Top of the list of your knowledge to learn as a husband, is the biblical rules for marriage. You should be deeply acquainted with 1 Corinthians chapters 7 and 13, in particular: the definition of love and its standards, because God commands you in Ephesians 5 to love your wives.
Then you have to have a knowledge of your wife and her particular gifts and capacities. Are you stifling them? Are you not allowing them to be exercised and expressed? You need a knowledge of her intuition, her understanding and perception of things, that you're very slow to understand. She picks up numerous things in her particular feminine wisdom that you are a complete blockhead over, and you have got to be aware of that. You have got to listen carefully to her on all sorts of issues, because she gets it where you don't, and she sees things that you don’t. You must dwell with her according to knowledge, or you won't appreciate how God has equipped you and helped you.
According also to the knowledge of her burdens. Do you know your wife’s burdens, or are you too full of your own? That is our tendency. Do you understand your wife’s burden of submissiveness? She is called to submit to you and that is very hard, because she often sees the point in an issue before you do, and she feels other’s needs before you do, and she will find it hard to submit to you.
Do you dwell with her with a sensitive knowledge of her feminine limitations, which the apostle Peter particularly mentions here? ‘Giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel,’ the more sensitive vessel in many ways. We are designed differently. The man is like a great, blundering truck: all horse-power, as it were. The woman is like a highly tuned performance car. That highly tuned performance car needs looking after. It can’t just steamroller through the mud and the muck and the rough terrain. There are sensitivities concerned. Know your own weaknesses which she has to live with, and hold them in check and be careful of them. This is biblical marriage. It is a tragedy that the world has abandoned all the rules of marriage. No wonder people can get so desperately unhappy and marriages can be so fragile. A husband is useless if he isn’t thoughtful and reflective and appreciative, and if he doesn't praise and thank God for all the dimensions that a wife brings into the marriage.
Some husbands don’t do so very much, and these are not men who are forced to work somewhere else to support the family and it is the last place they want to be. There are some Christian husbands who are never with their wives. They may be doing good things. There are not many like this but some are out visiting or doing the Lord’s work every night of the week. Well, that is grand and, oh, for more people with concern for the Lord’s work, but don’t forget the command of the Lord is ‘dwell with them’. Things have gone out of balance. You have got to be together sometimes and spend some time together. The majority of people in Christendom, perhaps, tend to go to the other extreme and do nothing but dwell with wives and do nothing for the Lord. That is obviously a serious shortcoming. Then there are some who engage themselves with things they would rather do in other directions. Take the case of young men, who are close friends with each other and then they get married, but they are still for ever spending time with each other and not with their wives. You have got to be loyal and supportive to your spouse; you have got to be a good friend, and you have got to be understanding and to make your wife happy.
‘As being heirs together.’ Do you dwell with her in the knowledge of your equality before God? You have the headship of the home but as people you are equal in the sight of God. There is headship, but there is equality. You are going to have the same inheritance. One day in heaven there will be no difference. One day it won't be, you the head of the house, and her in a supportive role; you’ll be equal stars in the firmament of God, because in God's sight your identical in value spiritually. You have the same distribution of gifts. Not the same gifts, but if you have out of a possible, say, thirty gifts from which the Lord distributes to each person. Perhaps you have seven out of thirty; if you only knew it she may have nine out of thirty. In God's sight you are of equal value, equally illuminated, equally understanding, equally useful to God. She can be used in the salvation of souls, and the training of children, and the blessing of other people, and the shepherding of others, equally. Martin Luther once said that a woman possesses more capacity to teach children, to command their attention, to guide them and influence them; she has more capacity in her little finger than a man has in his whole body.
Some people say a husband is like a priest, and they expound ideas of priesthood. ‘He is Christ to you.’ That’s rubbish friends. That's nonsense exegesis of the Bible. It contradicts the priesthood of all believers. You can't go that far. There is headship, but there's to be mutual understanding and consideration, bearing in mind these vast areas of equality.
‘That your prayers be not hindered’, hampered, eclipsed, muted. What about all your prayers? Your prayers for the gospel, your prayers for your Sunday School class, the prayers for the Lord's Day: that the Lord will bless us all, and deepen us, and save souls? Your prayers may not very much be heard. Why? Because you are a bad husband, because you are not kind and courteous and respectful. Because you are a poor wife and not supportive enough. You don't understand the glory of role distribution.