How Should A Christian Wife Treat An Unbelieving Husband?
My husband is hateful of me becoming God’s child since I have been saved. How do I deal with him? I’m married for 30 years, and I am with him until I die. It is quite difficult for me. I find it hard to deeply feel love for him after I became truly saved. But now I am having trouble with this problem, as I am becoming a new person in how I think and act, and he is not accepting of this.
Pastor David Guzik: I feel very bad for you. This is a challenge that the earliest Christians faced. That’s why Paul addresses this in 1 Corinthians 7 and Peter addresses it in 1 Peter 3. This problem was experienced predominantly by female believers in the early church. So, I want you to know that God knows your struggle.
The main emphasis of the response that God gave through Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 and through Peter in 1 Peter 3 was to love your unbelieving husband, endure with him, and pray for him. When you’re praying for your husband, pray for yourself as well, that God would remind you of the good things in your husband, that you can respect him and love him. There will be a temptation, which comes in some sense from the devil. I think that the devil would want you to lose all respect for your husband and to begin to despise him. That’s not what God wants you to do. God wants you to be real about your husband’s failings, but to fundamentally respect him for the good that is in him as a man and a husband, or, if nothing else, for the good that you saw in him in the past.
Pray that God guards your heart so that you don’t lose all respect for your husband, but rather continue to respect him, to honor him as a husband, and especially to pray that God would change his heart and his life.
Pastor Lance Ralston: In our ministry, we have seen many times over the years where a woman who is married will come to faith in Christ, while her husband remains unsaved and doesn’t come to church. Struggles arise in their marriage, and the husband doesn’t like the changes that are taking place in his wife. We have seen the wife get ahold of this respect for him and become very active in it. Because of that respect, we’ve seen many men in our churches who are saved, worshiping God, hands in the air, and involved in ministry because they were won by the faithful love and respect of their wives towards their husbands when they didn’t deserve it. And sometimes it has taken a long time. Don’t lose hope.