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Key Bible Verse: Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might (Ecclesiastes 9:10 niv). Bonus Reading: 1 Peter 3:7

Fifty years ago, when a man came home from work, he sat down and waited for the little lady to fix dinner.

But your assignment today may be your wife's assignment tomorrow. Her task tomorrow may be yours the next day. Given the normal you grew up with—your parents' and grandparents' roles may have been quite fixed—this may be a huge adjustment for you.

So now, when you get home and there's no dinner cooking in the oven (your wife may still be at work), you go to the freezer, the refrigerator, or, if you're really cool, the recipe book, and you whip something up for the two of you.

You no longer hustle past a pile of laundry, hoping that someday it'll magically disappear. No, you separate the whites from the darks, and toss a load into the washing machine, along with a dash of detergent.

Your marriage is like a two-person sailing expedition. Your goal is to get from here to there, and whatever jobs need to get done will get done by whomever happens to have the time to do them. There's no "hey, bailing water isn't my job—I man the rudder." Can you imagine?

—Robert Wolgemuth & Mark DeVries in The Most Important Year in a Man's Life

My Response: When it comes to pitching in to help, I think my wife would give me a grade of ____.

Thought to Apply: Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side. —Zig Ziglar (Sales trainer, author, & motivational speaker)

Adapted from The Most Important Year in a Man's Life (Zondervan, 2003) by permission.

Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Help me, Lord, to sacrificially love my wife in practical ways that will bind us tightly together.

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