Message Two
How to Help Your Husband in A Postive Way (1)  

Prayer: Lord, we are always encouraged by our spirit. We realize that our spirit has a treasure. Our spirit has the God of the universe within to be our everything. Lord, even now we pray, on the one hand, give us a full cleansing; on the other hand, may Your Spirit move among us, nourish us, feed us, supply us, subdue us, and enlighten us. Lord, we have no intention to dwell in our weakness. Lord, we have no intention to dwell in self-pity. Lord, we fully desire to be one with You and to cooperate with You. Lord, we pray that You would be so free to be the Lord in our family life, in the church life, and in whatever we do.

Lord, remember we all love You. Lord, if we didn't love You, why should we be here? Lord, remember we have given our lives to You. Therefore, day by day we pay a price for Your sake. That's why we treasure these days. Lord, we don't want to just live each day saying, "We are for Christ." We want, each day, to live for Christ. We also don't want to just spend today saying, "We are for our husband." We want to live each day for our husband. Lord, we pray that our family life, the church life and everything else with us would be so normal and healthy. Lord Jesus Christ, we give this time to You. By Your precious blood, we ask for Your anointing. Lord, limit us to refrain from speaking whatever shouldn't be said. Encourage us to fellowship whatever should be fellowshipped. Lord, may You have the full way among us. In the name of Jesus Christ, we give this meeting to You. Amen, Lord.

A Healthy Sister Must Have Several Realizations:
First, She is Here because of Her Husband

As we have seen in the previous message, a healthy sister must always realize first why she is here. She is here because of her husband. Eve was brought into existence because Adam was created. Eve came out of Adam. It is not a small thing to see this vision. Women have had many problems because they do not see that the reason they were born, and the reason they were raised in a certain way, was because they came out of their husband.

Second, She is Built Exactly according to the Need of Her Husband

The second thing a healthy sister must realize is that the wife is built exactly according to the needs of her husband. Married sisters, your upbringing, your appearance, your disposition, and everything about you is all because your husband needs it. This must be your vision. Once you see this, your whole life, even your whole attitude towards your existence, will be different. You will realize, "I am here because my husband was created. I am the way I am because my husband needs me to be like this." If you lose your temper and don't clean the house or cook supper, you can just tell your husband, "You need me to be like this; otherwise I would be much better."  

Third, She Must Be a Positive Help to Her Husband

But you you must also realize that your existence is not just to bother him or to "help" him in a negative way. Your existence is also to help him in a positive way. If you mess up the house, forget to cook supper, don't take care of your children, or neglect your appearance, you are helping your husband, but in a negative way. You shouldn't feel condemned if you help your husband negatively. But you must realize that your help to your husband should be positive. If a meal you cooked didn't turn out the way you wanted, don't condemn yourself, saying, "I'm a bad housewife. I don't know how to feed my husband." If this is your attitude, you are caught under the craftiness and subtlety of Satan. Why should you be condemned? You can just tell your husband, "I was made like this because you like to eat, therefore I don't know how to cook."

But this should not always be your attitude. You must realize that there is a positive side to helping your husband. Your conscience should be peaceful. Then you are ready to help your husband positively. You shouldn't be accused, bothered, or pressured. Otherwise you will not be your husband's helpmate, but his troubler. The more you get pressured, the more your husband will get pressured. And in turn, the more your husband is pressured the more you will be pressured. This cycle can continue until your husband is afraid to come home, but you get upset when he is late. This is too much for your husband to handle.

The Secret is to Be Relaxed

You must be very relaxed in your family life, realizing that you were made with weaknesses and shortcomings. You were made to help your husband. Being relaxed is the secret of a happy family life. Even to be in spirit, you must first be relaxed. If your husband is coming home in half an hour and you haven't started supper yet, don't worry about it. If you are so happy and charming when your husband returns, I don't believe your husband will be upset that there is no supper. He will be happy to take you out to eat. But if you are upset, then your husband will get upset.

Not many husbands realize how much work you put into a meal. Whether you spend four hours cooking supper, or thirty minutes, he will still take the same amount of time to eat. Much of your nervousness you bring upon yourself. You should be relieved from your tension, and be very restful in your family life, even when you make a mistake. Realize that you were made the way you are for your husband's sake. There is no need to aim so high, or to demand so much of yourself. You do not need to be perfect.

Help Your Husband in His Person and His Environment

Your husband was made according to God's economy. For this reason, the help you render him positively should be related to God's economy. You should consider that the help you render to your husband can accomplish God's economy. With this in mind, you should help your husband by caring for his person and his environment. By his person, I am referring to his body, soul and spirit. By his environment, I mean his work life, family life, and church life.

Help His Body to Be Healthy

If you cannot help his person, all your other "help" will be false. Just helping him go to church meetings is not real. You must help his body, soul and spirit. To help his body, you must help him to be healthy. It is easy for the husband to eat if his wife is happy. But if his wife is anxious or upset, the husband will not eat properly no matter how good the food is. Our goal in helping our husband's health is to prolong his life as much as possible. How long a husband lives has much to do with his wife. Wives should learn to give their husbands the proper nourishment, and relieve him from pressure by being relaxed themselves. The wife must learn to be positive.

Every positive person can be relaxed. If you have nothing to do, you will begin to imagine all sorts of offenses against you by your husband, the church, the elders, and so on. Or you may begin to feel all kinds of aches and pains. This is because you are not positive. If a wife is not living positively, she gets nervous. Then her husband gets nervous because she is not relaxed. Then, for some reason, the wife is unable to care for her husband's health properly. As a mother, your best function is to take care of your children. As a wife, your best function is to take care of your husband.

Don't try so hard to do spiritual things, or have spiritual accomplishments. The wife's portion firstly is to take care of her husband and his health. If your husband is physically healthy, it is easy for him to be in spirit, and to have a healthy soul. But if he is not healthy, it will be difficult for him to be in spirit. So the wife should take care of his nourishment and his rest to the best of her ability. This is the way to lay a good foundation for the church life. If you are feeding your husband with healthy food, chances are you will also be healthy.

I am afraid that we are short of healthy food, good rest and a healthy atmosphere in the family life. A healthy family life should include an atmosphere of respect, love, and happiness between the husband and wife. To create this healthy atmosphere the wife must be relieved from pressure herself. She can do this by realizing that she is made for her husband. She doesn't have to be so good. If she is "lousy," it is because her husband needs her lousiness. There is a right way to handle your mistakes. If you ruin the whole dinner, don't be bothered. When your husband comes home, just be happy. Most husbands will not be upset if their wife didn't cook one meal. The more you care about something you think is wrong, the more your husband will be bothered about it also. If you just ignore the "imperfection," your husband may not even notice it, and both of you will be happy.

Help His Soul to Be Relaxed and Upgraded

To care for your husband, you must also learn to care for his soul. To accomplish this you must know two secrets. The first secret is to let his soul rest. When your husband comes home, don't bother him too much. If you relax, you won't bother your husband. When you are tense, he gets tense. Let your husband be restful in his daily life. Don't bother him with all the little details of your life. If you need to do something, just do it. Let your husband rest as much as possible. If a wife learns this secret she will be a successful wife.

The second secret is to upgrade your husband's soul. Allow your husband to get the education he needs to have a good job. If a wife knows how to do this, the husband can be successful. Learn how to help him be aggressive, yet not ambitious in an improper way. Learn how to enlarge him, to develop his talent. And help him to be more useful. When your husband is young, he may be satisfied with a labor job. But when he is fifty, life will be hard. To have a trade, or a stable job will help the family life to be upgraded. A young couple should not rush to have children. It is worthwhile to sacrifice for a few years so that your husband can be educated.

I repeat, don't bother your husband too much. Let his soul rest. Whatever you want, your husband will give you. Women know how to bother their husbands until they get what they want. In the end, every husband will submit to his wife. But in the transaction, the husband will have very little rest in his soul.

Help His Spirit

Finally, in caring for your husband's person, you must feed his spirit. This is the simplest part. If you feed your spirit, you will feed his spirit. It is just that simple. If you are in spirit, he can be in spirit. If you are not in spirit, he cannot be in spirit. So just take care that you are in spirit. 

Help His Working Life to Be for the Gospel

After you take care of his person, you must learn to care for your husband's environment. His environment is made up of his working life, his family life, and his church life. Related to the working life, I feel that since we do not aim at this kind of success, we do not need to pay too much attention to helping our husband in his work life. The only need in this area would be for the gospel's sake, to invite his colleagues over for dinner. If you get involved in his work life, to promote your husband's success at work, there will be no end to your involvement. This is not what we aim for. But for the sake of the gospel, we do need to know how to present ourselves and how to open our homes.

Help The Family Life to Be Part of the Church Life

With regards to the family life, the family life is part of the church life. When the church life is healthy, it is easy for the family life to be healthy. When you and your husband are healthy in the church life, then you can both be healthy in the family life. I would also add that I don't think we need to consider too much how to raise up our children, because no one knows how. Many people have come up with theories that they have tested on children almost like they test rats. But no one has "the right way." The trend in the world shows that the family life is quickly being lost. Many young people are living together without being married. Some parents even encourage them to do this thinking that in this way the young couple will avoid divorce later on. The family life and moral life are collapsing. But salvation is still in the church. To my observation, 90% of the parents who are healthy in the church life have their children turn out well. The children may go their own way for a period of time, but because their parents are healthy, they can return and be a blessing to the church. Naturally all the children will grow up properly if the church is healthy. If we are not healthy in the church life, there is no way to raise up our children.

It is difficult to know when is the right time to preach the gospel to children. You may ruin your child by preaching to him too early. He will not have a genuine salvation, yet he will think he is a Christian. Then, when he is older, he will criticize his salvation, because he feels he hasn't gotten anything out of the church life. I would rather see the children be born again in a proper meeting, with a proper spirit, where the impression can go deep. But, to be honest, no one knows how to raise children. We all do our best. One thing is for sure, if we are healthy in the church life, then our family life can be healthy.

We must also realize that our family life is not for ourselves. Our family life is for the church life. When girls get married, they dream about how their life will be. You yourselves may dream about how romantic your husband will be, but he will never be what you expect. You must wake up and realize that in the sight of God, the husband and wife are one unit to serve the Lord. When you get married, you may feel that you will be for your husband, and your husband will be for you. But actually you will only be for yourself. You may dream of a little apartment, and of how sweet you will be when your husband comes home, with dinner waiting on the table. After you get married your dreams are never fully realized, but you still behave according to your dreams, guarding your own small territory, with your husband, your house, and your children.

You must realize that a proper family life should be for the church life. Consider the example of Priscilla and Aquila. Paul preached the gospel to them in Corinth and they got saved. Then they began to serve the Lord. Later on they migrated to Rome. Even in Rome, Priscilla's function was very healthy. When Paul greeted them in his letter to Rome, he greeted first Priscilla, then Aquila (Rom. 16:3), because Priscilla functioned so well, and her function upheld the church in Rome.

If the Lord can open our eyes, we will see that to keep the family life healthy, the family life must be for the church life. I am afraid that we utilize the church life for our own purposes, thinking that as long as we are in the church life, our husband is safe and will not cause problems. Or we may also try to control our husband, allowing our husband to only be for his wife and family. But sisters, your husband cannot be healthy and proper under this kind of situation because you are laying two "foundations." One is the church, to protect your husband so that he won't be naughty. The other is the family, to control your husband so that you will be happy. Sooner or later, these two foundations will confront one another. To be honest, your family life is not happy because you have laid two foundations. You do not lay these foundations on purpose. But you must realize that if you, your husband and your family are not fully in the church life, then naturally your family will have two foundations.

Let me give you a simple illustration. Do you consider it too much if your husband goes to meetings four nights a week? Or if he comes home late? Each wife will have a different answer to these questions. But do you realize that the healthiness of the family life depends on the healthiness of the church life? When both you and your husband are operative in the church life, you may not count the time. But if you are not functioning and your husband is, you begrudge how much time your husband spends for the church.

To allow our family life to be fully for the church life is conditional to many of us. It all depends on how useful we ourselves are. If we are useful, then every room of our house is open for the church. But if we are not useful, then not even our bathroom is for the church. To allow our family life to be for the church life is not easy. I know that you all love the Lord and the church life, but if all the husbands were free to love the Lord as they desire, the church would be much more prevailing. Right now, even though the wives love the Lord, they are a heavy weight on their husbands' love for the Lord.

The basic problem stems from this one point: we have never seen the vision that the family life is part of the church life. We separate these two lives. A sister may be upset that her husband only spends one night a week at home. This is a good sister, allowing her husband to be out six nights a week. I would even encourage all the brothers to spend at least one night each week with their family, and maybe more depending on their family's need. But the problem is not how many nights the husband is home. It is this statement from the wife, "Honey, why don't you spend at least one more night with me?" This statement shows there is still "you." But when the church life is very healthy, there is no "you." This statement also shows that you still divide the family life from the church life. You do not see that the family life is part of the church life. And this is where all the problems start.

When we do not have the realization that the family life is part of the church life, then we don't take the church life as the family life. We consider about our family life, then we consider what we can do in the church life. Even the thought, "Since I cooked a good meal I should invite someone over," shows that you still have a family life. If the family life is just a part of the church life, you will consider the family life and the church life at the same time. If you see this, your life will be much easier.

Sisters, what are you struggling with the most today? Basically you lack this one consecration, the consecration to say, "My family life is the church life." To count how many nights your husband is home with you is wrong. When the church is healthy, you and your husband will spend time at home together. But that time will be for the church life, not just for the family life. The family life is part of the church life. Once you consecrate yourself to the Lord in this way, you will not separate the church life and the family life. Then you will become much more positive and aggressive, and you will be less bothered. This week, if your husband is not able to be at home any night, you will have peace. The next week, if your husband is at home with you three nights, you will still have peace. It will be fine if your husband comes home after midnight one night, and if he comes home by 9:30 p.m. another night. Don't separate the family life and the church life. Give your family to the Lord, realizing that when the family life is in the church life, everything is healthy.

This is also true concerning the way we take care of our home. For example, do you like to keep your carpet clean, or do you like to see the saints raised up? When you are too cautious of your carpet, the young people are afraid to come over. Are you willing to have your carpet ruined so that a young brother can be raised up? Every dollar you spend is worth it if a brother can be raised up. If you know how to love the Lord, the Lord will take care of all your needs. This is the way to handle your money. You should invest all your belongings, your kitchen, your furniture, and everything in your home to the church life, for the sake of gaining even one person for the Lord.

When you put your family life fully into the church life, you will have too much to do. When you have two lives, you try to keep both the family life and the church life in a certain kind of pattern. But the church life will never fit into your pattern. Sisters, you need to initiate the placing of your family life into the church life. Learn to give whatever you have to the church for the sake of the church life. I am not talking merely about financial offering, but about allowing your time and possessions to be used for the church.

Don't consider so much what you can or cannot do. If you see a need, just take care of it. Isn't this how you raise your children? You cannot bargain with your newborn so that he will not cry in the middle of the night. When he cries you just get up and take care of him, and you are still able to function during the day. Learn to give everything for the church life. Learn to say, "If it will be helpful to the church life, I don't care what price I have to pay."

In caring for individuals, or in your serving, be positive and take the initiative. You don't realize how effective that is for the church life. As I said in the beginning, be relaxed in everything you do. Don't be pressured if you have invited too many brothers over for dinner. Just make them sandwiches. If you take the initiative to make your family life part of the church life, I believe you will be much happier. Even your daily life will turn out to be much more meaningful. There is no such thing as "my family life." When you try to struggle for your family life you will miss the church life, and you will therefore miss the mark. When the church life is healthy, you will have a very healthy family life.

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