See why God speaks to husbands differently than He does to wives

Over the Christmas holiday I wanted the 2000 film The Family Man, starring Nicolas Cage and Téa Leoni. It’s a film about a couple (Cage and Leoni) that were grad school sweethearts and Cage’s character got an internship in London, and they planned to do long distance during their year apart. The film fasts forward to their current time, and ultimately their year a part drove them apart. We see that Cage’s character became very successful in the business world, which led him to becoming arrogant and too sure of himself. He had an encounter with an angel (played by Don Cheadle), who puts him in a vision of what life would have been like if he had chosen family.

Without any control over his life, Cage’s character is thrown into a family that he doesn’t know, and as the days pass, he sees that family life is more fulfilling and meaningful than his executive job.

As I sat and watched the film, I took notice of how Cage’s character (the man in the relationship) received this vision, and not Leoni’s character (the woman). And, it made me think of how the man is the vision bearer in a relationship. This doesn’t mean that women cannot have vision in a relationship, God certainly speaks to wives and girlfriends. But, God speaks to men in a different way because they are the leaders, and they bear the vision for their homes.

In the Garden, God put Adam in charge of guarding and tending it. “The LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it (Genesis 2:15, NLT).” Essentially God directed Adam and his sons (all men that would come after him) to “tend and watch” their homes and families. Because of this, God speaks to a husband in a different way because they lead the home and carry God’s vision for that home and each person in it. “Certain leadership decisions need to happen from that perspective, and the woman needs to submit and understand that essentially the husband needs to be the vision bearer,” says SEELE Faith Editor KB Chakela. “He needs to be the one that understands the vision for the marriage and the family, so that he can lead.”

I once knew a couple and the husband struggled with pornography addiction. He reached a point where he wanted freedom from it, because it beyond affected his marriage, and decided to turn his life around. In the process of repenting and turning from that lifestyle, God began to deal with him, giving him dreams and speaking to him about the new man he was transforming him to be.

When the couple shared their story with me, the wife shared how God wasn’t speaking to her in nearly the same way. My response was that because her husband had neglected “tending and watching” over his home (his garden), that God was speaking to him because he was the man and leader of their home. Essentially, as he surrendered his life to God and repented from sin, God could now deal with him as a man, to build him up to be the man that He (God) created him to be. God speaks to the vision bearer of the home when He is trying to adjust leadership or set His will and purpose for a family.

Take for example Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus. When God needed his family to make changes, He spoke to Joseph.  God spoke to Joseph in a dream to marry his pregnant unwed fiancé, because Joseph was about to divorce her quietly (Matthew 1:20). And God did it again when King Herod was killing all baby boys under 2 years of age. God, through an angel, told Joseph to take his family to Egypt for 2 years (Matthew 2:13-14).

As I shared, God also speaks to women but in a different way to husband leaders. God values women just as much as men and the Bible is filled with examples where God spoke to women from Mary, the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:28), to God working through Deborah in battle (Judges 4:9), to Esther being used to save her people (Esther 4:14), and Jesus who spoke to Martha and her sister Mary (Luke 10:41-42), just like He spoke to Mary Magdalene (John 20:17).

As God intends in families for the husband to be the vision bearer, it simply means that He will speak to them differently than He does to a wife. Because men are leaders in their homes and God holds them to higher leadership, He will guide them. Please note that vision bearer does not mean that men can control or unjustly be overbearing over their wives or children.

Just as a king would speak to another king differently than he would a someone in his parliament or cabinet, so God speaks to a husband differently. As King Solomon wrote in Proverbs 29:18 “without vision the people perish,” so it is with a husband having guidance and direction from God to bear his family’s vision. A husband will not effectively be able to “tend and watch” over his garden, i.e. his home and the lives in it (which will inevitably impact future progeny). A husband (and wife) not only impacts their children, but indirectly their children, and their children, and their children. This is why God needs men to be serious vision bearers.