Husbands, Love Your Wives

I just posted here on Pastor John Piper's announcement that he is taking an eight-month leave of absence from all public ministry to focus on his wife and family. My wife and I had been going over a study Pastor Piper wrote some years ago on Spiritual Leadership, and one of the essential qualities of leadership he identified was loving your wife. This seems a very appropriate time to share what he wrote back then:

"Here I am speaking directly to men who are husbands and leaders. Paul said in Ephesians 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives!" Love her! Love her! What does it profit a man if he gains a great following and loses his wife? What have we led people to if they see that it leads us to divorce? What we need today are leaders who are great lovers. Husbands who write poems for their wives and sign songs to their wives and buy flowers for their wives for no reason at all except that they love them. We need leaders who know that they should take a day alone with their wives every now and then; leaders who do not fall into the habit of deriding and puffing their wives down, especially with careless little asides in public; leaders who speak well of their wives in public and compliment them spontaneously when they are alone; leaders who touch her tenderly at other times besides when they are in bed. ... Look her in the eye when you talk to her. Put down the paper and turn off the television. Open the door for her. Help her with the dishes. Throw her a party. LOVE HER! LOVE HER! If you don't, all your success as a leader will very likely explode in failure at home."

Thank God that He has moved Pastor Piper to focus on this, even years later, and to take the radical and humble step of telling his fellow brothers and sisters that he needs to take a break to tend to his family.