Written By Michael K. Pasque

CHAPTER SUMMARIES

Chapter 1

By God’s Holy Decree

    Assumption #1

Before a single atom was created, before a second of time had passed, God chose her

specifically for you.

Almost every one of us has, at one time or another, favorably acknowledged God’s provision in regard to our spouse. This book is about taking the recognition of God’s provision one step further. Before time began, God knew every single detail about every woman who would ever live, including her responses to every decision we would make in our life. With this knowledge and His desire to transform us into the likeness of His Son, Jesus, He chose the perfect wife for each of us. The knowledge that God chose our mate specifically for each of us changes everything.

Chapter 2

The Fallout that Results from Believing This

    Assumption #2

She is your wife until death.

God alone is responsible for our meeting and marrying our wife. Leaving her is simply not an option. The acceptance that she is the only one for you precisely because God has planned it that way actually makes things easier.

Chapter 3

The “List”

    Assumption #3

Everything about her was chosen exactly for you.

It is in the special, intimate nature of the God-ordained marriage relationship that the Holy Spirit tackles the really tough issues in our individual sanctification. The many attributes of our wife’s personality—the good and most specifically the bad—supply the roadmap to revealing our deepest, most hidden sin. We especially need to change our point of view regarding our wife’s most troublesome personality traits. They are most pointedly the reason God chose her for us and are a critical to the most difficult part of our sanctification process.

Chapter 4

Getting at the Deep Heart Issues

    Assumption #4

Pride is the taproot sin that ensnares your marriage.

        Our pride blinds us to our deepest integrity flaws. God has chosen our wife with her distinct character traits to open our eyes to the deep recesses of our heart. Only when we can see our heart through God’s eyes can He make the necessary changes. Humbling ourselves before our wife, therefore, is the critical step in our sanctification walk with Jesus.

Chapter 5

“Love Each Other”—the Command to Love

    Assumption #5

Your interaction with your wife is the focal point of God’s specific command to you to “love each                                        

other.”

Jesus stated that if we love Him we will obey His command. His command is to love each other. By God’s design, there is no other person in our life who more precisely fits that command than our wife. In our whole life the single most important way that we will love Jesus is by loving her.

Chapter 6

“If It Ain’t Right. . .”

    Assumption #6

If your relationship with your wife is not right, then don’t kid yourself—your relationship with                            

Almighty God is not right either.

        Too many of us continue to act like everything can be “just fine” in our walk with the Lord while raging warfare breaks out every evening when we get home from work. Discord in our marriage and a heart truly surrendered to Jesus are diametrically opposed to, and entirely inconsistent with each other. They cannot exist together. The status of our relationship with our wife serves as a barometer that gives a real-time, accurate reading on the most important relationship of our lives, that with Jesus, the King of kings.

Chapter 7

Let’s Get This Straight Right Now

    Assumption #7

Everything that is wrong with your marriage is, in fact, your fault.

        Our overriding assumption must be that all of the problems that have developed in our relationship with our wife are entirely our fault. From the moment we truly accept this assumption, we have a chance to salvage that which God has joined together and what our sin has torn apart. Our wife’s guilt or innocence in this regard has nothing to do with this assumption. This is about seeing our Savior’s face in the face of our God-ordained life partner and humbling ourselves before Him by humbling ourselves before her.

Chapter 8

The Only Real Marriage Manual

    Assumption #8

The only real marriage manual you need is the Bible, for only through its revelation can you

approach your wife in the correct frame of heart and mind.

        Getting right with our wife is not about picking up one of the dozens of self-help relationship books that we see littering the shelves of secular bookstores. The Word of God holds the key to our relationship with Jesus. It also contains every single bit of information we need to flourish in our relationship with our wife. If we have not made reading the Bible a systematic priority in our every-day life, we will never know God and we will never know our wife.

Chapter 9

What She Really Sees In You

    Assumption #9

Deep in every woman’s heart is the undeniable desire to be married to a man of God who runs

hard after Jesus. If your marriage is in trouble, you’re not running anymore.

        A woman’s desire to be married to a man of God is in her wiring. She is not empowered to change the script written on her heart. A relationship based upon a man’s appearance, intelligence, wealth, fame, or any characteristic other than his relationship with God is destined by her Creator to fail. Setting our heart on chasing hard after Jesus and seeking His face in every moment of every activity of our every day is the key to keeping her interest. His is the face she seeks, the more we resemble Jesus in our thoughts, words, and actions, the more we will appeal to her.

Chapter 10

Doing Things Against Her Will

    Assumption #10

There can be no excuse for your doing things against her will.

        Differing opinions on seemingly simple choices that face the family unit often turn into major disagreements. We lead our family through these situations by humbly serving our wife. In doing this, we die to ourselves and focus on Jesus. God promises to handle the details when we give up the reins of power and submit to our wife.

Chapter 11

Choose to Lose

    Assumption #11

There is no fight you can’t stop.

        In every marital disagreement, God wants us to surrender. He wants us to choose to lose. When we surrender, He steps in. At the beginning of the fight, in the middle of the fight, and even at the end of the fight, unconditional surrender will always work. It is the God-given, get-out-of-trouble card that can be played any time and trumps everything else.

Chapter 12

Forgiving is Foundational

    Assumption #12

Unconditional forgiveness, characterized by willful forgetting of her offenses, must be at the

foundation of your relationship with your wife.

        True forgiveness in marriage involves the active, volitional forgetting of our wife’s offenses. God let His Son’s blood seal His memory loss. That is how badly he desired to forget our sins. He wants the same from us. Forgiving our wife by willfully asking God to help us forget her offenses is the only answer.

Chapter 13

How Much Does Jesus Love Your Wife?

    Assumption #13

Jesus died for your wife. He can’t love her any more than He already does. Become like Jesus in   

your love for your wife too.

        Pull closer to your Savior and peek over His shoulder at your wife. She is incredibly special to Him. Her desires, her tears, her feelings are precious to Him—and they should be to you, too. Next time you hurt her feelings and are the source of her tears, next time you are thinking about holding something against her, ask Jesus for some of His love for her.

Chapter 14

Going “Tactical”

    Assumption #14

The key to making it happen in your marriage is practice, practice, practice—perseverance every

day, in every circumstance, every time.

Knowing God through our interactions with the people He places around us is a lifelong process that involves the complete transformation of our minds. It is a victory of perseverance found only in the changing of the way we think every minute of every day.

Chapter 15

This Is A Test

    Assumption #15

Every time you feel anxiety in your relationship with your wife, reflexively remember, “This is a

test.”

        Changing us into the likeness of Jesus involves the changing of our heart. God won’t change our heart unless we ask Him and we won’t ask Him unless we realize its true condition. God uses our daily interactions with our wife to reveal the true state of our heart. Recognizing that these interactions are tests from God allows us to persevere in responding in His will. Gradually, our response becomes automatic as God’s will becomes our will.

Chapter 16

What About the Kids?

    Assumption #16

Do you want to give your children a special gift that is their heart’s desire? Love their mother!

You can’t expect everything to be right with them unless things are right with her.

        We can have no chance of a flourishing relationship with our children without flourishing in our relationship with their mother. The most basic cry of our children’s hearts is for their mother and father to love each other. Love their mother. Humble yourself before her. Lead her by being first in servanthood. In the environment of a family unified in the holy name of Jesus Christ, your children will come to know the Lord. They will take the step into eternity with you. They will be sons and daughters of the Living God. They will have learned Christ’s plan for their marriages and their families. Then, your very first job as a father will be done.

Chapter 17

In Summary—The Bottom Line

        Our wife must come to know—by our dedication to serving her and our children—that no one less than the Jesus Christ is at the center of our life and at the center of our love for her. We must, therefore, shift the foundation of our marital relationship away from ourselves and toward Jesus. This is what every chapter of this book is about. We must look at our wife in her God-designated role as the single person we will encounter in our whole life who will most represent Jesus to us. We must love her as we long to love Jesus, serve her as we long to serve Jesus, and humble ourselves before her as we long to humble ourselves before Jesus. For in loving her, serving her and humbling ourselves before her, we will, in fact, love, serve and glorify Jesus. And that is expressly what we are all about.