Hope Beyond "I Do": The Give-and-Take of Domestic Harmony, Part 3

Chuck Swindoll titled his classic teaching series, Hope Again. And today on Insight for Living, we're picking up this study in a familiar passage written to husbands and wives, 1 Peter 3. In our previous messages, we focused on Peter's counsel to wives. Today, however, our attention turns to husbands. And before our time is finished, you'll hear a riveting real-life story of God's grace in a marriage that appeared to be over. For anyone who's lost hope, this husband's account provides a profound reminder that God is never finished.

Chuck titled today's message, Hope Beyond I Do. Now it's your turn, men. And even though you get one verse, there are three powerful commands to the husband in this seventh verse. You husbands, the first command, live with your wife.

This word translated live means to dwell together, to be at home with. It conveys a close togetherness for which you, husbands, and I are responsible. It isn't the wife's task to develop the togetherness of the home.

It is the husband's job. And right away I move to the second command, know your wife. See verse 7, husbands, likewise, be at home with your wives in an understanding way as with a weaker vessel. Remember the word in verse 7, likewise, submitting to the Lord Jesus Christ, husbands, submitting your will to him, giving him your selfishness, not demanding of your wife more than is fair play. Know your wife. And third, look at the command, verse 7, grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life. Honor your wife. Live with your wife.

Know your wife. Honor your wife. See the word grant, grant her honor. It means to make an assignment.

It's a rare original word and it has in mind assigning someone something. And Peter says, assign your wife a place of honor. Wonderful counsel.

How do you treat your wife on an average day? I don't mean after a message like this. I mean after a message like this.

It is going to be wonderful. Let me help you with the door. Oh, let me get the key. I'll open the door. Oh, let me carry you over the threshold.

Not after this talk, okay? Two months later, honor the wife. Honor her. A place of significance and tell her that. Don't just act it out, tell her. Write it out. Leave her notes.

Add that to your week. Send her a letter. You know, a letter you address to home and stamp it will actually come to your home. And she will actually read it. You might include a little glycerin tablet she can place under her tongue so that if it's that kind of surprise. There are neurotic husbands as well as neurotic wives.

I promised you the list from Osborn's book. The explosive argumentative domineering husband. That's one neurotic kind of husband. The compulsive husband. The uncommunicative husband. The child husband. The hypochondriac husband. The passive silent retreating husband. The playboy husband. And last but not least, the neurotic tightwad husband.

Isn't Peter on target? Isn't this a magnificent section of truth and you will never read stuff like this in the Times or in Newsweek or in any periodical you'll ever receive in this generation. You'll only get it from the scriptures. And this works.

Not some stupid extreme interpretation of it. The truth of it works. It works, men and women. It revolutionized my home.

That's why I know it works. I didn't come from a great home and my wife didn't come from a great home and we were determined if we were going to make it we had to go God's way and we had to equally be willing to change. And I'll tell you of the two, I have had to change the more. About the time I think I got it whipped into shape, another area emerges and I have to deal with that.

About the time I get kids taken care of and they're gone, then grandkids invade and they're back. Ladies, your actions, your adornment, your attitudes, your attention couldn't be any more important than in the home. Husbands, living with your wife, getting to know your wife, honoring the woman God gave couldn't be more important.

Couldn't be more important. You know the promise that you can gather from this last part of the seventh verse? Your prayers will not be hindered if you cultivate this kind of a relationship. Maybe that explains why your prayers aren't being answered. So that your prayers may not be hindered.

It's an old sports term for cutting in on the stride of a runner who has the inside track. Your prayers won't be cut in on, is the word used by Peter. Let me give you a couple of projects. Number one, let me suggest in the next week that you spend some time together and write down four qualities you appreciate most about your mate and tell them. Write down four qualities you appreciate most about your mate and tell them. Tell them why.

Across each one of them. Second, using 1 Peter 3, 1-7 as your guide, admit the one thing you would most like to change about yourself. Admit the one thing you would most like to change about yourself. Now don't get those two backwards. Don't mention four things you want her to change in and the one thing you like most about yourself.

That's not the project. Get the thing straight. Don't skate. Talk truth. Refuse to blame. Don't turn it into an evening of confrontation.

Make it an evening of getting back together. Risk being transparent. I promised you an interesting conclusion on this talk and now I can hardly wait for it. I want to introduce to you a man I did not know until this evening, but Bob Kraning, our pastor of adult ministries here at the church, heard last Thursday evening in Escondido. This man's name is Chuck Tyrell and having met him and having heard Bob tell his story, I felt like it was worth being repeated. Chuck, would you come join me up here and let's spend a few minutes hearing your story because it illustrates so beautifully, so beautifully what I've been talking about. It seemed worth risking, huh, to have Chuck come stand in front of people he's never stood before and to have you hear from a man that you've never met before. Chuck, I wonder if you'd unsnap that mic right over there that's got the yellow band around it.

It'll pull right off. There you go. Walk on over here, will you? Welcome. Up nice and close. Thank you. Chuck, tell us a little bit about your past. Will you do that?

I'm not used to this, so please bear with me. The Lord gave me one thing back and that was my emotions and I'll try to do the best I can. I grew up in a little town in Minnesota, kind of a backwards little community. It was a good high school. At 13 and 14 I started into drugs and alcohol. I started smoking pot, not any real great stuff because back in Minnesota you don't get real good stuff. But I went through that and I liked motorcycles and went through a lot of things in high school. Didn't like the cold so I decided to move out to California. Came out to California and got in with a crowd that was doing acid, doing a lot more drugs and drinking a lot. And was working at a little factory and I saw this little blonde who's still with me today working on a punch press across the way and I said I like her.

I'd like to go out with her. The first night we went out we took acid and from that time on we lived together. We lived together for four years before we got married. We had our oldest daughter named Tamara two years after we were together and went through the process of finding out what you have to do when you have a kid out of wedlock and going through all that. At the time we decided to get married.

We said it'd be a good tax break, be good for insurance. It was okay to do. We were still very heavy into the drugs. My wife and I had saved up and I bought my first Harley and I also gained an attitude.

That attitude was a not caring attitude. Still going out trying to be the macho biker, going through a bunch of different people, different ways of doing things. My wife and I arguing, fighting whenever I came home drunk because if I can go back a little bit my wife had a mother that was a social alcoholic and she has a brother who is still an alcoholic and we pray for him. But we went through a lot of garbage and we had our second child Miranda. Finally we had a business of our own. I moved from the one company we had a business of our own for four years.

We went through a bankruptcy. I found out my wife had had an affair for 18 months. At this time I was also in the pornographic scene watching movies, going through a lot of garbage trying to tell my wife what we should be doing and things like that. We came out of all that and moved into a little house and my wife, actually my youngest daughter Miranda who is with us tonight, met a friend at school and her little friend said, would you like to come to Sunday school? And my little daughter said, yeah I think that would be fun.

Can we come, can I go with you? And she said yeah. Well my daughter started a chain reaction. My oldest daughter started to go to church, to Sunday school with another friend. From that point as women do and you ladies are very good at it, you talk to each other very good whereas men don't do that a whole lot.

We talk about a lot of garbage but we don't really talk about things that are important. My wife met Debbie Reynolds, not the actress Debbie Reynolds but a friend of ours. She went through and she told my wife because my wife liked to look slim and trim, she said there was an exercise class at church, would you like to come?

This was a class called Slimmer Size and they teach low impact aerobics with Christian music. My wife started to hear the Christian music. She started to listen to Debbie. She started to understand, wait a minute, there's something here, there's something that I can't place.

She started to go to the church on Sundays. I still stayed at home and I thought it was a bunch of bunk. I thought there was no way. I believed, if I can go back again, I had a large argument with one of my aunts at a family gathering that we had. I believe in flying saucers and chariots of the gods, if any of you have seen all that stuff. I had no belief in God that he was real.

I said I don't think there's anything to that. At this point my wife going to church was asked to go on a lady's retreat. My wife went on the retreat.

Pastor Strauss, our pastor's wife spoke at that retreat. My wife came back. I was still getting drunk, still getting stoned and doing whatever. I came back and my wife started to change. My wife started to look at me and say, you're okay. My wife came to know the Lord a couple weeks later at our church. I come home drunk.

I come home wasted away. My wife started to hug me. She started to actually come up and not acting, not doing anything else, but she started to hug me for real and tell me I was okay, tell me that she loved me.

At that point in time I went, wait a minute, this is crazy. My wife, I worked with my wife for a long time and excuse me for the tears. I worked with my wife for a long time and you didn't talk with my wife before 10 o'clock in the morning. My wife rolled over, looked at you, did not smile, kind of grunted, got up, did whatever she had to do and we went to work.

Her boss didn't even talk with her before 10 o'clock in the morning. She actually rolled over in the morning and smiled at me and said, I love you. To have this woman do that in my bed, I couldn't understand it. I couldn't believe it. Debbie's husband, Greg Reynolds, had been talking with me a few times and he said, there's a men's retreat coming up, would you like to go? I said, no, I don't think so.

I still think this is a bunch of bunk and I'm not buying it. I went. I don't understand why, but I went and I saw a bunch of guys. I've still got my Harley parked in the garage and I said, these guys are riding bicycles. There's a bunch of yo-yos.

This is stupid. Why am I here? Dr. Mitchell from, I think it's Biola, Curtis Mitchell from Biola was there. And as he was speaking, I said, wait a minute. Somebody told him I was here. Somebody told him that I didn't know the Lord because everything he said seemed to beat me severely about the head and shoulders telling me that I needed something and I needed to do something to make my life whole.

After seeing what happened to my wife, I was getting a little worried that something may change and yet I saw these guys and I went, no, this confirms that they're way out of whack and I don't want to do that. Dr. Mitchell kept preaching. Finally, I started reading a little bit in the Bible that was there. And in the morning, one morning right before we left, it was a Sunday morning, I went to a little arena that was there and I asked the Lord into my life. I asked him to take the loneliness and the hurt and the pain out of my life and give me my wife and my kids.

And he did. I have a wife that we still have our problems. We still go through trials and everything, but she loves me and I know that. And my kids even like me, which to me is surprising because of all the stuff that we went through. I can get on my knees in the morning and again, my wife said something to me and I don't know where she gets it, but she said, can we get on our knees and pray in the mornings?

This has only been for about two or three months. We started to pray in the morning and when I go to work, I feel like a Superman. I feel like the Lord is there at all times. But you wives do it with love because we can see through the garbage. We can see if it's an act, but if it's love, please use it because we're a bunch of yo-yos. We don't know a whole lot at times. And I'm sorry guys if I'm copping out here, but it's true. It will happen and it can happen.

And that's what happened in my life. Praise God. Having heard what we have heard today and being moved over it, as I'm sure you have been, I'd like us to pause for a few moments to think about all of this.

If you're in a place where you can bow your head, I invite you to do that. If you're not, just listen closely. Today we've been encouraged to analyze our actions, to watch our adornment, to check our attitude, to evaluate our retention. Women, this is a great time for you to think about that in your own life. And husbands, we've been exhorted to live with our wives, to know our wife, and to honor our wife. A harmonious relationship doesn't just happen.

It's the result of a lot of prayer and a lot of dedication and hard work. This may be a good moment for you in evaluating your own domestic setting to ask yourself, is there anything I need to address? Not in my wife or my husband's life, but in my own. And while we're doing that, this would be a good time for you, if you've never trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, to take care of that now. Remember the old hymn, Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, but he washed it white as snow.

Great words. Jesus didn't just whitewash our sins. He cleansed us of all our sins.

That which was once scarlet is now white as snow. Our sins are forgiven. Our need is to trust the Lord Jesus Christ's death and resurrection on our behalf, that we might know God in a personal way. Do that now, won't you?

Take care of that right now. And so, Father, thank you for the conviction and for the exhortation and for the encouragement and for the inspiration of this time we've had together. May it be in every way profitable in our lives. May there be a difference in our marriage. And for those who've never trusted in your Son, may there be a transformation in that life.

I ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. This is Insight for Living. You're listening to the conclusion of a practical message from Chuck Swindoll about the give and take of domestic harmony.

To learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. Well, we understand that sometimes your best learning happens apart from this daily program. To dig deeper on your own, I'd like to remind you that Chuck wrote a helpful book on this topic and there's a complete section on cultivating domestic harmony. His book is called Hope Again. When your marriage is struggling, it requires intentional effort to restore harmony and even good marriages need consistent work. If you're ready to apply the kind of lessons that Chuck described in this particular study, we believe his book will help you.

It's squarely founded on the time-tested wisdom of 1 Peter. To purchase a copy of Hope Again, go to insight.org slash store or call us. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888. Bear in mind that your gift to Insight for Living large or small will be directly applied toward providing Chuck's teaching on your station and to countless others who listen beyond our borders. I just saw a note that said, Chuck, I started listening to your radio broadcast when I was in high school via FEBC in the Philippines. Your teachings and sermons helped me grow spiritually as a new believer and led me to serve God through local missions and later overseas in a restricted country. Wow, that is so encouraging. Since our first broadcast in 1979 until now, God has magnified the reach of this ministry through generous people like you.

Here's Chuck. Thanks, Bill. I'm always delightfully surprised to see the comments you leave on our website or in the letters you send to Insight for Living.

And thank you for each one. Many people tell me, for example, that they have been following our program for five, ten, even twenty years and more. Some go all the way back to the very beginning, July 1979. I smile as I remember that I was only in my forties back then when Insight for Living first went on the air. So go ahead, you can do the math, all to say I'm now living in the most rewarding season of my life, preaching every Sunday morning just as I did from the beginning. Today I want to appeal especially to those who have relied on Insight for Living through all these years. It's quite possible that in the early days you didn't have a lot of margin in your budget for nonprofit ministries. Believe me, I understand. Perhaps you had a young family and your resources were tight. But today things have changed.

The picture is different for you. I want to encourage you to give generously today and do for someone else what someone once did for you. Insight for Living reaches young moms and dads, students even children, you name it, people from all walks of life.

And the extent of our reach is directly correlated with those who are willing to prayerfully and financially support Insight for Living. Please, as we approach June the 30th, our financial deadline, please be especially generous as we continue to provide the hope of Jesus Christ to every generation and to all people everywhere. Here's Bill to give you our contact information. And I look forward to hearing from you today.

That's right, today. And here's how to get in touch with us at Insight for Living. If you're listening in the United States and would like to speak to one of our ministry reps, call us at 800-772-8888.

Again that's 800-772-8888. You can also give a donation online at insight.org. Thank you so much for your generous support. We look forward to hearing from you soon. I'm Bill Meyer.

Join us next time when Chuck Swindoll discusses Hope Beyond Immaturity on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Hope Beyond I Do, The Give and Take of Domestic Harmony, was copyrighted in 1988, 1990, 1996, 2006, and 2010. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2011 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.