The unfaithful wife…leading a man astray.

Disclosure: This blog post was written for pastor’s wives but I honestly believe that every wife can learn something from this article! Enjoy.

I can’t wait for God to bring about my husband’s call for his life. A pastor. I knew it on our first date…I told his mom later on when we got married and she was stunned, she replied she knew that since David was a little boy. Then for further confirmation his aunt told his mom the same thing in a casual conversation. It is an amazing responsibility not only for David but for me as well. I will go into detail in a bit about what I am referring to. David is truly a man after God’s own heart. He loves God more than anyone I have ever met, he has an eagerness to submit and obey the Lord in all areas of his life that is like a breath of fresh air. He is committed to live out New Testament Christianity and fully devoted to sound doctrine at whatever cost. He is like David & Goliath. So many pastors with degrees yet he has never gone to seminary. I know God made it this way for a reason. The love He has for Christ and the Word is enough to drive him to study day in and day out and when he’s done he will be another A.W Tozer or C.H. Spurgeon. God will be his teacher, just like the old days. The Holy Spirit is enough to teach a man everything God wants him to know. No seminary needed. If you look around most pastors with seminary degrees are corrupt in their theology, so what good is a degree on what man thinks of God? He rather go to the source of all truth, the Bible and the greatest teacher that ever lived…JESUS!

As a wife, God is preparing me for the role of being a “pastor’s wife”. This role is very influential (not just to a pastor but to any man, his wife is his source of influence for good or for evil). I have the responsibility to” get with the program” so to speak. Many times God warned the Israelites ( in specific Solomon) NOT to marry women from pagan cultures because they would lead them astray. That is true of us today as well…not the marrying a pagan woman (obviously) but that a wife that is NOT right with the Lord WILL lead her husband astray. No matter how strong. No matter how committed to the word…no matter how much of a good pastor he may be. If his wife is living OF the world, he will soon adjust his theology to fit the lifestyle. Take a pastor that preaches “women are to stay at home with young children and train them”…what is he to do if his wife decides she is sending them to daycare? Two things can happen: The pastor WILL stop preaching it or he will HAVE to resign for lack of being able to control his wife. Same thing with homeschooling, if a pastor is faithful to the word he preaches God gave the responsibility to parents to raise/train their children up, so his wife either gets with the program or she ruins his ministry. If he is married to a woman who wants a “life” and thinks no such thing is taught in the bible, the pastor will either have to override what he KNOWS is right in order to maintain his position as pastor because if he continues to preach the word, he is disqualified for not being able to disciple his wife and keep her under submission. I believe men out of the fear of their wives being “happy” with them and to avoid confrontation compromise their beliefs and the word way too much. I see this all the time. I can tell the kind of pastor a man is (his convictions, doctrine, etc) according to what his wife’s beliefs! If his wife is an independent woman, do it yourself, have a real life, lacking in modesty, lacking in knowledge of theology (the WORD), sees nothing wrong with sending her children off for others to do her job I KNOW that pastor will compromise the word. I know that pastor will not stand up for what’s right in certain areas that would shine the light on his lack of ability to be the leader of his home. Women have this devastating effect. They can lead their husbands in a path of being unfaithful to the word, to plainly misinterpret scripture and to look more like the world than to be set apart. On the other hand, I can tell the kind of pastor a man is by his wife’s faithfulness. If she is willing to obey the Lord and her husband, that man has no reason to ever compromise the word. He never has a reason to downplay disobedience as a preference. If she understands her role, in all areas of her life as outlined in the Bible…that man will soar. He will be a great man. A man of character, of honesty, of integrity and of value. I have found that pastors preach the word according to how they live their lives. If they send their children to public school, then they preach that homeschooling is just a “preference” (how they do that when it is a clear COMMAND from the mouth of God is beyond me! I guess we can all assume the OT is just preference stuff, hey why don’t we just assume all of the bible is to be obeyed upon your preferences? Ridiculous, I know!). If they use birth control, they preach that the bible doesn’t say anything “against” it so it’s ok. If their wives use an immodest bathing suit, it is not about modesty they call it legalism. They start the slow process of drifting away from truth into calling commands, preferences. A pastor’s wife will determine how far he goes in the ministry. Just like Adam and Eve, she influenced him to SIN. We all can influence our husbands to sin because of our own disobedient heart. This is not just a pastor’s wife’s problem, it is a wife’s problem. A godly woman who is not willing to compromise in biblical truth will encourage her husband and keep him accountable, acting at times as a second conscience leading him back to the Lord in all matters. She refuses to see her precious husband stand before the Lord and account for his error on her account. We need more godly women. We need more women that will step out of the glitz and glam of what they think life should be like and embrace the humble call of being a homemaker and to train their own children as the Lord commands. God did not give the responsibility to the government or the church to train a child, He gave it to parents. Day in and day out…when you wake up, when you walk along the way, when you lay down…it’s our duty. No sane pastor will ever tell you it is not so, he will just make a million excuses why he doesn’t do it and behind it all there’s a wife that is unwilling to submit and unfaithful to the Word. If his church would figure this out, he would be warned to get his life and wife under control. You can’t preach the word and knowingly disobey it calling it a preference. God knows. He knows why you do it and wives, he knows you are behind it 99.99% of the time so get with the program before you have to stand before God and account for being a stumbling block to your husband’s call and relationship with the Lord.

A sobering reality for all wives to understand the kind of influence we have on our husbands. It is not to be taken lightly or taken advantage of. We are accountable to Almighty GOD for the way we influence these precious men. I encourage you to get right with the Lord, to submit to Him in ALL areas of your life, to trust Him with reckless abandon and to honor your husband by submitting to him. A wife that is unfaithful to the word, will have disastrous consequences on that man’s life.