A loving leader will love his wife unconditionally. He will love her when she's undeserved loving. When she hurts him and says harsh things to him, he will do exactly what God does. He loves us even when we do wrong. And so a husband will love his wife unconditionally.
And I like to say, guys, I don't think you'll do that without the help of God. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. Well, I have to be honest. Yesterday, as we were interviewing Gary Chapman.
Who's back with us today? I had already read his book, but I found myself taking notes for myself personally, not just for the interview. Like, oh, I need to do this and this. I have two pages of notes of things that I need to change in my marriage to be better. Oh, I feel the exact same thing. And we're not newlyweds. We're four decades in, and we're taking notes not to teach somebody else, which we do a lot of, for our own marriage.
Yes. This is stuff you need to hear. If you missed yesterday, go back and listen. And then come back to day two, because we only got two of the five traits of a healthy family. Gary, thanks for being with us.
Can you review yesterday in like a minute, the first one serving? Yeah, we said that one of the characteristics of a healthy family is there's an attitude of service. The husband has an attitude of serving the wife. She's serving him. They're serving the children.
They're teaching the children how to serve each other and serve other people. An attitude of service. If it's a healthy family, that'll be there. And secondly, there will be intimacy between the husband and wife. And we said that's not just physical intimacy. That's emotional intimacy, spiritual intimacy, you know, social intimacy, the whole, we're just sharing life with each other in a deep, deep way.
Enimacy between the husband and the wife. Those were the first two. And I'm guessing some listeners just said, okay, I'm done. I got to go work on that for the next six months.
I can't even get to number two or number three, because I'm not doing number one. Well, Gary, we talked about this a little bit yesterday, but if we want this and we long for it in our marriage, those that doesn't seem like they're on the same page with us, even spiritually, how would you encourage that listener? Well, I think we don't blame them. We just say, Lord, what can I do in this situation? And because Jesus said, you know, don't go condemning the other person. Deal with the speck in your own eye or the plank he said in your own eye. So I just say, Lord, what can I do? Because one person can change the atmosphere of a home. And that attitude of service is, I think, the first place you start.
It's good. Yeah, I know when a wife or a husband would come up to me after a sermon usually as a pastor and say, I just, I can't change my wife. I can't change my husband. What do I do? What would you say? I know what I said. What would you say?
I would say you're right. You cannot change your spouse, but you can influence your spouse. And the most powerful way to influence your spouse is to have the attitude that Jesus said, and I'm here to serve them.
I want to learn. See, I'm writing this down right now, you guys. Consider others more important than myself. That's right. And I want to find out what I can do to express love to them, like learn their love language and speak their love language, for example. Whether I feel love or not, I want to be God's agent for expressing love to them and serving them. And you're having the most powerful influence you can have because your service and your love to them is going to stimulate something inside of them that draws them to you.
Yeah. We always start with ourselves. And Gary, I would add, because I've tried to do this in my flesh, it lasts about two days. But when I'm with Jesus and I'm asking him and talking to him about it, I'm in his word, that's when his spirit can work. Otherwise, I'm just trying to do it in and of myself and I don't have the power. But the Holy Spirit lives within us to change us. Yeah, I think that's why walking closely with God, because the closer we walk with God, by spending time in the scriptures, talking to God, being honest with God, sharing life with God, the more we realize it's not our power, it's his power. But we've got to open our hearts to it. The love of God is poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. So, Lord, you know how I feel about my husband and I don't have any positive feelings for him, but I know you love him. So, I'm opening my heart, pour your love in to me and I'll just channel it to him.
So good. Lord, he's doing the same thing toward his wife. I had a guy I counseled years ago, decades ago. He's actually passed with the Lord now, but he and his wife have married 30 some years. He had an affair and it became known and he left his wife to go with a single woman. And they had great kids.
They were pillars in the church, not our church, but another church. And the long story short was he came to me and said, we need help. I want to get my marriage back. My wife kicks me out of the house, blah, blah, blah. I said, you got to come with us to a weekend member marriage conference we were doing in Chicago.
They went, sat among five, six hundred other couples, got back to Detroit. I said, hey, what happened? He goes, nothing. I got nothing for her.
This marriage is over. I'm like, you got you got to fight, you know, you got to. I couldn't convince him. And I don't know what happened. But about three months later, he calls me up and he goes, well, we're back together. I go, I know what happened. I know what happened. I'm going to tell you, but I didn't know then.
He told me, he said, I realized God wants me married to my wife. I don't love her. I don't feel love for her. Our physical relationship is done.
I'm going to do the right thing and ask God to give me my feelings back. Is that what you're going to say? He actually left his job because that's where the woman was.
They had the fair with. He goes, I can't be around this woman. I'm going to quit this job. I'm going to go back home and I'm going to ask God to give me feelings and I'm going to love her and serve her.
And they had a great marriage for the last 20, 25 years of his life and it changed their legacy. And when you just said that in early ago, you do the right thing. He did it. He said the feelings were not there when I did it. I did not even want to do it. I did it because I knew I am a Christian. I got to obey God and this is the right thing. And the feelings slowly came back. That's exactly right. All right, so let's talk about it.
We've got the first two done. What's the third trait of a healthy family? In a healthy family, parents will teach and train the children. Ephesians 6.
Yeah, Ephesians 6. It says that we're to bring our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Those two words, one has to do with using words, teaching. The other has to do with training, actions. Words and actions go together. So in teaching and training our children in a healthy family, as parents, we see that as our responsibility. These kids in 18 years are going to be ready to move on to college or join the military or something.
We've got 18 years here to teach and train them. And if we use both words and actions, and in our culture, we tend to go to one or the other extreme. There are parents who have the attitude. All you have to do is just explain to your children why you want them to do something.
And they'll do it because they're intelligent. And so they explain it, but if the child doesn't do it, they explain it again, a little louder. And eventually they're yelling at the kids. And then the other are the ones that you don't have to explain kids. You just tell them what to do. You're the parent. Put words and actions together.
And I sometimes describe it like this. Let's say that you have a rule that we don't throw the ball inside the house. We throw the ball in the yard. If you throw the ball in the house, then the ball has to go in the trunk of the car for two days and you don't get to have the privilege of using it. And if you break something, we'll have to pay for it out of your allowance.
Okay? Child understands it. You understand it. Every time you have a rule for your children, tell them what the consequences will be if they break the rule. And so then when it happens and they do throw the ball in the house, you go in and you say, I'm so proud of you because you usually keep the rules.
Oh, but you know, this time you did throw the ball in the house. So you know what has to happen, right, honey? And he's nodding.
Yes. And probably crying. Let's take the ball out to the trunk of the car.
He put it in the trunk of the car. Now, I don't know what the vase will cost. We'll have to find out, but we'll have to start taking out of your allowance. But listen, man. I'm proud of you because you seldom break the rules. What you're doing, you're wrapping the discipline in love and the child's far more likely to receive the discipline because you're wrapping it in love. If you're listening and you're thinking, I have drastically failed.
I am with you and in your corner. That wrapping it in love. And you're right. If you know their love language, they have broken the vase and broken the rule.
And you start out saying, I'm so proud of you. Wait, what? What?
This doesn't even make sense. But it's so disarming to the child, probably. Yeah.
Because they're already like, oh, no. I mean, how did that work in your home? Well, we had to learn it. Yeah. We didn't know it in the early days.
Oh, good. You didn't do it in the early days. We had to learn it. The reality is we typically, all of us, respond to the child when they disobey a rule based on our own emotions. So if we're kind of uptight already and we're busy doing something and then we hear they broke the vase, we're going, I told you not to do this. We yell and scream at them based on our emotions. But if you let them know beforehand what the results are going to be, the consequences will be, you're far less likely to act out of your emotions because you already know and they already know what the consequence is going to be. And so I think we overreact if we just do the natural thing. Now the way you describe it right here, it makes me think you guys never made a mistake in parenting.
Did you ever blow it or have any mistakes or regrets? I'll tell you the saddest night of my life in raising a child was our son was 13 or 14. And he and I got into an argument one night, and I don't remember the topic, but I was yelling at him and screaming at him and said hateful things to him and he said hateful things to me.
I mean yelling and screaming. And in the middle of the whole thing, he walked out of his room, which is where we were, walked across the living room, went out the front door and slammed it. And when he did, I started crying. And I said, God, I thought I was further along than this to be yelling at the son I love. And Carolyn came in and tried to console me and she said, Gary, I heard that whole thing.
He started it. He's got to learn how to respect you and I don't know what we're going to do with him. Well, she kind of finally gave up on trying to console me because I knew I was wrong. And so I just got on my knees and poured my heart out to God and asked him to forgive me. And finally, when he came back in, I don't know how long it was, but he came back in and I said, could you come in here, son? And he sat down and I apologized to him. And I said, a father should never talk to a son the way I talk to you. And I know I said some horrible things and that's not the way I feel about you.
I love you very much. And I'm, I'm sorry that I lost my temper at you and I want to ask you to please forgive me. And he said, dad, that was not your fault.
I started that and I shouldn't talk to you that way. And when I was walking up the street, I asked God to forgive me and I want you to forgive me. And we hugged and we cried. I sometimes say that's one of the saddest nights of my life and one of the happiest nights.
Sad because of my failure, happy because I just heard my son apologize and I knew someday he'd be married. Yeah. He would need to know how to apologize. Well, it's almost when you tell that story, it's like, there's a trait of a healthy family is confession or apology. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, the thing that I... Only in your sin and mistakes. Yeah. The thing that I was thinking as well, when you were approaching the discipline and the consequence, but wrapping it in love, I really thought that's how our father God is with us.
Yeah. He loves us. He has a different perception of what God is like, but I now, I didn't use to, but I now see God like that. He's not like, Oh my, you know, he's not yelling. He's like, Oh, first of all, I love you, but there is a consequence, you know, to our actions, to our sin, but he always wraps it back in love and I think that's why we have to run to him because he's the safest place and the most loving person that we could ever encounter. Yeah, absolutely.
I love that that gives our children a glimpse of God's love for them, but also his consequence is out of love. Absolutely. Yeah. All right.
We're on number four. In a healthy family, husbands will be loving leaders. Not a popular idea in our culture because we have a distorted idea of leadership. You know, many people have read the husbands, the head of the wife is Christ is the head of the church and they say, well, that means he's the president.
He's the vice president or he's the general who tells her what to do. No, it says the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. What did the head of the church do for the church? Lay down his life.
He died for the church. That's why I say loving leaders. If a husband recognizes I'm here to lead this family and what it means to walk with God and how to have a fellowship with God. And that begins by serving my wife like Christ served the church. Most wives are not going to run away from that kind of leader. So a loving leader, and in the book I kind of spell out what that really looks like. Just try to be more practical.
Yes. Share some of those with us because we don't often hear it today. One of them is that the loving husband would view his wife as a partner. We're on the same team. I'm not here to win an argument with her because that means she's a loser. I don't want to create a loser. She's a partner with me.
We're on the same team. And then the husband will communicate with his wife. One of the most common things I hear from wives is I don't ever know what he's thinking. He doesn't ever share it with me.
I don't know what he's thinking. So a husband will share, will communicate with his wife what he's thinking because he sees them as a team. And then a third one is that the husband, he will put his wife at the top of his priority list. Now when I say that, people say, wait a minute, God's supposed to be at the top.
And I say, right. But when a husband reports to God for duty, God says, okay, let's see, you're married. So your first priority is going to be to serve your wife like Christ served the church.
Oh, okay. And then a loving leader will love his wife unconditionally. He will love her when she's done deserve loving. When she hurts him and says harsh things to him, he will do exactly what God does. He loves us even when we do wrong. And so a husband will love his wife unconditionally. And I like to say, guys, I don't think you'll do that without the help of God. Before all this stuff in Ephesians, it says, you know, first of all, don't be controlled by wine or liquor, but be controlled by the Holy Spirit.
Let God pour his love into you and you can do it. You can be this kind of a leader in your home. Yeah. I think often that's missed in that Ephesians 5 passage where you just said, it comes out of the context of this is how you get the power.
It's the filling of the Holy Spirit. And then there's a discussion about marriage and even parenting. And we think, oh, okay, I got to muster up enough energy and I got to figure out how to do this.
And you're like, well, that's a good move, but you can't, you'll just fail and fail and fail until you go, Jesus, you got to do this in me and through me. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, do you have stories like you did with your son, with your wife, where you didn't love and lead like you're just talking about? Or are you the perfect husband? No, I was the perfect husband the whole way around. Yeah, me too. Me too.
We bet she's not here any Tuesday. No, as I said earlier, there were many times that I was yelling and screaming at her. And then in the later years, there were times when I didn't yell and scream outside, but in my mind, I was yelling and screaming at her, you know, why would you do that? And a lot of it was just over practical stuff. The way she loaded a dishwasher, I mean, I'm an organized person. I believe it ought to be everything in its place. It'll all get clean.
Nothing will get broken. She loads the dishwasher like she's playing Frisbee, you know, and I tried to explain to her, you know, God is a God of order. I bet that went over well. What is it about the dishwasher?
We hear more stories about this because we all feel right. Eventually, my wife said to me, honey, if it's so important to you, why don't you load the dishwasher? And I said, well, yeah, okay, I can do that. But I said, some nights, honey, I have to go back to the church right after dinner. And so you'd have to load it on those nights. She said, well, I don't mind loading it.
And I'm thinking, I know you don't, but I've got to unload it in the morning. And I want to tell you another layer of that. Twelve years ago, my wife had cancer, went through surgery and through chemotherapy, lost her hair, and she calls it her lost year. She lost weight and that's all she did. You just walk through that year and now she's fine, you know, but when you go through that kind of experience, none of those things bother you. Sometimes when she loads the dishwasher now, I look down there and I laugh, say, thank you God.
She's still here to load it like that. Gary, it was the same kind of story. I was meeting with a nurse and I was just talking to her briefly. She asked what we did and we talked about marriage and writing and all that. And I just talked about our book was about how we almost lost our marriage. And she said, yeah, I used to be really bugged about the things that my husband did. And I said, did you divorce? And she said, no, he died in a plane crash. And she said, every day I'd look at these glasses, the couple of glasses, these drinking glasses and he just leave on the side of the sink and it used to drive me crazy.
And then she, and this has been maybe 20 years ago and she, but she got teary and she said, what I wouldn't give to see those two glasses sitting by that sink now. All the things that I thought were a big deal were nothing. It's exactly what you're saying. Absolutely.
Puts it in perspective. Okay. You got one more? Yeah. The last one is that in a healthy family, children will obey and honor their parents.
What does that look like? Well, I think obedience has to be learned and I think we do for our children what God does for us. We give them guidelines. We call them commandments in the scriptures. These are things we don't do.
These are things we do. Every commandment God ever gave, negative or positive, grew out of his love for us. So all of our rules flow out of our love for our children.
Don't have unnecessary rules, have rules that are for the good of the child. When they do obey the rules, we reward them. And I've heard people say, well, why do you reward children for doing good?
God does. I mean, the Psalmist said, you know, Lord, your statutes are there for me and when I do them, you bless me. So you know, commend them for the positive things for obedience. The Psalmist accepted as a normal thing, affirmed their obedience.
So we teach them to obey and I think also by letting them suffer the consequences when they do wrong. So I said to a father once when his son was put in jail overnight because he was driving under the influence and he said, I'm going to go down and get him out. I said, you can, but I wouldn't suggest it. He said, what do you mean? I said, let him suffer the consequences. I said, you can get him out tomorrow or next week or whatever, but let him suffer the consequences.
Let him sit there a little while. Because we learn, all of us learn by suffering the consequences that we're always worse when we break God's law. Yeah. And so let him suffer the consequences. Why do you think it's so hard for us as parents to do that? To let that, especially I feel like in a culture now, it's very hard to let our kids suffer the consequences. Well, I don't know. I don't know because we don't want them to have to suffer. You know? We hate them to be sad or broken.
Yeah. We want them to be happy, but they're going to be happy on the other side if they suffer the consequences, they're less likely to do it again if they suffer the consequences. I've always talked about writing some book, 10 best gifts parents can give their kids and every one of them is a negative, adversity, trial, hard work, you know, it's like, those are, you know, those are the best gifts because when I remember when our boys were going into high school, we were like, one of the, one of our values for the Wilsons, we even took our name Wilson, W means work hard. We want to raise boys, we had three sons that know how to work. And so we're like, what are the hardest jobs they could do?
And they both did them roofing and cement and then they come home just like, you know, a hundred degrees on a roof all day covered. And we had other parents saying, those are dangerous jobs. I wouldn't let my kids do that. I'm like, yeah, that's what we're letting them do it.
I mean, again, you don't want to put your kids in danger, but you want to let them feel a hard day's work if that's a value and let them go through the thing. And they do. They know how to work now. I thought we're going to make them hard workers. But when they got into those jobs, I think one of them already was, but one of them was like not. And so Dave said to his boss, you have my permission to kick his butt, like make him work hard.
Yeah. Cause he told me after like a month, he goes, your son's not a hard worker. And I looked at him, he was at church, you know, I'm his pastor and he felt bad saying that to me. And I said, Ron, kick his butt. He goes, what? Make him a worker.
That's I hope you can do that. And I'll tell you too much later, Ron came up and said, your boy can work. We know Ron's character.
He's a fun, loving, great guy. And so he did it in a way that was great. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, when you say children that obey, did you have a lot of rules? Did you have just a few?
What it looked like in the Chapman house? Well, I think we didn't overdo it. Yeah. I mean, there were some specific things and to me, that's key specific things that you do or don't do. We had more trouble with our son than we did our daughter. I mean, our daughter could have raised herself, you know, she just did, always did things right. And he was exactly the opposite. And your poor son having that comparison to his perfect sister.
Yeah. You know, she said when she was eight years old, when I grew up, I'm going to be a doctor. So when she went to high school, she took three years of chemistry and four years of Latin in high school.
And Derek said, Shelly is so focused, she's going to miss out on a lot of life. Because he was never focused. He had a little rock band in high school. He was the guitarist and the lead singer.
And we'd go to his shows, you know, local shows, just small group things. When I wrote a book some time ago called Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Became Parents, one chapter is, I wish I'd known that no two children are alike and let them be who they are. No two children are alike or four children, yes. Let them be who they are. That's right.
Yeah. Hey, Gary, let's end here. Like if I'm listening to five traits of a healthy family and I'm like, we're not healthy.
What would you say? Where do I start? How can I start a journey toward building a healthy family, husband or wife?
We'll hear Gary's answer to that question in just a minute. But first, I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Dr. Gary Chapman on Family Life Today. Dr. Chapman has written a book called Five Traits of a Healthy Family, Steps You Can Take to Grow Closer, Communicate Better, and Change the World Together. You know, one of the ways that we taste and see that the Lord is good is by actually experiencing a healthy and thriving family that honors the Lord.
Because it's a family that's rooted in biblical principles. So this book is going to be helpful for you and your family in order to taste and see that the Lord is good. And it's going to be our gift to you when you give today to the Ministry of Family Life. You can get your copy right now with any donation by going online to familylifetoday.com and clicking on the donate now button at the top of the page. Or you can give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329. Again that number is 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Or you can feel free to drop us something in the mail if you like.
Send your donation to Family Life, 100 Lakehart Drive, Orlando, Florida, 32832. All right, I want to hear his answer. So let's get back to Dr. Chapman answering the question, where do I start?
If I don't have a healthy or thriving family? I think, you know, the first thing I would hope, and if I could do it, I would give a copy of this book to every couple in the world and begin to work through it as a couple if the spouse is willing. Let's just read this chapter by chapter and see what we can learn and what steps we can take to improve.
And don't get in a rush. It may take you a year, but you're just working through it, but you're making changes because changes have to take place incrementally. And most of the changes have to start with us being changed and asking God to change our attitude, you know, and help us to have a loving attitude rather than a selfish attitude. Because your family can be better. It can be better, but it does take effort.
It does take choices. It does take discovering what we can do to make it better. And your kids will get into it.
Where they begin to realize that you're making changes, they'll get into it and they'll help you begin to create a healthy family. You know, especially with hope that people that grew up in a dysfunctional family and have no idea what a healthy family looks like, they're the ones that could really profit from working through something like this. Well, thanks for helping to make all of us healthy and to seek Jesus. Thank you.
You're a hero. Enjoy being with you guys. Thank you. Coming up tomorrow, Jill and Paul Miller are going to be here with David Ann Wilson to talk about their daughter Kim's disability with autism and its impact on their family. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
