Helping Husbands Lead

The role of a husband within the family has become a running joke within our culture. Sitcoms, cartoons, and movies depict dad as a doofus who can’t do anything right, which is the predominate view of male leadership. In some ways, this stereotype is deserved because it merely reflects what has happened to the men in our culture. Men aren’t submitting to their God-ordained role in marriage and they are not leading their home’s well. Commonly, men abandon their role in the family leaving nothing but a dad sized hole in the home. Sadly, many of the husbands who stay around, selfishly abdicate their role so that they can give their lives to other selfish pursuits. This is a serious problem, in fact, the abandonment and abdication of husbands is probably more devastating to the Christian home than an unsubmissive wife. God made husbands the head of the house (Eph 5:23), which is a position of functional and spiritual preeminence. This does not make him the most important person in the family, nor does it mean he must always be served by everyone else in the home. Headship means the husband must exercise the primary influence in the life of the family and that he possess the primary responsibility for the spiritual condition of his household.

In order to fulfill his spiritual duties in family life, a husband must influence his home by proactively setting the pace, establishing the priorities, and teaching the principles by which his family will live. These three categories—the pace, the priorities, and the principles—help to define how a husband should lead and they also guard against an unbalanced view of headship. It is a biblical truth that the husband is the head of the house, but it is an unbiblical distortion to think that means a husband must micromanage every detail that takes place in the home. The wife’s primary ministry to her family is to mange her household (1 Tim 5:14), which will require her to make decisions concerning the day-to-day operations of the home. She does not need her husband to dictate every detail of family life, nor would that be helpful. However, she does need her husband to provide the leadership that will allow her to fulfill her ministry in an effective way. The wife’s ministry in the home does not negate the husband’s responsibility to faithfully manage his home (1 Tim 3:4) by providing the kind of direction that allows everyone under his care to follow his lead. This direction frequently comes back to the three categories mentioned above.

What does it mean to set the pace in your family?

Basically, setting the pace of family life means that husbands need to decide how much their families are going to do and what their ongoing commitments will be. Husbands, you need to honestly evaluate your family’s capacity for life and ministry so you can set a healthy pace for family life. Sometimes setting the pace at home requires that you protect your wife from overburden (1 Pt 3:7). Sometimes setting the pace at home requires that you push your wife to strive more diligently in service (1 Cor 11:1). You will have to carefully balance the genuine need for rest with the constant temptation of selfish indulgence. As you are thinking through the pace of family life, keep in mind that every season of life will be different and your capacity for life and ministry might ebb and flow over time.

Additionally, think about the longterm goals you want to accomplish within your family. If every day is driven solely by the goal of getting the kids to bed early so that you can watch Netflix with your wife, you are going to look back one day and realize that you didn’t accomplish anything of lasting value with your leadership. You want to set a pace that will lead to longterm spiritual growth for those under your care. Here are a few diagnostic questions that can help you think through the pace of your family life:

• If we do this how will it affect other priorities and commitments?

• If we don’t do this what would we do that would be more profitable?

• Am I letting my selfish desire for comfort drive my thinking?

• Do my expectations for my family match God’s expectations?

• How am I working to make sure we keep up an appropriate pace?

What does it mean to set the priorities in your family?

Once you have determined how much your family can handle, you need to determine what your family will do. There are a lot of great things your family can do (and some that are not so great), but you must decide what your family will prioritize. One of the most significant failures in the Christian home today is the setting of wrong priorities. Families are exhausting themselves and their resources with youth sports, specialty diets, and trendy hobbies leaving little to no room for the means of grace in their family life. They have filled their homes with things that may not be sinful, but were never intended to be focal points of the Christian life. When you think through the priorities of your home, you must:

• prioritize spiritual matters over earthly pursuits because your family needs to learn how to store up treasures in heaven more than it needs to earn treasures on earth (Mt 6:33);

• prioritize the means of grace over leisurely pleasures because your family needs to learn how to feed on the means of grace more than it needs to enjoy itself (2 Cor 9:8).

• prioritize ministry over entertainment because your family needs to learn to serve the church more than how to entertain itself (Heb 10:24).

Here are a few diagnostic questions that can help you think through the priorities of your family life:

• What is vital to family life at this stage in life?

• Where do we exert the most energy and spend the most resources (time, money, etc.)?

• Do the priorities of our household match the emphasis of the NT?

• Do the priorities of our household emphasize eternal matters and the means of grace?

• How can I model the life patterns I want my kids to follow when they are adults?

What does it mean to set the principles in your family?

Christ leads the church with the truth and husbands must lead their homes with the truth (Ps 25:5). You must hold deep convictions about biblical principles and clearly articulate those conviction to those under your spiritual care. This means, you must be able to understand and explain the reasons for the pace and priorities you set for your family. In doing so, you are providing a biblical grid to train your family how to think biblically about life. Your goal should be to lead them into the knowledge, belief and obedience of the truth (2 Tim 2:25), which means you must root your leadership in specific biblical truths. It will be far easier for your wife to submit to your leadership if she can see from Scripture why you are leading her in a specific direction. In fact, you need to allow her the opportunity to develop the same convictions that guide your leadership, and that requires time and truth.

You must patiently communicate biblical principles and persuade your family with the truth. Here are a few diagnostic questions that can help you think through the priorities of your family life:

• What are the core biblical principles that guide my leadership in our home?

• How am I communicating these principles to my family?

• Have I explained to my wife why I expect certain things from her and our family?

• Am I allowing her to develop biblical convictions and helping her to do so?