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How to Take Care of Your Wife – 7 Guidelines

take care of your wife

“What does it look like to biblically care about the needs of my wife?” That is a question that I feel as though I am just beginning to learn how to answer 11 years into marriage. While there is no silver bullet, there are many things that the Scriptures teach us in order to help guide the process of learning to take care of your wife. 

In that extremely complex and, at times, hard to understand section of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we come across the comparison between the married and the unmarried (1 Cor. 7). In short, the Apostle insists that marriage is good (and the norm) but that it brings with it a division of attention. Those who are married have a preoccupation with their spouse. Those who are unmarried are free to more fully “care about the things of the Lord” while “the married man cares about…how to please his wife” and “the married woman cares about…how to please her husband.”

How to Take Care of Your Wife

Here are seven basic, biblical ways concerning how to take care of your wife:

1. Take Care of Your Wife by Leading Her in Worship.

Whether this occurs one on one or in the context of family worship, a godly husband will seek to “wash his wife with the water of the word” and to lead her “to the throne of grace” that they might together receive grace and mercy to help in time of need. A man who truly loves his wife will want to sing God’s praises with his wife and to encourage her with God’s word. This is the most foundational way that a godly husband can love and serve his wife. Everything else in the marriage is secondary to and will necessarily wax and wane commensurate with this all important calling. God has given a believing husband his wife so that he might shepherd her soul to glory.

2. Take Care of Your Wife by Carrying Her Burdens.

One of the apostolic words to husbands regarding the way in which they are to love their wives is that they are to “dwell with them with understanding” (1 Peter 3:7). A loving husband will seek to be gentle toward his wife. A truly loving husband will seek to listen to his wife as she relays her burdens. He will be patient with her when she seems to be folding under the pressures of life. He will seek to understand why she is struggling even when he doesn’t have the same burdens.

3. Take Care of Your Wife by Providing for Her.

A man who truly loves his wife will be a man who labors diligently to provide for his wife. The loving husband will be a hard working husband. This doesn’t mean that he will make lots of money; but it does mean that his priority is to “provide for his own” (1 Tim. 5:8). He will work as many jobs as might be necessary in order to provide for his wife. Being a provider is something to which a loving husband must be committed.

4. Take Care of Your Wife by Serving Her in the Home.

I don’t know if it is possible for someone to hate folding laundry as much as I hate folding laundry. My soul has a holy (and, often, an unholy) hatred of it. However, when I recognize that my wife is tired from bearing my burdens, taking our kids to school, teaching one of our sons at home, doing the shopping, driving the boys to different events and caring for many, many, many other things in our home and lives, one of the most loving things that I can do for her is to fold the five laundry baskets full of clothes. Doing the laundry, cleaning the dishes, repairing things in the home, pressure washing the house, taking her car to get the oil changed, etc. are some of the very tangible ways that a godly husband can learn to love and serve his wife in the home.

5. Take Care of Your Wife by Praising Her in Public. 

One of the things that has not often been pointed out about Proverbs 31 is that it actually tells us quite a number of things about the godly husband—and does not speak merely about the godly wife.