Do you need to let go of control in your marriage?

But What If He Really is Doing it Wrong?

Now, it’s one thing if he wants to park the car somewhere I wouldn’t. It’s another if he wants to leave me stranded with crying babes while he sips coffee at the coffee shop. What should a wife do when she doesn’t see her husband’s behavior as respectable? Does the verse, “Let the wife see that she respects her husband,” (Eph. 5:33) still apply?

Thankfully, there’s some help a couple of paragraphs back in Ephesians 5, where several ideas are clustered together: “And do not get drunk with wine… but be filled with the Spirit . . .  submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:18, 21).

Like being filled with alcohol, when I’m filled with God’s Spirit, I’m under His influence. I do and say things I ordinarily wouldn’t. Things like giving my husband respect, even when I don’t think he deserves it—out of reverence for Christ. And when my husband is under the Spirit’s influence, he does things he wouldn’t ordinarily, as well. Things like showing me love and kindness, even when I’m not being particularly loveable.

As God has opened my eyes to the ugliness of my controlling, disrespectful behavior, more than anything He has shown me that I’m the one who’s been wrong in those ways. And as I cave into God’s Spirit, rather than my desire for control, I see God changing both me and my marriage.