Every Woman’s Dream

fear

It’s not Rocket Science: Men and women different from one another. Equal value. Yet very different in some essential ways. So what I do is show favoritism toward both genders. A favoritism based on how God created them. Their needs. Their desires. Their beauty.

You may already know that I do training seminars for pastors and counselors. A female attendee once asked, “Do you think what you’re teaching is true for all cultures?”

“Well, I can’t say for sure. But I can say that I’ve never met a woman from any background that didn’t have a deep-down, though perhaps unstated, desire to be led by a godly man who loves her enough to protect her, to guide her, and to hold her,” I replied.

Even from the front of the classroom,
it was easy enough to see her eyes go instantly teary.

A Christian woman’s Number One “fomo”
is directly related to her Dream.

Many a Christian woman fears that her man will not be the Spiritual Leader of their family. So she takes over, and she doesn’t do it well. Although it’s better for the man to take the lead, especially with the children, she reasons that a female Spiritual Leader is better than no Spiritual Leader.

However, once she’s taken on that role – before or after marriage – it’s very difficult for her husband to step up to the plate. So please, guys, be the leader, in every sense of the word. Don’t live life under the curse anymore!

The most important task a man has been assigned is to continually direct and redirect his loved ones toward Christ. Only He can meet everyone’s needs!

Leadership is a man’s responsibility.

Men were designed to take the lead. God created men with all that it takes right there inside of him. It’s a learning process, for sure, and no man comes into this life knowing how to lead. So men need to get all the support they can.

As a husband, he’ll be held responsible before God for his family. God knew it was Eve who took the first bite of the apple, but He came looking for Adam.

You can believe me when I say I know that women can be difficult to love at times. I’m one of them, remember?

As Christian women, most of us have been taught that the man is to be the leader in the family. But in reality, women have been running the show for a long time now. Yes, a woman knows she can make it through life without a man.

But can she really live the life she desires?

Yes, she would survive. But in taking charge, she misses the beauty of what God intends your relationship to be. She not only makes it impossible for you to lead, but she denies what her heart and yours are both longing for.

Sidebar for Singles
Nice girls don’t chase boys.
Wait for him to take the lead.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  • How many women do you know who “wear the pants” in their marriage?
  • What could a woman do to encourage her husband’s leadership?

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
(Colossians 3:18-19)

Couple Communication 102

Stephen Covey wrote, “If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication.”

why do men stonewall?In my earlier post about Sean and Nicole and couple communication, “What, if anything, do you think Nicole was doing wrong?”

Nicole — like most people — wasn’t listening with the “intent to understand,” but had been listening with the “intent to reply.”

She hadn’t been trying to gain a deeper understanding of Sean. She filtered everything he said through her own experience, reading her autobiography into his life. As soon as Sean had started talking, she had already begun formulating a response. She hadn’t given him any space to really be in the relationship with her.

  • She didn’t understand him because she wasn’t listening.
  • She had been way too busy formulating her reply.

QUESTION:

Use your powers of self-observation and take notice of your self-talk (what you’re thinking or saying to yourself) when others are talking.

  • Are you silently evaluating the words of your friends and coworkers … while they’re still talking?
  • If so, you’re probably evaluating his, too.

EXERCISE:

Get better at couple communication by practicing on your friends. Listen until you’re sure you understand the other person’s point of view. That is, wait until you’re sure you’ve heard the whole story before you offer your own thoughts and feelings.

To answer before listening—
    that is folly and shame. (Proverbs 18:13)

Couple Communication 101

We can’t stop communicating … for one simple reason! According to Communications Experts, 93% of our communication is nonverbal. Your parents told you that a long time ago when they said: “Actions speak louder than words.”

slides-communication

Consider Sean and Nicole …

Nicole’s Point of View: Sean was a quiet guy. And that was one of the things that Nicole found irresistibly attractive. But after they’d been dating for awhile, she wanted more from him. During a silence, Nicole would ask him what he was thinking.

He never gave her a satisfactory answer.

Then she began begging him to talk to her. He was hesitant at first. But at her encouragement, he began to open up. He offered up two or three sentences. Then Nicole got excited about getting closer. In her enthusiasm, she’d try to get more information from him.

Then all of a sudden — at least it seemed to be sudden — Sean quit sharing. He was more withdrawn than ever, and Nicole was really confused. She kept asking him what was wrong. And he kept refusing to talk about it.

He’d just shrug his shoulders and mumble, “Nothing’s wrong.”

Sean’s Point of View: He had a very different experience of their relationship. He really liked Nicole. When they first met he loved her energy — and her chatter. She was always ready to fill the silence, so he didn’t have to worry about what to say.

After they’d been together for awhile, he wanted to tell her more about himself. But he felt like he could hardly get a word in edgewise. Nicole kept telling him she wanted to know what he was thinking. But it didn’t seem like that to Sean. As soon as he would get a word out, Nicole would begin her critique.

Nothing he said was right.
It seemed like everything he said set her off in one way or another.
So he gave up.

He began dreading their time together. And started to think about breaking up.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  • What nonverbal communication was Nicole sending?
  • Do you think she was aware of what she was “saying”?
  • What nonverbal communication was Sean sending?
  • Do you think she was aware of what he was “saying”?
  • What could each of them done differently?