Our church has a men's group that meets on the 2nd and 4th weeks of the month. Group 1 meets on Sunday at 5:00pm and Group 2 meets on Wednesday at 7:00pm. One of the areas that all men (including myself) need to continually work on is: leadership, especialy leadership at home. In last week's lesson I spoke about this subject. Hopefully the notes will be an encouragement.
Leading at home involves
1. Spiritual leadership
2. Financial leadership
3. Romantic leadership
4. Parental leadership
• By nature, women are responders. Although they may, because of lack of male leadership, fill a leadership need, this is not how they are designed.
Spiritual leadership involves:
1. Leading by example – I Corinthians 9:27
2. Establishing the direction of the home – Joshua 24:15
3. Insuring the spiritual health of your wife and children – Ephesians 5
4. Bringing your family to church and involvement in church – Hebrews 10:25
Financial leadership involves:
1. Providing for your family’s necessities of life – I Timothy 5:8
2. Establishing the financial objectives for your family
a. Necessities
b. Giving
c. Emergencies
d. Debt Retirement
e. Retirement
f. College
3. Rejecting selfish spending
4. Participating in financial decision making
Romantic leadership involves:
1. Committing to love your wife – Ephesians 5
a. Love her the way God made her
b. Refusing to cheat
c. Maintaining the dating/honeymoon approach to relationships
d. Proactively creating time to be with each other
2. Loving even when the feelings aren’t there
3. Spending time and money to pursue her
4. Separating her need from affection from your need for sex
5. Alleviating the worries of her mind (housework, child work, etc…) so that she can care for your needs
Parental leadership involves:
1. Deciding the boundaries for your children – Hebrews 12:7
2. Disciplining your children when you are present
3. Interacting with your children to know and understand them – Ephesians 6:1-3
4. Making decisions about school, clothing, friends, sports, etc…
5. Protecting your children from over involvement in extra-curricular activities
6. Confronting children (when older) about wrong decisions
Home leadership principles:
1. Good husbands always involve their wife in the decision making process
2. Good husbands always take responsibility for the decisions of the entire family
3. Good husbands firmly but lovingly lead their wife and children
4. Good husbands always speak well of their wives
Steps to good leadership:
1. Confess to God your failure/sin in not leading your family
2. Confess and apologize to your wife for your failure/sin in not leading your family (and children if old enough)
3. Spend one week in prayer (and fasting) asking God to give you a vision for your family’s future in these four areas – write that vision down
4. Share the vision with your wife (and children if old enough) – allow them the freedom to help shape the vision
5. Firmly but lovingly lead in all of these areas
What if my wife won’t follow?
1. Do what is right because it is right; not because you want your wife to change
2. It is your responsibility to lead; it is your wife’s responsibility to follow
• You’ve failed in your area; give her some time and grace in her area
3. Stick with it
• If it took you years to get into this mess, you won’t fix it in one day
I know...I should be asleep right now. I have a full, busy day tomorrow and I definitely need the sleep. But I'm really enjoying watching the Olympics. I guess its a combination of the competition and patriotism. I am very proud to be an American. No other country in the world has the unique mixture of freedom and opportunity. Phelps just won another gold medal in the 800m relay! I would be yelling at the television, but the everyone else in the house is asleep.
