For a meager $11 per month, a young mechanic in Detroit, Michigan, worked 10 hours a day for the electric company. In the evenings, he went out to an old shed behind his house and labored until midnight trying to build a new motor.
His father, a farmer, felt that his son was wasting his time. The neighbors said he was a nobody. Everybody laughed at him. No one believed that his crude instrument would be worth anything. Nobody, that is, except his wife. After her tasks in the home, she would go to the shed and help him. In winter, as night came early, she held the Argand lamp so that he could see what he was doing, His teeth chattered with cold and his hands turned blue, but his wife was there with him. She was sure that the motor would give good results. So much faith had she that her husband called her "the believer."
After three years of hard work, the extravagant contraption gave fruit. Shortly before his 30th birthday, in 1893, his neighbors were frightened by loud noises. People ran to their windows and saw the eccentric Henry Ford and his wife streaking through the streets in a horseless coach.
Actually he only went to the corner and returned. Yet that event gave birth to a new industry—the automobile. Fifty years later, Mr. Ford was questioned about what he would want to be if he had the chance to live his life again. "It wouldn't matter what I had to do," he responded, "as long as I lived with my wife... I would Iike to spend eternity with her!"
Every man needs a wife that can be with him when people and circumstances are against him. When nothing goes well, when fires ignite around him, when he fails, the man should be able to count on his wife to have faith in him and help him tolerate the situation. If his wife doesn't believe in him, who will?
Believing is an active quality which rejects the idea that failure is a catastrophe and works at restoring lost confidence.
If anyone needs a believing wife, it is a pastor. He has a big job to do. He needs to be vigilant that everything goes welt in the church and at home. In the implementation of new plans to win souls, he doesn't always have the support of his church members. He needs an encouraging word from his wife when he feels all alone. If his wife prays for him, if she encourages and accompanies him, the task will bring positive results for the glory of God.
A good wife has a special insight to see the qualities in her husband that are invisible to others. She sees him with loving eyes. When he comes home discouraged or depressed by the difficult situations and worries of the day, and his strength seems to have escaped him, his sweet wife should greet him with a smile and encourage him to find peace in Jesus. She will pray with him and encourage him to continue in the task with the help of the Holy Spirit. The Bible tells us, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1). This is the type of faith that a wife should help to inspire in her husband.
In this era of the ff-minist movement, how many women look for individual fulfillment and separate themselves from the work of their husbands? Yet the Christian wife who is joined with her husband as a helper in the ministry can find fulfillment serving at his side.
It requires a big dose of humility to be at his side, holding the lamp and being there for him even in the most unpleasant conditions.
My friends, may the Lord help us to be adequate helpers to our husbands. Then, if anyone were to ask about their lives, they would be able to say as did Mr. Ford, "It wouldn't matter what I had to do, as long as I lived with my wife... I would like to spend eternity with her!"
