A WORD WITH YOU
By Ron Hutchcraft
#5163 - "How to Improve Your Man"
Proverbs 31:10
Listen to the audio broadcast!
http://media.gospelcom.net/rhm/sounds/awwy/awwy5163.mp3 Now here's a memory for your summer vacation scrapbook. You got kissed by a dolphin. No thank you. But it happens to people every day at Sea World, this park where you can see whales and fish and seals do these amazing tricks. Those
dolphins are really something. They will jump through hoops (I wish we could get
kids to do that), they'll dance on their tails, and oh yeah, did I mention jumping out of the water and kissing tourists? But if you want to understand why they do all this neat stuff, you have to watch what they do after each trick.
They swim around the pool and straight for the guy with the bag. You know what's
in that bag. Fish! Yummy fish! If you want a dolphin to do something, give him a
fish and he'll do it again! Men are a lot like that.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How To
Improve Your Man."
I really do think my half of the human race has a lot in common with those
dolphins at Sea World. If you give us a fish when we do something good, we'll
want to jump through that hoop again.
Some women seem to believe that the best way to get their man to improve is
to nag him into it, to shame him into it, or to criticize him into doing it. The Bible describes two kinds of women in Proverbs 14:1: "The wise woman builds her
house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down." There are some
things that a woman does that build the people she cares about, and there are
others that tear them down.
Now there's no question that every man needs a lot of work. But if you approach your husband like your personal home improvement project, like "I've got to fix this guy!" you'll probably keep him from changing. Is it stubbornness? Ego? Deafness? I'm not sure, but I do know that when a man is pushed, he tends to go the other way, not come your direction. Part of love is what I call "mirroring" - holding up a mirror to the person you love and letting them know what you see when you look at them. We tend to be a lot better at mirroring the things we don't like than some of the good things about that person. But it's in affirming the good that we give a person the courage and the encouragement to work on the rest.
Proverbs 31 contains God's description of a woman who's got it right. And,
after all, He invented man and woman! In Proverbs 31, beginning with verse 10,
our word for today from the Word of God, He says, "A wife of noble character who
can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in
her and he lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days
of her life." This woman continues to bring value and confidence and good into
her husband's life. And it pays off. This says, "Her husband is respected at the
city gate. Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, he praises
her."
If you want to improve your man, bring him good, bring him value. Tell him
what's good about him. Praise him when he does something right, even if it's
just a small improvement. Give him a fish if you want him to do it some more.
Or, as my wife often says, "Water what you want to grow." When you consistently
have a ministry of encouragement and affirmation in your man's life, he feels
safe. And a man won't risk changing unless he's in a place where he feels safe.
And if he feels safe and valued by you, he's a lot more likely to listen when
you need to tell him something that's hard to hear. He'll know you love him and
that you want him to be the best he can be.
Billy Graham's wife, Ruth, has a wonderful outlook on this. She says, "It is
my job to love Billy. It's God's job to change him!" That says it better than I
ever could.