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“I'm Jen Houston joined today by Pastor David and Marilyn Chadwick. We're continuing in our series this week called How to Honor Your Wife. David will you share about encouraging her gifts? We took our first church together in 1980.”From the transcript
by David Chadwick
We accepted the call to our first church in 1980. For our first year in ministry, Marilynn told me she wanted to get our home secure and learn what it's like to be a preacher's wife. Fortunately, the wonderful people of that church never placed any expectations upon her. They simply wanted her to be her!
That's what she did. She was always by my side, as a gracious wife and helper. In those early years, when this church was small, we were everything from the youth leaders to pastoral counselors to Bible teachers to prayer leaders. We were involved in everything that went on in the church—mostly because we had to be.
Yet I knew that underneath her servant's heart laid a greatly gifted woman of God—gifted in ways I wasn't. I knew she had much to offer the world. She had already sacrificed much to follow me. Therefore, I wanted to encourage her gifts, passions, and goals in life.
Encouraging Marilynn's gifts was all about releasing her God-given potential. As her husband, her life partner in marriage, I was in a better position than anyone else to make that happen.
Have you ever thought about that as well—that you as a husband are the one person who is most able to encourage your wife's gifts? God has gifted her in special ways—in fact, she's gifted in areas that you aren't. God brought you two together because he knew you could help bring the best out of each other.
Biblically, husbands are called to love their wives (Ephesians 5:25). In my opinion, one of the best ways you can demonstrate the love of Jesus to your wife is to help her launch her gifts.
Here is one final point of advice: As you encourage your wife to discover her passions, try to find those areas in which you share similar giftedness. When you do, if possible, try to find ministry and service opportunities you can do together. These experiences will draw you closer like nothing else—just like the mission trips that Marilynn and I do together.
I pray you will encourage your wife to discover and use her unique gifts. I pray especially you'll be able to find mutual areas of giftedness through which you can serve together. That will especially help to draw you closer together. And make you one.
This series is adapted from David Chadwick's book, Eight Great Ways to Honor Your Wife. To download your free PDF copy of the book, please visit our website by clicking here!
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A Moment of Hope — How to Honor Your Wife: Encourage Her Gifts. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
Welcome to your moment of hope. I'm Jen Houston joined today by Pastor David and Marilyn Chadwick. We're continuing in our series this week called How to Honor Your Wife. David will you share about encouraging her gifts? I will and will do so gladly. We took our first church together in 1980. We've been married for a little less than two years and we came into that experience with me being a preacher's kid knowing some about the preacher responsibilities and what the church is like. Marilyn, you didn't understand it at all. Yeah, you you were not from that background and but you committed yourself. I went to church and I had become a believer. I was very fervent in my faith had no clue how a preacher's wife was supposed to act. We fortunately had a wonderful church people who just let you be you. They did and I told them I said look, I don't know what I'm doing. So y'all didn't have to help me and it was a very fun journey. It was. We laughed a lot. Great people. No expectations about you being in the choir or teaching Sunday.
I remember in the interview I told them I said I don't play the piano and I won't sing in the choir but I said I will help support David and you know encourage whatever he does in the church. That's all I knew to say and they loved it. And you did and and for the first years as we established ourselves in that church and watched it started to grow you were right by my side encouraging me in every possible way but then I remember feeling like you know you're really gifted in so many different ways you have academic gifts you have social gifts you have other kind of gifts as well and so I started encouraging you to find your gifts and to do the things that you wanted to do which then manifested itself and you helping to start the crisis pregnancy center here in Charlotte in the early 1980s you then went back to school at the University of North Carolina Charlotte and earned a master's degree in counseling you started doing some other things like writing and teaching which then allowed your gifts to explode and I just set on the sidelines watching you pursue you going you go girl and I was so excited to see you using your gifts.
Well you know I loved the ministry that's why we're doing this 48 years later you know we've been married and in ministry for that long I love doing ministry with you this didn't take away from the wonderful relational heartbeat of doing ministry together but when you started to encourage me to kind of do my own unique part of that which did include more counseling and graduate school and then doing a lot of teaching in the church I began to flourish kind of in the way that I had before I knew Christ I was my old me but it was redeemed you know we all have that. We do all have that and I'd like to add to this like your gift of teaching is remarkable and I know so many people not just in our church but there are other churches around the city that want you to come and teach your content and the things that you have learned and gained authority in so the gifts are manifold. And then we had to wait a good number of years for children. Sure baby. Yes. And one finally came and then two finally came and then the third was a total surprise. Yes. But then I watched you draw back from some of those aggressive outreaches that you
were doing to care for the kids and to be a mom. That's right. And then when those kids got to an age you started going back out to serve and use your gifts in ministry as well to the point where you just recently completed a seminary degree which I applaud and you were what summa cum laude is that right? Yeah but you didn't like my institution. Well we're not going to talk about that at all but I won't go. Listener just no Maryland graduate as summa cum laude from seminary I graduated thank a lot of you from seminary that's a bad joke but you did unleash and that's what I loved about you from day one you were always celebrating you know whatever I wanted to do to explore my gift and Chris has done that for you Jim. Chris has done that for me and you know what we see is the fruit in our children from both Chris and I pursuing things. Yes nurturing and raising our children but also stewarding our own individual giftedness as well. I think it's equipped them to try to have aha moments and discover what their giftedness is. So at the end of the day guys do this sit down and even write it out what are your wife's unique gifts? What does she love to do which is one
of the clues on her unique gifts and what are the results that she gets when she does them? That's always key to look at as well then do this just encourage her to pursue her passions and when you do so you'll see a wife unleashed who will end up loving you more because she knows that you didn't marry her to use her you married her to set her free to be all that God created her to be.
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