Hello friends, welcome back. As you prepare for the summer days coming up, I want to take a quick moment and just say, wow. The unstructured days of summer can be a blessing and yet a burden at the same time. I know from wrangling my six kids that the days can feel long, they can feel unpredictable, and a little inconsistent. Well, I would love to be a consistent source of encouragement for you this summer.
I’ll be sending resources to keep you connected to God’s goodness, to encourage you and to share my heart in the ways that he is growing me in more wholeness and in more joy as it relates to how he made my body, how he made marriage, how he made sexuality, and all the ways that actually ripples out and impacts my life, my relationships, and the world around me. Be sure you subscribe to my weekly newsletter so we can stay in touch and you can receive all the consistent encouragement that I want to give to you, to build you up, to equip you, and to bless you. Look for the link in my show notes so we can stay in touch over the summer. Bless you and enjoy today’s episode.
Hi friends, this is Francie. Welcome back to another episode on the Heaven in Your Home podcast. Today we are going to dive into a topic that’s really close to my heart and it has to do with our husbands. And if you’re not married yet, it has to do with understanding potentially a future husband if God leads you to marriage. And if you are a husband listening, I would be very curious to see how this hits you. And this is my journey. This is where I’ve been thinking and praying and living for the last several years. And I’m not saying that I have this figured out or how I know it all by any chance, by any stretch of imagination. I’m just saying this is what I’ve been thinking about.
I’ve been thinking about the strength of our men and the strength of masculinity, and how as women as we become more flourishing, fully alive women, image bearers of God, how can we honor, support, strengthen and bless the masculinity of our husbands. In our culture right now, we have conversations about toxic masculinity, and I think it’s kind of a growing nebulous term and it gets tossed around a lot. And overall, I think it’s trying to say that just telling men to be strong and go for violence and achievement and don’t cry. Of course, we want whole men integrated, mind, body, spirit men. We don’t want that. We don’t want toxic masculinity, but I don’t think there’s really room for what holy masculinity looks like. And so, if we’re swinging on the pendulum like we often do in culture, we’ll go way away from toxic masculinity into what? What is the other side of the spectrum other than just feminizing our husbands or rejecting masculinity as a whole?
What does holy masculinity look like and how can we come alongside of our men, honor their masculinity, their true strength, an integrated holy calling from God for them to bear his image as men, as fathers, as husbands, as brothers? And how can we encourage that? How can we speak life over that? And what does that have to do with our engagement with them sexually, with our husbands? What does that look like for us as wives, as lovers, to honor their masculinity and to come alongside them and speak life over it? Because I’m pretty sure that in our world right now, it’s not easy to be a man. And maybe some people will hate me for saying that, but I’m raising sons and I have a husband and I know that the onslaught of chaos sexually and visually on our men is real. But I also know that men are not really honored in TV, in sitcoms.
A true man is hard to find in the media, a good man, and it is demoralizing at times, I think, to be a man in our world where we are riling for equity. And I’m for image bearers. I’m for men and women honoring the goodness of each other, lifting one another up, partnering in unity, completing each other as the full picture of humanity made in the image of God. Men and women connecting as husbands and wives in love, as brothers and sisters supporting one another in the body of Christ, as families who lift each other up and reveal more of the heart of God to each other through our genders. There’s not a gender war in my mind and heart. It’s a gender reconciliation so that we can bring all of it back to God, and that it can be reconciled back to his good plan.
And so that’s the big picture, but I want to share with you in this episode some of my journey as a wife, what I’m learning, how I’m learning to try and honor and bless the masculinity of my husband, the very tender conversations we’ve had around it, and I’ll just share with you what I’m learning. So let’s jump in. God, thank you for the gift of gender. Thank you for the conversations we’ve had leading up to this conversation about the meaning of our bodies and the meaning of gender and the goodness of your plan and it all. And we just thank you for it, God. And we repent for where we have tried to elevate one at the expense of the other, or where one has been abusive at the cost of the other. We just ache for the misuse of these gifts and we ask for a righting of order and alignment with the gift of gender, with the gift of relationships, and we just ask for you to lead us into more goodness around this, God. In Jesus name, amen.
Okay, so I’m going to tell you a little bit about our story on this, and Wyatt has given me permission to share all of this. I actually asked him to come on and do this with me, but it didn’t work out timing wise. And he said, oh, your girls would like to hear from you more anyway. I think otherwise. I think you guys would love to hear from him. And maybe if you send me messages begging for Wyatt to come on, maybe he will, but at this point you’ve got me. But he gave me permission to share this.
And we sat on the porch recently and just took tons of notes as we were dissecting what has our journey been on with masculinity, and me recognizing the gift of Wyatt’s masculinity and him recognizing the gift of his masculinity and not being ashamed of it or worrying that it’s too much or too little, and how does that relate to how he relates to his body and how I relate to his body, and his sex drive and whether it’s high or low, whether he feels healthy, whether he feels weak, how does that all play into his emotional vulnerability as a man?
Because our culture tends to paint men as kind of big pigheaded, gruff, high sex drive, just needs to have a release and be done with it, kind of emotionally vacant. But that’s actually not true of most men. I think most men are good men and most men, especially the kind of men that are probably married to you women, are good men who want to try and be a good man and be a good father and be a good husband, and the world is just emasculating them right and left. And how can we build them up and maximize their holy masculinity, and honor it and call forth their strength and bless it to celebrate the vulnerability of their masculine sexuality?
Because we have feminine beauty. And I think I’ve shared with this in different episodes that women by nature, how I can summarize it in my mind, in my heart, is that women are marked as image bearers with a feminine beauty that invites and is invitational and is mysterious and is hospitable and welcomes in as receptive.
And men are marked with a strength and initiative strength, initiative love and a sense that they are pursuing and protecting and providing for. And our bodies are marked with those messages from the receptivity of a woman’s vagina to the initiative strength of a husband’s or a man’s penis. And so even our bodies speak of this truth, but our insecurities and our sin nature and our fallenness can often subvert these things and confuse it or make us feel insecure about what God actually called good, or make us doubt our beauty and make them doubt their strength.
And so, I wanted to share with you just our story. We started out early in our marriage with Wyatt being a really good dude. He was just a really good guy wanting to honor God and wanting to honor me and trying to navigate and steward his sexuality and just being really afraid that it might be too much for me. He was afraid that it would be overwhelming to me or that who he was too much. And I know that we felt that as women with our emotions or with our personality or whatever, we kind of go small because we’re afraid of being too much. And that was his feeling.
Early on he shared with me some things that I could say to him from the place of vulnerability. And he just said, “Francie, I’m worried that I’m too much. Can you communicate to me that I’m not too much for you, that I’m not overwhelming to you, that you actually want who I am and you want my drive?”
That was my first tipping point to realizing, wow, there’s a lot more vulnerability to Wyatt’s sexuality than I thought. I thought it was just a man’s need and a woman’s duty to fulfill, kind of like he needs three meals a day and I got to cook them or whatever. And I realized quickly that was not the case at all, that there is a physical side to a sexual urge, but there is a deep emotional need for comfort, for receptivity, for receiving and affirming and welcoming his physical sexual strength, and that it is my gift and my privilege to be the woman in his life that affirms his masculine strength in that private vulnerable way.
I had no idea how his pursuit of me and his initiation of me sexually was so deeply tied to his soul, that when he says something that is offering pursuit or initiation and when he wants to be with me sexually, what he’s saying is that I want to be close to you with my heart. And oftentimes, I’ve kind of joked, but it’s like his private man parts are one way to his soul that is very big and important and significant to who he is as a man.
When I dismiss his sexual initiation or when I reject it flippantly, and I just don’t think twice about it and I assume it’s just a man’s need and whatever he can live without it, and I’m not careful and honoring of how God made him, it deeply wounds him. And we’ve walked through some hard moments where he didn’t even have the words to articulate why he was so wounded and why he was shut down. But I learned that when he leans into me sexually, it’s like he’s giving me his full access to his heart. And depending on my understanding of that is how I handle that. If I see it as this vulnerable space he’s opening up to me, even if he doesn’t have the words to explain that, I can see it as an invitation to care for his heart and to care for the fact that he is very vulnerable in his initiation.
We were talking about even the male equipment, and this is kind of putting it right out there, but there is a time where a man and his penis is very soft and very small and soft and fragile. And then there’s a next moment where it’s large and erect and strong, and that’s kind of how a man’s heart is. There’s times where it’s very soft and very tender and very vulnerable, and then there’s times where it’s strong and it is ready. And in both of those situations, how we honor and care for his body and his sexuality and his masculinity communicates directly to his heart on a heart level.
There’s some things that I have learned to say that help build up his masculine sexuality instead of tearing it down. There are cues that I can take. There are ways that I can honor his design and his makeup. And one of them is just acknowledge that his sexuality is a masterpiece, thought up by the Master himself. And that even his penis and his male sexuality is a gift to me that I get to enjoy and I get to discover and I get to care for, not only to take care of him and honor him, but also to enjoy it personally, that his body is a gift to me just like my body’s a gift to him.
There’s often times where we realize as women, woo, I’m not so sure about that. I’ve talked to some of you who are not comfortable maybe even looking at your husband’s private parts or touching them or kissing them and it feels maybe icky or it feels uncomfortable or it feels wrong. Those are probably keys to two things. Either you’ve had a really hard experience with masculinity and specifically with a penis in your journey. Maybe you’ve experienced abuse or you’ve experienced pain or you’ve experienced some sort of misuse of power from a man in your life. And if that’s the case, tell your story. Let your husband into that pain because that is worth exploring for your own healing and for the flourishing of your marriage and for the honoring of your husband and his gift that he wants to be to you.
The next one would be somebody else experience tainted yours, either something on TV or something your mother said to you or something women in the church joked about or something you were exposed to along the way tainted your understanding of the goodness of a man’s body. And if that’s the case, do the work there. Go to God and say, God, where have I believed a lie about this good gift that you created? You created a man’s whole body to be a gift to a wife, and that it is to be shared fully and it is to be shared without reserve, that we share our bodies with one another, giving ourselves freely and completely to each other because that is our marriage vow, is that we are one flesh and that every time we have sex, every time we enjoy each other sexually, it is re-solidifying the vow that we’re giving ourselves to each other fully and without holding back.
That is a very vulnerable thing to do regularly, a very powerful thing that connects what we do with our body directly to our spiritual reality. That we are one flesh before God, that we are one unit before God, that he has joined us together through the covenant of marriage. And so, that’s one of the ways our bodies speak when we come together in sex is that we’re speaking of a bigger story and we’re reconfirming our vows to each other. That’s part of theology of the body.
But if that’s hard for you to truly enjoy your husband’s body and to truly get lost in the goodness of it and the glory of it and genuinely affirm his masculinity, invite God into that place. God, why is this hard? Why do I feel pressure in this place?” Be curious with it. At what point did I start believing that this was icky or this wasn’t good because God made your husband’s body, handcrafted it, designed it intricately, wove it together beautifully, just like I’ve said about your body in previous episodes. He’s done that with your husband’s body and he called it good.
Our gift as wives is to hold our husbands emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and sexually with care, with honor. And we get to build up his masculine strength because we want a husband that initiates, we want a husband that is strong in his pursuit of us. We want an interested and engaged husband, but if we reject him sexually and if we push him down and make jokes with our friends about sex with our husbands, or if we belittle his sexual needs or his sexual interest or his sexual vulnerabilities, that dismantles the very thing we long for and really want and really need.
So we are in extremely powerful positions to build up our husbands. We are in extremely powerful positions to speak life over our husband’s core strength. And when we use our words to honor him, to strengthen him, to bless his sexuality, to bless his masculinity, to call forth his strength, he starts becoming the man that God created him. And we get the benefit of walking alongside a more fully formed, more fully confident man of God who knows that he doesn’t have to be afraid of toxic masculinity because you are going to help him honor, support, and build up his holy masculinity. And that is part of the gift of marriage. It’s the gift of being able to see him as a strong man but also a very vulnerable man and he’s most vulnerable to you.
Wyatt has mentioned to me several times, he’s like, “Francie, I could be terrible at work. I could be terrible at my favorite sport. I could be horrible in my finances. I could fail at so many things, but if I fail with you and if I am a failure in your eyes, it cuts me to the core. And when I lean into you and I initiate with you and you delay or you reject me and you don’t show interest back, it cuts me to the core and I’m almost speechless.”
I had no idea I was that powerful. It’s like the men and women are completely from different planets thing. We speak different languages. We value different things. We communicate in different ways. We feel things differently, and that is okay. And so I want to encourage you that our invitation in this gift is not to feel like, oh no, I’ve missed it by a mile, but to say, oh wow, I get to lean in and learn. I get to become a student of my husband. I get to know him in a way no other woman gets to know him and I get to speak life to the core of who he is.
That is part of how God wants to move through you to bless your marriage, not only to be a power of a praying wife. Pray for him. And not only to cook him dinner if you like to cook dinner or whatever you do for him, but how you love him sexually and how you draw out his sexual strength in a way that is careful and joyful and playful and honoring, is a huge deal to building him into the man that God’s created him to be. I fear and feel like we have a lot of sleepy and sad and maybe heartbroken men in our world and in the church who haven’t had their masculinity affirmed properly. And because we’re so afraid of toxic masculinity, we just shy away from it in general.
But I want my girls to grow up to marry truly whole masculine men, and I want them to know how to honor their husband’s masculinity in a way that makes him a fully alive image bearing man of God who serves with his strength, who goes low and is humble in his capacity to protect and achieve and do all the strong things that God’s made him to be, but he does it with meekness like Christ.
It’s an upside down masculinity. It’s not like the macho worldly masculinity. It is a Christ-like masculinity that serves and that honors and that is truly strong in his initiation and his covering and his care for those around him. That’s a beautiful thing that we get to call out and affirm. So one of the few of the things that I say to my husband, I wrote them down so that you could just kind of hear some of the phrases. And honestly, I had to ask him, how can I say this stuff to you because I don’t speak male.
So I think this is the bottom line of what I want you to pull from this is number one, your husband is way more vulnerable than you know. He’s not fragile and weak in the sense of like a baby, but he’s vulnerable on a soul level, and you have the ability and the calling as his wife to speak life and strength and truth into the core of those vulnerable places, so that as you come together and you’re growing in your femininity and your confidence of being an image bearer, he has the benefit and the blessing of having someone speak straight to the core of who he is. And the pathway that you get to access that is emotional and spiritual and mental and especially sexual, because he can have other people speak into his mental strength, his physical strength of working out, his spiritual strength of discipleship, but you are the only one who can speak to his sexual strength.
Sexual strength is so core to how God made him in his image because we are all sexual people, and if that’s part of his life just as a big void that no one ever is able to affirm because we as wives didn’t know how to affirm it or that it’s important to affirm his strength or that it’s valuable or maybe we’re even just scared to affirm it because we’re afraid that it’ll require more and more and more of us, I just wonder, maybe not. Maybe the more we affirm his sexual strength and the more we honor who God’s made him to be, the more connected we’ll feel because we’ll have more capacity for vulnerability together.
That’s what I’ve found. It’s not defeating this idea of, oh, you’re such an amazing strong man. I want all of your sexuality. It doesn’t become more of a burden to me. It becomes more territory of his heart that I have access to because he feels so close to me. And the closer we feel together in those intimate places, the more vulnerability we get to share. And honestly, the more vulnerability you share, the more stuff comes up. And the more stuff comes up, the more conflict can arise. And when conflict arises, you get to work through it and you get to go to God for healing. You get to go to counseling, and then you have more intimacy and it’s so good. And so it becomes this unfolding or this snowball effect of connection and affirmation and kindness and support and love and vulnerability and intimacy and then conflict and vulnerability and intimacy and conflict because conflict can lead to intimacy if we allow it, but intimacy will also lead to conflict.
I’m not saying that this is like a one and done, say these things and everything will be good. I’m saying this is a journey of loving well as a wife. It’s a journey of knowing that God has entrusted you with this man, just as he’s entrusted this man with you. And as much as it depends on me, I want to love this man well, and I want to honor his masculinity, and I want to draw it out so that it is maximized and he feels like a fully alive man, not ashamed of his sexual strengths or his sexual frailty. If he’s feeling weak or if maybe he’s been in a season of sickness and he doesn’t feel as strong, I get to come into that vulnerable place and I get to speak life and honor and value that his strength as a man doesn’t depend on his performance. It depends on the fact that he’s been called good and that I get to be close to him and receive from him and give to him and that he’s not alone in this. It just becomes a really sweet place with sharing.
So these are some things that I say. How about this? I’m so excited about how God made your sexuality. I want to maximize your erotic potential. It might make you freak out at the moment, just hearing that. But I want to maximize how God made you to feel pleasure. I want to learn about your body. I want to learn how to give you great hand jobs. I want to grow in my ability to give you great kisses all over your body. Great blow jobs. Sorry if I’m making some of you blush. I’m just saying this is how you can maybe begin speaking to your husband.
I want to learn. Even just saying this, can you tell me what would make you feel loved sexually? What could I say that could make you feel strong? What words could make you feel comforted? What could I say that makes you feel appreciated in bed? Ask him. Because oftentimes we don’t know man speak and he doesn’t know woman speak. We’ve said this so many times over the year, “Hey, actually this is what I need to hear from you.” So just straight up ask him, what do you need to hear from me? I want to maximize your masculinity. I want to honor your sexual strength. What do you need to hear from me, and I’ll say it? It has even looked literally like this guys, as simple and as maybe elementary as this sounds.
Wyatt and I will be intimate. We’ll cuddle. Maybe we’ll have been physically intimate one moment or emotionally intimate, but he’ll say, “Hey babe, I need to hear this from you.” And he’ll give me a sentence. And it might feel a little awkward at first because you feel like, well, that didn’t come from me. It came from you. But that’s okay. You’re learning how to love him. And that’s what marriage is about. It’s learning how to love each other. And sometimes you need a really clear roadmap because you can’t read his mind and he can’t read yours. So he’ll give me something to say, something like, “Hey babe, sleeping with you is the highlight of my life.” I would never have thought of saying that. It would never be on my feminine radar to even think about that, but that mattered to him. And so, I’ve gotten actually really comfortable saying that and it’s playful and it’s sweet, but it communicates to him that sleeping with him is important to me.
Sleeping with him is not just something on my to-do list that I tolerate. Sleeping with him is not just a checkbox on my weekly things of taking care of my people. It’s something I look forward to. It’s something I have anticipation about. It’s something that’s special to me, that is important to me, that matters to me, that is fun for me. And when I say those things to him, I can see his soul get filled up. It’s like a twinkle gets in his eye and he has this little boy feeling of happiness that is hard to find in other places of our life because life is full and life is stressful. But when we can love each other tenderly in that way, it is really powerful.
These words will help your husband become stronger, more courageous, take more initiative. It’ll help him be a better risk taker in love with you and family life, because pretty much all of life beats our husbands down. Work is hard, finances are stressful, things are competitive in the marketplace, but you get to be a safe place of validation and support and strength for him to know that he is a strong man to you and God has made him to be a strong man, and you get to honor and celebrate his masculinity.
A few other things you could say are, Hey babe, I just want to love on you and I want to learn to love on you. Will you tell me what feels good to you? Or, I love your whole package and I want to learn how to touch you in a way that makes you come fully alive, head to toe. These are just some fun little phrases that you can say so that he knows that you are so into him and it’s not too much for you. You are not shut down by him. You want to welcome him and you’re making it clear. And as you do that, it’s a very sweet invitation for him to know he’s safe and that you honor and celebrate his masculinity and his strength. Because you doing this, will help you realize that your words have the ability to affect your husband’s body, his heart, and his mind. Your words are incredibly powerful.
This validation of your husband’s vulnerable sexuality will actually help him become more of the man he’s made to be in the bedroom and in other parts of life. Because we’ve talked about the ripple effect of sex, how we grow together sexually, the love we share, the love we make has this ripple effect that flows outward. And when your husband feels built up by you, when he feels like you admire him and respect him and honor him and validate him, that sense of shoulders, back, chest out, I think I can do this, feeling leaves with him out of the bedroom into work, into his conversations with colleagues, into his challenges that he faces because he feels supported and he feels built up by you.
Okay, the last thing I want to say is what to do when your man initiates and you’re feeling a little tired or not in the mood. How do you care for his heart and honor his masculine strength when he initiates and you are not up for it? Okay, so I want to bring it back to the body. The body is a visible thing that reveals the invisible. This is bringing in theology with the body again because we can’t get away from it, and I don’t want to ever get away from it. So when your husband has an erection and he’s looking towards you, and this is all assuming you’re not in an abusive relationship, you’re not with a manipulative man who’s taking advantage from you, you’re just grinding it out, doing the life, doing your best, okay?
If you are in those situations, run for help, run for counseling. Do not stay in that situation. But if you’re in a normal everyday life marriage and your husband initiates and you feel too tired, or you can’t handle it, you’re just not in the mood. A couple things: one check, is it just that you’re tired and a minute of refreshment could help you? If so, choose connection because it’s worth it and say, “Hey babe, I am so into you. Can I have 15 minutes to go freshen up in the shower and shift gears?” Just that phrase communicates to him he’s not being rejected, you’re really into him, and you want to be with him. Inside you might be feeling like, ah, I’m not ready, because you still have spit up on your shoulder or you’re still in your work clothes, or the whole kitchen is a mess, and you’re still thinking about how all the things you have to do before bed.
But just say, “Hey babe, yes. I’m so into you. I love being with you. I want to be with you fully, mind, body, and heart. So let me switch gears. I’ll be back in 15 minutes. If you could help put the kids down, that would actually really help me switch gears.” You can name things that would help you be present, because that’s the whole deal is honor, honor, honor. Affirm with your words, and figure out how to switch gears so that you can actually enjoy it genuinely. And you don’t have to just flip the switch immediately. You can set it up so that you’re in a position to enjoy it.
If there’s no way for you to do that in the moment and you really are sick or you really do have a genuine headache, he’s like, “Hey, how about we do it?” or “Hey babe, are you into it?” Or whatever he says. “Oh babe, I love being with you so much. Being with you is so thrilling. I feel horrible tonight. Could we wake up 15 minutes early in the morning and connect then? I really want to be with you, and I want to be with you with all my energy, and I just don’t have that tonight.” And then maybe you could just give him a little pat pat or a little rub or a kiss and just affirm the fact that you love his initiation. You telling your husband I love your initiation multiple times a week will minister to his soul because he needs to know that he’s not too much for you and you want his initiation. You don’t want a man who shut down and checked out because he’s been rejected too many times.
And so I just am hoping that you get the fact that you’re powerful. Your words have enormous impact. And you becoming a student of your husband, learning what will minister to his heart, and knowing that this is ministry. Loving your husband sexually is a beautiful place of intimate ministry that only you have access to. And as you minister to him, as you speak words of life over him, as you find out what touches or strokes feel good to him, what words make him feel built up on the inside, what phrases make him feel desirable and attractive to you, those things can be a profound and powerful experience of maximizing his masculinity. And it not only benefits you, it benefits your whole family. And truly, our world needs men who are built up in right ways, who have a sense of holy masculinity, of what it is to be strong servants, to be humble leaders, to know how to serve and initiate in all areas of life.
And the most intimate place starts with you, and welcoming his initiation, and seeing his sexual strength as an outward display of his inward desire to be close to you and to be one with you and to experience joy and pleasure with you. That’s a gift. So my invitation to you is to turn this upside down to know that our world is railing on our husbands with toxic masculinity, trying to conform them and beat them down into emasculated, intimidated men. And we have the opportunity to come in the opposite spirit. We have the opportunity to build up our men, to maximize their masculinity, to honor their holy masculine strength, to build them up with our words, knowing that the weight of our beauty and our influence has huge ramifications for good.
And we can build them up. We can realize that I have a choice to build up or tear down, and I’m going to choose to build up. I’m going to choose to honor. I’m going to choose to be receptive, to enjoy him, to be into his body, to learn about his body, to become a more skilled lover with my hands, with my mouth, with all of me, to become more playful and engaged personally, so that not only does he feel enjoyed, but I am realizing how fun it is to be engaged and to reciprocate that joy and that energy, and to know that I am really powerful as a woman to enjoy him and to be enjoyed by him. And all of that feeds the passion, the excitement, the lightheartedness, the joy, the pleasure of your marriage bed
And there is a ripple effect. It ripples out and it matters. What happens in those intimate places has an impact. So I invite you to take advantage of your strength, to build up your husband’s confidence, to celebrate his body, his drive, his strength, and to remember that when you say “I do” in marriage, this is what you’re saying yes to: I do commit to affirm you. I do commit to build you up. I do commit to honor who God has made you to be and to call you into that strength, to set a table to say, hey babe, come and feast on this love that we share and help me love you more. Teach me what would make you feel comforted. Teach me how to say what would make you feel strong. Show me what makes you feel appreciated. Help me be a better wife to you in the ways that are meaningful to you.
And I think as you venture down this road, you’ll find that your husband’s heart is really touched, and his masculinity is affirmed in a way that maybe the church hasn’t done a great job of. And I think you’ll have fun doing it too. And the best thing about it is that we have a whole lifetime of marriage to learn this stuff. There’s not pressure to figure it out today, but this is an invitation to start.
So let’s pray. God, thank you for the invitation to be powerful wives who draw out and cultivate our husband’s holy masculinity. We just repent for lies that we’ve believed about our husband’s masculine strength, that maybe it’s a burden or too much or a duty, or just a simple thing that doesn’t matter too much. We just want to honor how you made our husbands. We want to honor their masculine strength. We want to honor their drive and the fact that even as they sleep, their body is producing sexual hormones to make them tune into us and attune to us and pursue us. And we just thank you for that.
We thank you for how you made them good. We thank you for how you made them with all the features that their body has, and we celebrate that good design. I pray, God, for greater intimacy in these marriages. I pray for breakthroughs, for healing, for vulnerability, and even in the places where this might stir up conflict or a need for healing, we just lean into healing. And by your spirit, would you minister to the deep wounded places of our hearts and in our husband’s hearts, and draw us into wholeness, mind, body, and spirit so that we can bare your image, reflect your image to each other, and see your glory fill our homes and this earth. In Jesus’ name, amen. Okay, friends, thank you so much for joining me. This has been a sweet chat. I pray it encourages you and I look forward to next time.
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