Sid: My guest is red hot for the Messiah, but you know Craig Hill, it’s hard to be red hot for the Messiah if you have marital problems at home, have you noticed that?
Craig: That is a fact Sid, I think that is one of the most painful experiences that people can have when you are in a situation where you’re are being wounded and hurt over and over and over again my your husband, by your wife and you love the Lord. And many times as it was with the case of Jan and me we both loved the Lord and yet could not seem to stop from hurting each other, we just didn’t understand and didn’t know what we were doing to hurt each other.
Sid: Now, you tell a story in your book which illustrates some of the levels of communication that most Christians don’t have a clue about, they are clueless, tell me the story about the state fair.
Craig: Yeah, that true Sid, what we found is that there is a lower level of communication that most people are not aware of, and I call it a relational level of communication. Most people understand the topical level. Where were talking about where we’re going to live, what cars are we going to drive, how we are going to discipline our children, whose going to pay bills, whose going to cook food. All those kinds of things that people need to discuss in a marriage. But underneath every one of those topics if a relational communication and that is messages that we send to one another in the realms of identity in regard to value. But to make it real simple, every one of us needs to feel valuable. The deepest desire I have with my wife is I want to feel valuable in her sight. I know the deepest desire that has is to feel valuable in her husband’s sight. The problem is that we don’t know how to convey value and I’ve discovered that husbands and wives that perceive value entirely differently. And Apostle Paul gives us some key to that in Ephesians Chapter 5 at the very end of the chapter when he commands husbands to love their wives and commands wives to respect their husbands. And I wondered what does that mean? So I began to ask a lot of husbands and a lot of wives and I sort of boiled it down to this, that to love your wife, what most men don’t realize is that it means to make her feel high priority, to care about her feelings and to take responsibility when you hurt her. And for husbands what respect means to them is to feel accepted, to be made to feel pleasing in the sight of my wife and that she appreciates me and appreciates my efforts and admires me. Well there was a couple that I know that some friends of mine had four children and the wife asked her husband, “Listen, I’m going to go on a retreat, I would like to go on a retreat with some of my girlfriends from the church for a weekend, would you be able to watch our children that weekend? The husband wanting to please his wife and loving his children, checked his schedule and said, “Absolutely, I’m free that weekend, I would be happy to watch the children.” So the weekend came, the wife went on the retreat, the husband was watching the children and the older son said on Saturday, “Hey Dad, the State Fair has come to town this week and I wonder if we could go to the State Fair perhaps after Church tomorrow?” And the Dad really didn’t want to do that, his favorite football team was playing a game that afternoon and he had in his mind that he was going to sit home and watch the game. But he decided to die to himself, be a good father, maybe tape the game and take his kids to the State Fair, which he did. So the next afternoon they were at the State Fair and the cell phone rings and it was his wife, she said, “How are you? I’m great. How are the kids? Fine. How’s the retreat? Oh, it’s wonderful. She said, “Where are you, sounds sort of noisy, where you are, are you at a part or somewhere?” He said, “Oh, I took the kids to the State Fair.” And there was silence about three seconds and then she said, “The State Fair, why did you take the kids to the State Fair?” And he knew by the tone of her voice he was in trouble. Now I’ve got some counsel for husbands, when ever your wife asks you a rhetorical question starting with why in an angry tone, never answer that question.
Sid: Did you say, never answer that question?
Craig: Never answer that question.
Sid: Well, what do you do?
Craig: The reason is that there’s no correct answer. Just think about it.
Sid: It’s called no win.
Craig: That’s right. She said, why did you take the kids to State’s Fair? So he’s grasping for answers because if he answers it there’s no right answer, no matter what he says, she’s going to be hurt and angry, so why do you do? What I’ve learned to do is ask another question. Because when she said, “Why did you take the kids to the kids to the State Fair? She actually did not want to know why, in other words well, because they asked, the weather was nice, we had the time, those were the kind of answers that he was thinking of. But that wasn’t her question. Her question was this, every year we go to the State Fair as a family and now for some reason I’m out of town one weekend you decide to do what we always do every year as a family event without me? And she was feeling alone, abandoned, unloved, not care for so her question was do you realize and understand that by taking the kids to the State Fair which we do every year as a family event without me you made me feel alone, abandoned, not loved, not cared for. And her question was do you realize that? And he didn’t know that, and when she said, “Why did you take the kids to the State Fair” that was a topical question. He didn’t understand the relational issue which was; she was feeling, worthless, unloved, not cared about and what I suggest husbands do in that case instead of trying to answer the question. Well, I took the kids to the State Fair, because the weather was nice, they asked, they had time, instead ask her a question about her feelings. And the questions would be this, “Honey, by the tone of your voice, I sense that I made you feel hurt and wounded, is that true?” She would say, “Absolutely.” Then he could say, could you please share with me how I made you feel. Then when she would do that, he would then be able to answer her real question is, “Do you care about my feeling, do you care that I feel abandoned, alone, cut out of the family, not loved?” And that’s her real question, he didn’t know to do that so he just said, well, we went to fair because we had the time, and the kids asked.” She said, “Why did you go without me?” Well, honey you are out of town, you’re at a retreat.” And she said, “Didn’t dawn on you that I might like to go with the family to a family event that we do every year?” He said, “Well, no actually it didn’t dawn on me.” She said, “I see, so I’m out of town for two days and I’m completely out of mind, out of sight, you don’t even think about me at all, you don’t love me, you don’t care about me.” She began crying at that point, well he began to get angry at that point because he was thinking, “You know, I thought she would be calling to give me the Father of the Year award because here I am denying myself, I would have preferred to stay home and watch the football game and instead, I tried to be a good father and take my children to the State Fair because they asked and what do I get from my wife, the same thing I always get, criticism, judgment, she’s telling me what a poor excuse for a husband I am, I don’t love her, I don’t care about her, I can’t win. And now this blew up into a big argument that actually lasted for two weeks. And again, as we were talking earlier in the week, who wanted this? Did the husband intend to hurt his wife? Did the wife intend to hurt and accuse and judge her husband? And the answer was no, the enemy set them up for this situation and neither of them realized it. And again if he doesn’t understand what the problem is on the relational level, he will try to repent on a topical level which never works.
Sid: But men are wired that way, I mean it’s almost like were sabotaged from birth.
Craig: That really is true Sid, and I think it is like speaking two different languages. Early in my marriage God said to me, “Do you love you wife?” I said, “Yes Lord, of course, I love my wife.” He said this to me, “How come you’ve never learned to speak her language?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “That it’s like you were a missionary and you went to live there ten years and never learned Spanish, but yet you said you loved the Mexican people, what kind of love would that be? You expect them to just learn your language and you refuse to learn their language?” I said Lord, “What do you mean?” He said, “Your wife speaks an entirely different language on relational level and you have never spent the time to learn her language so that you can communicate with her, you tell her you love her in your man language, but you don’t tell her in a way that connects with her heart, that she actually feels loved; and you could if you would learn these principals.” And I said, “Lord, forgive me; I say I love my wife and I’ve never taken time to learn her language.” You know I think that there are many woman that are listening right now in that exact same situation they have never spent the time to learn how to communicate to their husbands what it means to be valued, how to communicate respect to him, how to make him feel accepted, valued, admired, appreciated and many families get in a cycle that to around and around and around. I would like to take a moment and pray for several that I just sense the Holy Spirit is speaking to you right now. What’s happened is because your husband has wounded you you have criticized him and sent him a message that he is of no value. That he’s not a good husband, not a good father, not a good Christian, not a good covering for your family. And that has wounded him and he’s withdrawn. Father, I pray for every one of these wives that are listening right now, where that has happened and they have deeply wounded their husband, he has withdrawn and closed up. And Father, I pray that you would supernaturally give each one of these wives a key open the heart of her husband that as she begins to take small steps to begin to convey him admiration and acceptance that his heart will open again to her and communication will begin to take place. In the Mighty Name of Yeshua, Amen.
Sid: Amen, you know Craig, there are many best books from a secular view point like “Men are from Mar, Women are From Venice.” The point the difference in how men are and women are but your book not only points the differences but shows how to use the supernatural to get rid of those differences.
Craig: I think that that’s exactly right and you know one of the keys I found Sid is people don’t realize that there are spiritual influences beyond just the two people in a marriage and never deal with those.
Sid: So it’s not just the different levels of communication, it’s the spiritual side that’s interfering with that natural side.
Craig: And it sets us up all the time and we don’t even realize it and if we never deal with that and we don’t access God’s supernatural power, then we are going to have difficulty in marriage because it’s not just learning my wife’s language, learning my husband’s language. But it’s accessing God’s supernatural power to be able to allow that to flow through me in a way…
Sid: Okay, our time is up
