Leadership Tips for Husbands - Part 3

3. Tell Your Wife What You Want to Eat 

A major part of being a godly wife/mother is cooking. Cooking for someone who enjoys their food is a rewarding experience. Cooking for an ungrateful or picky eater can be very frustrating. Your wife will be much happier cooking for you if she is cooking something that she knows you will like. If she asks you, "Would you rather have an omelet or pancakes?" and you honestly have no preference, just pick one! Whatever you do, do not say that you don't care or that it doesn't matter.

Better yet, be proactive and approach your wife with a couple of meal ideas that you would like to see come down the pike that week. Your wife will probably appreciate the suggestions since she is constantly having to decide what to cook. In the end, you will get to eat some of your favorite meals, and your wife will be happy to cook for a grateful eater. Let her plan the majority of the meals, but throw in a few meal requests also.

Lastly, if you are a picky eater, it is time for you to branch out. If you keep wanting your wife to make the same "plain Jane" meals over and over again, she is going to bore her brains out, and cooking will become a drudgery. Be willing to try new things and expand your palette. Tell her what you want to eat, but try not to get into a rut where you are asking for the same things over and over.

4. Be served first at mealtimes 

"The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits." - 2 Timothy 2:6

You may think that you are being unselfish by being served last at mealtimes, but actually you are just training your family to believe that the children come first, and dad comes last. Not only is this damaging to your position of leadership, it is also teaching the children to be spoiled and to believe that the world revolves around them. Your children are much better off waiting a few moments while dad is served, and seeing a daily reminder of their place in the family.

"That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children," - Titus 2:4

Obviously dad has more patience than the children, so the tendency is to get the children happy first and then feed dad last. Basically, the wheel that squeaks the loudest gets the most oil. That will only reinforce their impatience and selfishness. As the husband, you are (or at least should be) the one who is laboring to make the money that puts the food on the table. Therefore, you have every right to be served first, and by insisting on being served first at mealtimes, you are sending a signal to your wife and children that your are the king of your castle.

To be continued...