My awesome husband periodically writes here for the men, and especially for all the wanna-be-men little boys.

You may want to read the first four ways to honor your wife.

If you missed the previous posts, you can find them at Introduction and Part 2 What is a real man?

He’ll take it from here…

photo at www.credos.us/zoofythejinx

5. Honor her financially.

Provide for your family. Take this responsibility men, it’s yours, NOT hers. Sure, your wife may indeed contribute financially as mine does, but she needs to know that you bear the weight of providing financially for the family. I am sure you can think of all sorts of good reasons why this should be a “shared responsibility” but this is most likely just the little boy in you thinking of a way out of your responsibility. So, man up. I find that once men feel the weight of this responsibility it makes them incredibly focused, diligent, and creative, which makes them great providers. It also makes their wife’s level of respect shoot thru the roof, who then feel honored, secure and cared for.

6. Honor her practically.

Consider her needs and serve her. If you are like me, it’s easy to overlook the little things, the practical things. Cleaning up around the house (some of us don’t even clean up after ourselves), dishes, repairs around the house, giving her time away from the kids… you get the idea. Pretty much anything that will lighten her load. It is amazing how the little things make a big difference, but how easily we can miss these little opportunities to serve and honor our wives. Selfishness and lack of care and concern are the reason we fail to honor our wives practically, but these are no excuse, they are faults.

7. Honor her parentally.

Lead, train and be involved and engaged with the children. It may be easy to think that child training and development is the domain of our wives, school teachers and child care providers. Sorry guys, this is our responsibility too. The cool thing is that properly trained and disciplined, children are an absolute joy to be around. If your children are not a joy to be around, not only are you not training them properly, you are probably not honoring your wife parentally.

8. Honor her spiritually.

You initiate and lead prayer, Bible, conversation, church involvement and attendance. Men, even if your wife is more “spiritual” than you, it doesn’t mean that you are not once again responsible to lead in this area of your life. Be a leader in this area of life; it will honor and provide security to her to know that while you may be imperfect and perhaps even immature or inarticulate when it come to matters of faith, you have concern for hers and the families spiritual well being.

You may have noticed that the common denominator here takes us back to the original and important idea for us men: Take Responsibility. This is essence of true masculinity.