areas in your marriage where you need to start showing some leader-
ship. Ask your wife to point out areas where you can be leading her and
your family. Examine the major areas—your faith, your marriage, your
family, your job, your relationships with friends, your service to the
community, your physical health and well-being, your stewardship
over the resources God has given you, and your recreational time—and
decide where you need to begin to take some initiative and lead.
As you lead, make sure to check your heart. Are you making deci-
sions that will bring honor and glory to Christ and that will lead you
and your wife to grow in your relationship with Him? Do you stand
to gain personally from the decisions you’re making? Remember,
when you exercise your leadership for selfish purposes, you’re abus-
ing the important responsibility God has given you.
Do some strategic planning.Most successful businesses have a strate-
gic plan, mapping out where the company is headed over the next five
to ten years. Things change, of course, and the businesses adapt. They
work hard to consider market conditions, examine competing orga-
nizations, access their own strengths and weaknesses, look for oppor-
tunities on the horizon, and then set the course for their businesses.
Many of those same businessmen, who can establish a successful
plan for a company, are clueless when it comes to thinking strategi-
cally about the spiritual, emotional, physical, and social needs of their
wives. Ask them about their five-year plan for their marriage and
you’re likely to get a deer-in-the-headlights look.
In their book Intimate Allies,Dan Allender and Tremper Longman
III write about this aspect of how a husband should function as king
in marriage: “We are called to cultivate Christ in our spouses.... To
do so effectively, we must be guided by a vision of who they are, a pic-
ture of who they were meant to be [like Christ] and a grasp of our role
in helping them become like Christ.”^8
During a “FamilyLife Today” radio interview about the book,
Allender talked about writing a short-term mission statement for his
wife. When he began explaining the idea, I thought it sounded pre-
sumptuous. But as Dan talked about encouraging and exhorting his
wife to become all God wants her to be as a woman, as a wife, and as
The Husband as Prophet, Priest, and King 111