February is often dubbed the month of love, and in the blogosphere, post after post expands upon the most valuable Christian virtue. I’m thankful for such posts, as I need constant reminders and exhortations to love others. It’s definitely not something that comes naturally for me.

But this post is different. Like John said in his first epistle, ” let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” There’s a lot of speculation out there. There’s a lot of puffing up and thinking about stuff, but there’s not often action. Today, I want action.

There’s a lot of lovey stuff out there this month, and why not capitalize on it? But why not go above and beyond simply loving in attitude, and love in action (while maintaing the attitude, of course).

So here’s the challenge for you wives out there: demonstrate love to your husband this month. In small and big ways.

The Bible gives us a few ways we can do this. The first would be submit (Eph. 5:22). Instead of only having the attitude of submission this month, actually submit. Is there a decision your family needs to make? Let your husband, and go along submissively with it–not acting like you could make a better one, not acting like he’s doing it wrong, not pouting. Totally give yourself to your husband and let him know you appreciate his leading your house. Is there some opinion you have that differs from his? Give in. Allow him to be the one who is over the household, and whole-heartedly, lovingly follow him and respect his decision. It sounds easy, but I think this is enough to be the challenge for the month, because all of you other go-getter wives understand that this is NOT an easy thing to do. Or maybe I’m alone in that…

The second thing we can to challenge ourselves this month to be the kinds of wives God wants us to be is to respect our husbands (Eph. 5:33). This sort of goes along with the first one, but it’s different. This one is more of a when you’re not around him type thing. You see, when we submit to our husbands, we can go along with whatever he decides is best for our family in a joyful, non-complaining way. When we respect our husbands, we don’t talk negatively about him behind his back. We don’t talk about how stupid the decision was to our girl friends, we won’t make fun of his quirks or weaknesses, and we won’t expose his flaws to others. We are our husbands helpers. Are we helping him by degrading him? By harming his reputation? By mocking him? Are we helping ourselves by gossiping and breaking our husband’s trust? It’s easy to think of this in a flippant way, but one of the greatest ways we can help our husbands is to give him respect to his face of course, but always, always to others. This month, challenge yourself to only speak words of praise about your husband…both to him and about him. Lift him up in prayer before God when you find yourself thinking of his weaknesses. That’s the only productive outlet!

I hope all of you who are wives will join me in this challenge. It might not always be easy, but that’s what makes this a challenge…and it will be a rewarding one! Maybe our husbands won’t notice. Maybe they won’t appreciate it. One, I doubt that, but two, who cares? When we are the wives we are supposed to be, our reward will be in heaven!