11 Ways to Honor Your Husband as a Dad

What your husband wants most as a father is your support for his parental authority.

My dear sisters! If we only knew just how critical this issue is in our families, our children’s entire lives, and in our society, we would not take a flippant, casual attitude toward it.

If we don’t carefully nurture our respect for our husband’s parenting, we are creating unimaginable pain for our children in the future and even for society.

Honestly, we need to foster a culture of respect and honor for everyone in the home—Dad, Mom, children, grandparents, and everyone.

God’s authority structure is for our blessing, protection, and provision—and to bless our children. He provides parents to guide, love, nurture, and discipline children. We are supposed to teach them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord so they will grow up to be godly, responsible members of society who will know how to have healthy marriages and be godly parents one day, themselves.

In God’s order, the husband is to be the head of the home.

The head of our homes are under more attack today than ever before on every side. Disrespect for fathers and husbands is mainstream. Just look at commercials and TV shows to see how fathers and husbands are portrayed often as idiots. It’s tragic!

The husband and father is the one who ultimately holds accountability and responsibility for the management of the entire family before God. God has given him this position, not because he is better than the wife or because he is always right, but to reflect the picture of the Gospel.

Children learn to honor God-given authorities, and eventually, God, Himself, by watching the way their mom honors their dad’s authority in the home.

Children are drawn to the gospel by the interaction between their godly parents.

The father is to represent the love, leadership, selflessness, humility, gentleness, wisdom, and leading of Christ for the church. The mother is to represent the admiration, respect, and cooperative spirit of the church to follow Jesus. (Eph. 5:22-33)

Children learn who God is from watching their dad’s character. And they learn how to relate to God by watching Mom relate to Dad. They also learn how to properly approach any God-given leader with respect and honor by watching Mom interact with Dad.

Moms and wives never have to respect sin or cooperate with sin or abuse. (If that is your situation, please pray for God’s wisdom and reach out for trusted, experienced help if you need it for you and your children.)

But most of us, thankfully, are not in that position. For most of us, our husbands aren’t asking our children to sin or disobey God. And most of our husbands aren’t dangerous to our children. In fact, what is more dangerous for most children is for their fathers not to be involved in their lives.

A Father’s Leading and Discipline Are Critical for Healthy Children

It doesn’t take long to look at statistics of children whose dads are absent, addicts, or incredibly emotionally/spiritually unhealthy to see that children do not do well without healthy relationships with a loving father.

STATISTICS from THE NATIONAL FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE

  • More than 19 million children in America (more than 1 in 4) live without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home.
  • They are at 4X greater risk of poverty
  • Girls are 7X more likely to become pregnant as teens.
  • They are more likely to have behavior problems.
  • They are more likely to face abuse and neglect.
  • They have 2X greater risk of infant mortality.
  • They are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol.
  • They are more likely to go to prison.
  • They are 2X more likely to suffer from obesity.
  • They are more likely to commit crime.
  • They are 2X more likely to drop out of high school.

Moms are important. Children need loving, involved moms.

But children need dads, too. Dads are a different kind of parent. They have a different approach that brings balance to a mom’s perspective and approach.

They generally know how to help keep kids on a straight path and help them avoid serious trouble in the future.

There are things that only a dad can teach and only a dad can properly model.

Dads are different. But that doesn’t make them automatically wrong. It makes them valuable!

We moms can’t be good fathers. Our children need to see us honor our husband’s parenting. They need to see that both of their parents are united and that both parents honor each other’s authority. But they especially need to know that mom honors Dad’s authority.

This is how they will learn to respect and relate to God properly and how they will learn to relate to people in positions of leadership respectfully in the future.

11 Ways to Honor Your Husband’s Parental Authority

  1. Support any instructions or commands he gives the kids in front of the kids.
  2. If you have a serious problem with something he wants the kids to do, speak to him privately and respectfully about your concerns.
  3. Uphold his rules even when he is not home.
  4. Require your children to speak respectfully to Dad with good manners. Reprimand them if they are disrespectful, or support Dad reprimanding them.
  5. Let your children know that when there is a significant decision to be made, you need to check with Dad.
  6. Pray for God to give your husband wisdom to lead your family and children.
  7. Thank your husband for his leadership.
  8. Let him do things his way even if he is a bit more rough or adventurous (unless he is doing something extremely reckless that would be considered child abuse biblically/legally).
  9. Remember that you will not think the same way he does and that he helps to balance you out for the benefit of the children in the future.
  10. Remind yourself that the baby books and parenting books often change their minds every few years. Just because he isn’t doing something exactly the way the latest book says to doesn’t necessarily mean he is wrong.
  11. Speak highly of him to your kids and to others.

When you do the opposite of these things, you are undermining his authority. That hurts your husband and children deeply.

Lord,

Please help us see the areas where You want to change our hearts, minds, and words. Help us to see where we are undermining our husband’s authority, and therefore, where we are undermining Your divine authority.
We repent of this and seek to learn to honor our husband’s parenting so that we can honor You and point our children toward Your best for them. Amen!

THE WEEKEND MARRIAGE CHALLENGE

Choose 3 or more of the 11 ways to honor your husband’s parental authority this weekend to focus on.

Let us know you are joining the challenge in the comments so we can encourage and pray for one another.

Share

What are some ways you have learned to honor your husband as a father? We’d love to hear your ideas!

Resources

10 Reasons Why Kids Without Dads Are at a Disadvantage – by www.allprodad.com

The Importance of a Father in a Child’s Life – by a pediatrician’s office

What Does the Bible Say about Christian Fathers? – by www.gotquestions.org

For more ways to honor your husband’s parenting, there is an entire chapter on this subject in the book, The Peaceful Mom (by April Cassidy).

Respecting Our Husbands As Fathers – Part 1

Respecting Our Husbands As Fathers- Part 2

12 comments

  1. I appreciate your boldness in speaking the truth about a Dad’s role in their children’s lives, and how we Moms need to respect and honor him in this. Good reminders for me to focus on #3, #8, and #11.

  2. This spoke to my heart today April.

    When you see everything God instituted in Genesis – turned upside down – destroyed – twisted and undermined – you know that Satan knows what he is doing! Destroying God’s ordained order – and even using Christian wives to co-operate with his purposes! I can’t willingly ally myself with Satan’s wiles! Much prayer is needed.

    Thanks April – for being like a woman warrior – right there on the front lines – where Satan says “Did God really say?” Your weapons are not in physical or mental strength – but in the armour of God and obedience to His revealed Word and will.

    And we women of God either hear and obey – or…..? If in ignorance – we might claim some excuse – but on reading all that April herself has been through – and shone the light on – and how she expounded God’s truth – I either agree with “Did God really say?” – or I agree with Scripture and godly wise counsel – or I become discouraged because l’m so far away from living the truth – and so it seems too hard to turn everything around – OR I agree with God – and in repentance I turn around in radical obedience – for His sake and because this is my calling as a Christian woman and wife.

    And because “Better is one day in your courts Lord – than a thousand somewhere else”. Psalm 84.????

    1. Martha M,

      Once we have eyes to see, there is no way to take but God’s. Anything else so clearly leads to destruction and heartache. Many of us have unwittingly cooperated with the enemy to attack and subvert God’s design and His order in our own homes. It is sobering to see the devastation. But God is so gracious! When we repent, He can restore us and He is able to heal marriages and families, too. That is my prayer!

      I praise God for what He is doing in your life! It is BEAUTIFUL! I praise God every time I think of you.

      Yes! One day in the Lord’s courts are better than years anywhere else.

      Thanks so much for sharing.
      Much love!

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