What Your Husband Wished You Knew About Him

Q: What else do wives need to know about their husbands when it comes to approaching sex and physical intimacy with the right mindset?
 
Ladies, your husband just wants you to want him! My husband, Steve, makes this powerful statement in the book:
 
“When a husband knows his wife desires him sexually, it gives him a special sense of empowerment … This is not about ‘conquering his woman’ nor is it arrogance. Rather, it is a quiet confidence that comes over a man when he believes his wife actually wants to make love to him. When my wife puts my needs above her own through love-making, her selflessness empowers me to be effective for God’s kingdom. And you may be delighted to find your husband energized to accomplish whatever God is calling him to do as well. In my experience as a pastor and biblical counselor, husbands who are sexually satisfied at home are deeply in love with their wives.”
 
If you are one who really just does not enjoy sex with your husband, or if you have issues that prevent you from wanting to make love to your husband, I wrote an e-book to help entitled A Christian Woman’s Guide to Great Sex in Marriage.
 

Q: Raising kids can bring a great deal of stress to a marriage relationship. What are some practical ways to keep marriage strong amidst the chaotic years of raising children?

Your children’s security lies in the health of your marriage relationship. When you learn to live with your sights upon God’s calling on your life—to know Christ and make Christ known—this will influence how you live at home. God intends you to live in a manner that draws your kids to Christ in good times and in difficult seasons. In 18 years of youth ministry, we observed the number-one thing that drove kids away from Christ was the hypocrisy they observed in their Christian parents.
 
Remember that your genuine love for the Lord—no matter how happy or trying your marriage may be—will do far more to draw your kids to Christ than any words you can ever say to them. Whatever trials you encounter, if your kids see you and your husband united in purpose to display Jesus’ character in your relationship to one another, they will come to understand your relationship with Jesus really is the answer to all of life’s problems.
 
And if your husband is not a Christian, do not fret. God can shine brightly to your children through a godly woman who determines to honor the Lord in how she relates to her unbelieving husband.
 
Q: Trials often ruin marriages. What encouragement can you offer to a woman who finds herself amidst the storm or in a difficult, tumultuous marriage?
 
You are on a mission: Every follower of Christ is called to reach people for God in their generation. We are to know Christ and make Christ known so that people might come to redemption. When you and your husband learn to live with a missional perspective, you will stop looking to each other to fix the difficult situation and turn to God instead. And you will trust that whatever trials or blessings come your way are divinely orchestrated by God so “that you may be blameless and harmless, sons of God, without fault, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine as lights in the world” (Phil. 2:15). This allows God to use whatever means necessary to grow your faith to shine His glory through you to create an appetite in others to know Christ—beginning with your own children.

Q: What special features are included at the end of each chapter? Tell us more about the contributions your husband, Steve, made to the book.
 
I love the special features that are included in this book. At the end of each chapter you will be encouraged to go to my website, NoRegretsWoman.com, to listen to a short audio excerpt of me teaching on each chapter. You will hear me share intimate details of my own marriage and many of the wonderful love stories, as well as practical application to help you build a no-regrets marriage.

Each chapter also has sections titled “Thinking it Through” and “Living it Out.” These sections have questions to answer based on what the reader learned in each chapter. There are also Bible verses to look up. This is a great study to do alone, or to use for a book club. I encourage women to start an online book club through Facebook so they can read through the book with their friends and have a virtual discussion online.
 
My husband, Steve, wrote the section “From a Husband’s Perspective” for each chapter to help wives gain insights from his perspective as a husband, pastor and biblical counselor. Steve did such a wonderful job trying to help women realize how their husbands think on specific issues. Many women have emailed me that they have been reading Steve’s perspective to their husbands, and the husbands are all in agreement his words are spot on how they think and what they wish their wives would know about them. Often husbands end up reading through the book with their wives once they listened to Steve’s insights.