– Paul Schlehlein
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Imagine this. Simon hears a Sunday sermon from a missionary who works in northern Africa. The preaching cuts him deeply. His eyes water. He gets to dreaming. He senses God is calling him into missions. He tells his wife. She smiles politely. He goes to seminary. He reads missionary bios. He tacks maps on his bedroom wall. He takes survey trips. He’s all in.
Years later he’s ready to go. As he pulls up the tent spikes at home, he discovers his wife’s roots have only run deeper. She can’t leave her parents. She can’t homeschool in a foreign land. She can’t take the heat. She’s not going. Simon is crushed. What should he do?
This is a difficult matter that is not all that unusual in missions. It’s happened more than one might expect. Here are three words that Simon should embrace.
Persuasion
It is true that husbands must teach their wives (Eph. 5:26). It is also true that husbands mustn’t use the Bible as a crowbar to force his wife to comply, as Amnon forced Tamar to follow his plan (2Sm. 13). The time for Simon to persuade his wife about the virtues of missions is not when they’re ready to sail. The time begins after that missionary’s sermon.
Husbands should use the Scriptures the way lawyers use arguments to convince a jury. Lydia didn’t guilt the apostles into staying in her home. “She prevailed upon them” (Ac. 16:15).
Dorothy Carey resisted and rebelled against her husband’s desire to enter missions. She was not passive. She mocked her husband’s weak constitution, saying he’d die quickly on the field. She insisted they’d never see each other again after he left. But Carey, later to be called the Father of Modern Missions, purchased passage to sail anyway.
I say this humbly but I think Carey was wrong to go without his wife. It is a sin for a husband to abandon his wife. It is not a sin to relinquish his dreams to evangelize India. To be fair, Cary was trying to convince his wife to come, even until the moment his ship set sail. He wrote her often, urging her to accompany the team, using another missionary wife as an example: “[Mrs. Thomas] would rather stay in England than go to India; but thinks it is right to go with her husband.” Mrs. Thomas was right. She submitted to her husband and accompanied him, even though she preferred not to. But what if she refuses? I see four options:
Option 1: Carey tries to persuade Dorothy. She comes happily.
Option 2: Carey tries to persuade Dorothy. She comes willingly, though not happily.
Option 3: Carey tries to persuade Dorothy. She refuses. Carey stays back.
Option 4: Carey tries to persuade Dorothy. She refuses. Carey still goes.
Biblically, option one is best. Option two is permissible but may not be wise. Option three shows Carey still has work to do with his wife. Option four is the direction Carey decided to take, but I don’t think is biblical.
How did it all shake out? In the end, it was not Carey that convinced Dorothy to come (to his shame). Instead it was Carey’s friend, the surgeon-missionary John Thomas, that raced home and convinced Dorothy one last time to accompany the team. Recreating the Farel/Calvin moment in Geneva, Thomas warned Mrs. Carey: “If you refuse to go now, you’ll repent it as long as you live!” She changed her mind in an instant and said she’d come if her sister could as well.
That’s what husbands must do—convince their wives what will be best for God’s kingdom (in this case missions), best for their family (in this case missions) and best for their eternal joy (in this case missions).
Rarely should husbands make executive decisions. Often should husband and wife move together in total agreement. Husbands, persuade your wives and don’t be surprised when they actually persuade you of a better path (1Sm. 25:31). Option two prevailed, by God’s grace.
Patience
Husbands must understand the needs of their wives. “Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way” (1Pt. 3:7). This means showing compassion when she needs more time to ponder, when she fears the danger her kids will face, when she feels as though she’s abandoning her parents in their old age. Husbands, love your wives (Eph. 5:25) and don’t forget that love is patient (1Cor. 13:4).
After Anthony Norris Groves told his wife it was his lifelong dream to be a missionary, it became her lifelong goal to root out his dreams for the mission field. She hated his evangelical friends. Their marriage became strained. Groves wrote that after years of marriage, “Our religious judgments could not long remain uncontrasted, and I soon powerfully felt they were awfully different.”
But Mary’s heart began to thaw. First, she agreed to give a 10th of their income. Then came her conversion. He made his missions proposal again. Tears flooded her eyes. “Consider the children,” she said. The time hadn’t come.
Some time later he tried again, proposing an easier mission field than the trauma of the Middle East. Again she burst into tears. He didn’t urge her again. Finally, the Holy Spirit prevailed. She submitted to Great Commission work and more, renouncing a hefty inheritance from her parents and yielding to one of the most difficult mission fields on earth. Groves followed both of these principles. He persuaded his wife with patience.
Prayer
The order here matters. According to 1 Peter 3:7, a patient husband that persuades his wife biblically will keep his prayers unclogged. No husband should expect a successful prayer life if he does not live with his wife in an understanding way. The more he is sensitive to his wife’s weaknesses and understanding of her fears and reservations, the more informed his prayers for her will be.
Sample prayers Simon may pray for his wife:
1. “Lord, give her a greater love for afar, or me a greater love for near.”
2. “Lord, use the counsel from others to point us both in the same direction.”
3. “Lord, make my wife not only willing to go, but wanting to go afar for Christ’s sake.”
Adoniram Judson prayed that God would make his future wife, Ann Hasseltine, willing. God answered. She later wrote:
I have about come to the determination to give up all my comforts and enjoyments here, sacrifice my affection to relatives and friends, and go where God, in his providence, shall see fit to place me…. My mind is settled and composed, and is willing to leave the event with God—none can support one under trials and afflictions but Him. In Him alone I feel a disposition to confide.”