Many women are currently the head of their home. They make all the important financial decisions, all the discipline decisions, the plans for daily living, and inform their husbands of how it will be. We have become control freaks.
Our desire for control goes back to the Garden. God is the one who said: “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." In this verse the word desire means "to compel, impel, urge, or seek control over." We ladies want to be in charge. We want to be the ones making the decisions and running the show over the men. It is a part of the curse upon us (Genesis 3). The men want to “lord” their authority over us in an unbiblical manner, and that is a part of the curse on them! This makes for some ongoing friction in marriage, doesn't it?
Culturally, many of our men have been emasculated. The idea of leadership in the home and family has been drained right out of them by the 1960’s hippies and 70’s feminists who became parents and have learned parenting from Dr. Spock, Dr. Dobson, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Phil Donahue, Geraldo and Oprah.
The whole don’t let boys be boys’ mentality created an effeminate and weak generation of men who are now adults. They were trained to be sensitive, tender, loving, and soft. They grew up playing with play dough and dolls, not Lego guns, or soldiers; many boys were frankly coddled and as they grew up the learned they were to be partners with their wife, and share the duties of the household 50/50. Men were taught to consider us equals in every respect, home, job, and church and discouraged from taking leadership in the home. Another casualty is that very few were taught spiritual leadership.
All of this fed the desire of the curse- that women would want to seek control over their men and the guys nicely handed it right over to us.
This has caused a crisis in leadership in the home and church. Women in have told me they are afraid to allow their husband to lead. Think about that statement- “allow” the husband to lead? I didn't know it was a choice biblically! A husband who is not the leader of his home is not being respected by his wife. He may not make every right decision, and some wrong decisions have far reaching consequences. God has given him this role we are to honor it. A woman who refuses to submit to her husband’s authority is thumbing her nose at God.
I encourage women in difficult marriages to do that very thing- to really be in obedience to God, for His glory. When the focus is taken off the finite and focused on the Infinite a change in the thinking takes place. It is no longer about me and him, but about God. I have seen this work miracles in lives and marriages.
The husband is understandably leery of such a change! A wife may have to give him opportunity to lead. She must step back from the decisions and stop taking the lead at home. Especially if you have been rather vocal about his shortcomings in the leadership department. It is never too late to change; there is time to make it right.