Christian Homekeeping

You can read, Part 1 Sexual Needs here.  Now, I'm going to move on to the second need a man has and needs from his wife; Psychological Needs.

Psychological Needs

Men need admiration from their wives.  They need moral support.  They need you to be their biggest cheerleader.  They need to know you are in THEIR corner.  They need to know you are on THEIR side.  They need what God said they needed - a help meet.

Genesis 2:18

And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

A lot of women will gossip about their husbands to other women.  They will also ridicule him or put him down in public.  They are his biggest enemy, if truth be told.  They are not in his corner and definitely not on his side.  I've known women that are only proud of their husbands when it makes them look good.  They are selfish and not a help-meet at all.

If everyone is against him and he can't count on you either, then you are not being a help meet, much less a wife.

I'm embarking on a new series concerning marriage.  It is much needed, and most especially in the Christian church today.  Men and women have forgotten what marriage is, how it should operate, what is needed and how to keep it.  I will be covering the husband, the wife and divorce and remarriage.  This has been on my mind since earlier this year and I pray it will be a blessing to you.


Loving Your Husband

This is comprised partly, of my opinion, based on my experience(s), combined with the Bible and psychological studies over the years.  I believe there are 3 extremely important areas of a man that must be met by his wife:

1. Sexual needs
2. Psychological needs
3. Emotional needs

Sexual Needs

I put this number one because it truly is men's number one need.  There are feminists out there that want to deny this.  There are Christian "experts" who want to say it isn't a "need".  However, I will step out and say it is NUMERO UNO to most normal men.  A man by nature has been given a sexual drive that far surpasses the female in most (not all) cases.  It is something that can only be suppressed for so long. 

The wife does not own her body, the husband does.  I hear some of you wagging your finger in the air saying that ain't so, but lets see what God said:

1 Corinthians 7:4

The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband:...

Your husband should be able to enjoy you when he wants.  He shouldn't have to beg for it.  He shouldn't be denied it.  He shouldn't be put off to another time.  You should freely meet his sexual needs as often as he would like.  I know that I just upset a whole lot of women but this is really how it should be.  Our society is made up of feminists who think men have to beg for it, be denied it, earn it, work for it, etc.  That is cruel knowing that your husband's greatest need as a man is his need to be fulfilled sexually.  There are times that you can both agree to abstain for a time due to extraordinary circumstances.  I would think this would be things like surgery, sickness, moving, etc.  However, if you have a headache every time he wants it, you need to rethink your true motives toward these "illnesses" that put him off.

1 Corinthians 7:5

Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. 

If you defraud your husband - you will reap the consequences!  You can't deprive him of affection and expect him to feel good towards you.  I knew many women in recent years, yes Christian women, who would brag about not letting their husbands have it unless he did this or that.  I remember being disgusted at hearing them talk to one another and laugh as if it was some sort of a game.  I was thinking of their husbands and how horrible it was probably for them to endure deprivation in such a manner and also to remain pure before God and resist temptation.  These wives put their husbands in a situation that made him weak to fight off temptation.  I personally believe that they are partly, if not more so, responsible for the husband's infidelity, if he did get to that point due to his wife's defraudment.

I know this flies in the face of society and our culture but it should be the normal teaching in the Christian world.  If you truly LOVE your husband, it will not be an issue to meet his greatest need.  To not meet it, is to not love him.  You are his partner in life and you should be the one that does all you can to help him resist all that is around him.  Everywhere men turn there are women showing themselves off.  He already fights this daily and if you neglect your duty, you make it even harder for him to resist lust.  He has a hard enough time and you are supposed to be his cherished love - act like it!  If you don't love him, believe me, someone else will.

Being a Christian is a life of self-denial, being a sinner is a life of selfishness.  Wives, you have to deny yourself sometimes when your husband needs it and you don't feel like it.  Feminists want to be selfish and hold it over their husband's heads, as if they have the power.  This should not be so among Christian wives.

My husband has said he has never lusted after another woman than me in our entire marriage of almost 18 years.  He hasn't even entertained the thought.  There is a reason for that, besides simply being saved and filled with the Holy Spirit and a man of high character, - his wife meets his needs.

Disclaimer: I know there are even Christian men, who will have wives that meet their needs and still lust, view pornography (which is adultery) and commit acts of infidelity.  These men have become unbridled somewhere along the way and allowed their thoughts to be uncontrolled.  That is not the wife's fault!  I also believe if a man wants it 5 times a day, he needs to gain control of himself.  You can't expect the wife to fulfill her duty past the point of physical harm in such cases.  This would be something one should seek a medical solution to, to lower the sex drive.

Part 2 - Psychological Needs

After we became debt-free in 2011, our goal was to not buy a home until we had a good amount to put down and we had a fully-funded 6 month emergency fund.  Well, you long-time readers know my story, it was medical situation after medical situation for several years.  By 2016, we had rented for 16 years and we had nothing to show for it.  Thankfully we had good landlords who liked us and they kept our rent very cheap the whole 9 years we lived in our last place; a mobile home.  There just wasn't a time we could save up money for this elusive down-payment.  I even called Dave Ramsey and you know what he said - No way, keep renting till you get there.

Sorry Dave, but we decided to go forward and buy a home after much prayer.  The rent in the area we were moving to in Ohio for a 3 bedroom in a decent area, was just too much and would have put us in a situation of no savings.  We needed something that was 25% of our income for all that the housing entailed and housing prices were very affordable compared to rent.  We got a very low-interest rate and no down-payment thanks to being veterans.  I'm glad we did buy because now we have our mortgage locked in for 30 years and we are only using 25% of our income for housing costs (including taxes/insurance) and we can build everything else around that.  I think was the smartest thing we ever did!  I wish we hadn't waited so long to do so and just took the plunge.

We are fixing up all the regular maintenance issues that come up and it is still proving to be better than renting for us.  One thing I highly recommend to any homeowner is American Home Shield home warranty.  They have been awesome and fixed whatever came up with our older appliances.  We have the full plan that covers just about everything (HVAC, plumbing, appliances, electrical, etc.) and it is something that a home inspector we knew in WA, that was a pro, even has for his home.  Other than that, we are paying an extermination company to come 4 times a year, as we live across from a lake and have a few more insects than we care for.  We are learning to DIY with a lot of things that have come up.

You have to have a place to live and God will provide!  You either owe the landlord or you owe the bank.  With the landlord, you have nothing left to show after your years of payments.  With the bank, you will eventually own the home yourself or at least be able to sell it for the equity you have in it.

We actually bought our home without even seeing it!  The first time we saw it was when we pulled up before we went to sign the papers.  It was everything I had hoped for and more actually.  God just knows how to pick 'em!  My husband decided to heed the Holy Spirit and go to this city that God gave him in prayer 3 years prior one night.  It was the next morning after that, that this house was listed for sale.  It was in the area I got in prayer from the Lord and it had everything on my "wish" list.  It was in a perfect neighborhood too.  There was no need to go check it out.  When you go on faith - you BELIEVE and God delivers!

We didn't even have all the money to move and take care of what we needed to but FAITH got us there.  And just like that - God gave us all the money we spent for our move back.  I sit back and look over this past year and think - HOW!?  Then, I hear God say - according to YOUR FAITH!

This is our first time ever having a garage and I'm amazed how much stuff we have accumulated.  A friend said God touched his heart to build us shelves in our garage when we first moved here.  It was a blessing and all we had to pay for was the materials.  I don't know where everything would have went without these shelves!  He also built in some areas to hang the weed-eater, shovel, ladder, etc.

Here they are when they were first built:

I haven't really showed many pictures of our new house and it has almost been a year (in 2 weeks) since we bought it.  This is the first house we have bought, as we had rented for 16 years.  It truly is a blessing!  I kept waiting to get my kitchen just right for photos but I gave up on that, this is good enough.

I've always wanted white cabinets but most houses we had seen, had brown or pine cabinets.  I thought I would have to settle but then we found this house and the cabinets were white!  They were originally pine but the previous owner painted them white.  I also love the gray counter-tops and the white sink that is deep and I think it is ceramic.  I also love being at the sink and being able to see outside or into the living area.

I've prayed in earnest over the years in various situations with various people for what I (or they) perceived that they needed.  However, in many of those situations, I learned that my perceptions are not always right as I saw what happened when God answered my prayers.  I learned that God's omniscience surpasses our human capacity of perception.

Let me give you some examples of what I'm talking about.  One situation was where I prayed and asked God to bless someone monetarily for the years they went without for the cause of the gospel.  I really sorrowed over this person's financial state of extreme debt and I thought money was the answer.  However, upon God answering my prayer and this person coming into large sums of money (more than once!), they didn't use it to pay off their debt, they spent it and then went on vacations, etc.  I was so mad!  I was thinking how could they just ignore God's blessings like that (and more than once!) and not free themselves from their debt?  Then it hit me - God knew that money wasn't the answer to their problem.  Their problem wasn't a lack of money.  Their problem was a spirit of debt, greed, etc.  God showed me that I should have prayed for them to be free from the spirit of debt and greed instead.

Be careful when you pray for others.  Be careful what you perceive to be the answer for them.  Really stop and pray and wait on God to give you the wisdom on what to pray.  I've had people ask me to pray for something specific but I felt the Holy Spirit letting me know that wasn't what they needed or what they needed to be praying.  I try not to agree to their demands of specific prayer but rather tell them I will pray what God leads me to pray.  Here are some examples to help guide you in this process:

1. Praying for money for someone - be sure money is the solution!  Do they have a spirit of greed or debt?  If so, pray for their deliverance of these spirits.  Do they have a problem handling their finances?  Pray God gives them the ability and wisdom to handle their finances.  Are their money problems because they have a bag of holes because they are seeking after money more than God?  Pray they return to their first love and put God first.
2. Praying for a bodily or physical need - will healing truly heal them?  If they are wanting healing of structural or muscular issues, do they have a problem with laziness or not moving much that will still be there after healing?  If so, pray for the spirit of laziness to be removed and for God to give them the ability and desire to get up and move around more AND for them to be healed.  That way, when they are healed, they will also not continue in the same mindset as before that got them there.  A lot of our bodily and physical issues are from our own making.  We can pray for healing and God WILL heal us (He is touched by the feelings of our infirmities) but if we want long-lasting deliverance, we must pray for what caused it in the first place.  This is but one example.
3. Praying for someone to get a specific job/position - Be very careful with this one!  Is this the job or position that is right for this individual?  Is this truly what God's will for them is?  Seek God in how to pray for this situation.  I've known situations that if the person had gotten the job that they sought after, it would have ruined them.  I've also known those who did so and got the job or position, and it did, indeed, ruin them - sometimes in God and sometimes in other ways as well.  So many men are led away by this and it is combined with the spirit of the pride of life and even greed in some cases.  I liked what my husband prayed this year when he got laid off due to company cutbacks.  He prayed for God to close every door of the other companies he was applying for, if it wasn't what God wanted for him.  Not only did God close the doors but He busted open the closed door at my husband's job and (long story) after a lawyer got involved with a workaround with the union, they saved my husband's job and he is still there today.  Thank God for a man that knows how to pray correctly!
4. Praying for someone to get away from someone else - this is quite common believe it or not.  I hear it a lot: "Pray for me that I can get a different desk at work to get away from this person that is making me angry and/or causing me problems."  Is it truly the other person that is the problem?  If it was, then you moving away should solve it.  However, that is not the case a lot of the times, you just find another person that bothers you just as much, if not more.  Rather, let us pray that this person be delivered from their irritableness, lack of long-suffering, anger and/or becomes easily intreated, but in most cases the deliverance prayer needs to be that of - from pride.  There are some cases where it is best to get away from someone when the above things are not a problem with the person involved.
5. Praying for someone's child and their behavior issues - Most, if not all, behavior issues from children are because of the parent.  Behavior issues in children sometimes stem from a lack of attention from the parents, especially and most importantly, from the mother.  Many adults are walking around with mother-hunger because their mothers were not there for them - physically, emotionally or psychologically.  It is a need that MUST be met in all of us and if not, we will be prone to addictions in adult life, seeking after what only our mothers could have given us.  So - check yourself as a mother.  When I get asked this from women, I usually pray for the mother unless I'm impressioned by the Holy Ghost to pray for the child.  Another cause of behavior issues in children is not enough sleep.  Other causes of behavior issues in children could be abuse, demonic spirits or medical issues.

I could go on and on but I think you can begin to see the pattern and understanding with these examples.  The smarter we pray, the more we can help others and ourselves!  Don't let your perceptions get in the way of someone that you love and their deliverance.  Seek God and allow His omniscience to guide you into how to pray for others.