission shows an extraordinary amount of self-restraint. But ultimately submission is impossible apart from the filling of the holy Spirit. These verse follow directly after Eph 5:18 “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;”

Practical tips:

Don’t try to get your way by badgering or manipulating him. This is just a passive aggressive way of taking the leadership in the home. Its pulling the puppet strings behind the scenes.

Don’t give in to the kids behind his back. If dad has said this is how things are going to be, don’t try to be the nice one and sneak around.

Wives should feel the freedom to express their opinions and both husband and wife should be involved in discussing decisions; however, sometimes a decision has to be made and discussion has to end. If you keep bringing it up or reminding him when things didn’t go as planned you never truly submitted to his leadership.

I read a story by Shannon Popkin that so illustrated what God can do when we choose to do the right thing even when we don’t want to:

My husband was nice enough to take our sixth grader shopping for running shoes recently. But the shoes they came home with were not shoes I would have bought.

They looked great; they were bright and fun-looking. But they were also twenty dollars more than I would have paid. And they didn't look very supportive for running, either, which was the whole point of buying new shoes.

I suspect that the selection process was heavily influenced by both my son's enthusiasm over the shoe color and his dad's ambition to get out of the store quickly. Neither of these, in my opinion, were good reasons to buy these particular shoes.

"I'm taking them back," I said.

"What?" my husband said. "Then why did you ask me to take him shopping in the first place?"

I then listed out all of the reasons these shoes were a bad idea. Apparently he hadn't seen the way inferior shoes tend to cave under the pressure of a twelve-year-old boy running. And perhaps he wasn't aware that our son would claim any shoe felt supportive if it was the right color. I was quite certain that these shoes wouldn't even last the full season. I'd have to replace them in a month.

None of these reasons, however, won my husband over to my viewpoint. He just kept voicing frustration over the wasted shopping trip.

The next morning, the shoes remained in their box on the kitchen counter. My son, who kept lifting the lid to admire them, began pleading with me to change my mind. He loved those shoes! Daddy had bought them. Why couldn't he—pretty please—keep them?

As I learn to trust God by submitting in marriage, I exchange worry and stress for freedom and joy.

I could feel my heels digging into the kitchen rug. All the reasons for returning the shoes started pinballing around in my head. But just as I was about to clamp down and insist on doing this my way, I sensed the Spirit of God impressing on my heart, "How do you know? Can you see into the future? Can you be certain these shoes will fall apart?"

I suddenly recognized my lack of trust in God. The Lord hadn't asked me to calculate the risk of letting my husband lead. God asked me to submit to my husband and trust Him with our future—even the future of something as small as running shoes.

Two things surprised me when I told my son he could put the shoes on and wear them. First was the tenderness in his expression when he hugged me and said thank you. He had heard my concerns. He knew it was hard for me. (It's ridiculous, really, how hard it was.) But he saw that I was trying to obey God and let his daddy lead. That's a good thing for a boy to see.

My second surprise was the immediate feeling of freedom and joy. Why had I burdened myself with trying to control based on my limited perspective? It felt so good to say, "Honey, your shoes look great. I'm so glad you like them!" And it was fun to text a picture to my husband of the brightly clad feet on the way out the door—along with a smiley emoticon and an apology.

III. Respect him

1 Peter 3:1-2 “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.” Eph 5:33 “Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.”

A. Respect his decisions

B. Respect his abilities

C. Respect him in the way you talk to him- nagging Prov 17:27 “He that hath knowledge spareth his words: And a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit.” Proverbs 21:9 “It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, Than with a brawling woman in a wide house.”

“Sometimes when something breaks in the house, a man might like to take a crack at it before calling in someone and having to pay a bunch of money. The wife might respond ,”You’re really not a fix-it-type of guy.”

Practical Suggestions:

1. Don’t publically criticisms him even in jest. While things might be find and dandy at home, putting him down in front of others carries a different weight.

2. Trying to control him is not respecting him. Inside there is some doubt in his ability that makes you feel like you need to take the reigns. He may not necessarily be worthy of respect at that moment but a wife has a strong influence on her husband when she lives right not when she naggs him. Notice her respect and purity can win the husband.

3. If you don’t think he can do something, find another way to say it or just trust that God can honor your respecting your husband.

Conclusion

The last truth I want to leave you with is that all men are fallen sinners. If you are waiting for your husband to be a godly husband before you start being the help meet that God wants you to be, you won’t get there. Our obedience is not based on other people’s obedience. God deserves our obedience. If he says this is what I should be like, then this is what I should be like.

I truly believe, the influence of a godly women in a man’s life cannot even be measured. God gave men wives because He knew that we needed you. Please embrace the role that God has given you in the home knowing that you can transform the world.