“The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain.”
I think we can all agree that you would want your husband to trust you no matter what, no matter the situation, all the time. But when it comes to the nitty gritty parts of actually having a relationship where trust is real and alive, it can be harder than you think. It takes work, it takes self-control, and it takes conquering daily temptations that may hinder the trust of your loved one.
But I don’t want this to stop you at all! This is why we’re going to take a deeper look into this verse (because it’s important). I want to share with you what it means and looks like to be trustworthy to your man and how that will lead you to enrich his life rather than taking from his life. And if you feel like trust has taken a hit lately, I will touch on how to gain back your husbands trust.
What does it mean to be trustworthy?
To be trustworthy means to be able to be relied upon as honest.
In this verse of Proverbs, the wife in this poem is trustworthy to her husband. He is able to rely on her as honest. He can assuredly know that she is honest with him in everything. And he has faith that she will remain honest.
This is yet another example of how the relationship between a husband and wife is like the relationship between the church and Christ. We as part of the church are called to be honest and trustworthy, especially with Christ. If we were constantly trying to hide things from Christ or if we were constantly lying to Him (even though He would already know), the relationship would be very weak, if even existent. How could we as followers of Christ remain untrustworthy to Him? How could we have a healthy relationship with Christ if trust was missing? We couldn’t. It would defeat the whole purpose of us being followers of Christ and choosing to have that personal relationship with Him.
What does it look like to be trustworthy?
It’s not a passive thing, where we just expect it to happen. No, it takes action on our parts. We have to be actively trustworthy. And it’s a daily thing. We have to daily choose that we aren’t going to fall into the temptations that would cause our husbands to lose trust in us. Just as we daily take up our cross, it’s a daily thing to choose to actively be trustworthy to our husband.
We have to be actively trustworthy.
The first and foremost thing that you can to do be trustworthy to your husband is to submit to him (Ephesians 5: 22). This is one of the first thing God calls us to do to our husbands. It is a necessary component of your relationship with your husband.
The best way to know how to submit to your husband is by looking at how you submit to the Lord, since in Ephesians 5:22 it compares wives submitting to their husbands just as they do to the Lord. Submitting to him shows your husband that you respect him and that you trust him. Trust works a lot easier when it’s coming from both sides.
Eventually, we will be going through the whole passage of Proverbs 31:10-31. But a great way to know what it looks like to be trustworthy is to spend some time reading this passage of the woman who fears the Lord (hint hint, that’s another aspect to what it looks like to be trustworthy: fearing the Lord). This wife is extremely trustworthy through her actions, activities, words, etc.
How will this lead to my husband “having no lack of gain”?
When your husband trusts you completely, he trusts you with every aspect of his life: those things of materialistic worth and the things of spiritual/emotional value. When you and your husband become one (get married), you become the one who manages the home (see “Working in the Home vs. Managing a Home” for more information). You are the one to take care of your husband’s possessions, your possessions, your kids possessions, and so on.
When your husband trusts in you, he trusts that you will not foolishly harm the fruit of his hard work. This harm could be in the form of overspending money, allowing his items to become dirty and dusty, mistreating his items, taking his hard work for granted, or not caring at all what happens to his things because “they’re his things, not mine.”
There’s also the aspect that you will enrich his life spiritually and emotionally. “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22). How cool is this???
You enrich his life by being a great accountability partner for him, by being the iron that sharpens iron for him (Proverbs 27:17), and by learning from each other spiritually. Each person comes with their own spiritual gifts, wisdom, and experiences. There may be things that your husband hasn’t quite learned or is in the process of learning that you may have already gone through and can therefore help him and encourage him spiritually.
Emotionally, your husband will be enriched by having you as his lifelong companion, his best friend, his confidant, his love, his laughter, his “iron,” his encourager, his shoulder to cry on, his helper, his lover, and so on. Though there will be rough patches in your marriages, you will always be the one that your husband found to be his excellent wife who is more precious than jewels (Proverbs 31:10) (see “Digging into Proverbs 31: Verse 10” for a deeper look into this).
How do I gain back trust that I may have lost?
Here’s the important thing for you to remember if you have damaged some or all of the trust that your husband had in you: you gained that trust once, you can gain it again. However, it will take more time and more effort to gain it back a second time. But there is always hope.
Time will be your best friend. I know that it would be easier to have a quick fix for this, but the best thing you have is time. Time is needed for you to prove yourself to be trustworthy again and to give you the area you need to put a great amount of effort into being trustworthy again.
Repent and ask for forgiveness. This is a huge first step to showing that you are truly sorry. And not just being sorry, but that you are repenting. In other words, it’s not something you will do again. You are not only repenting and asking for forgiveness to your husband, but to the Lord as well.
Again, re-submit to your husband. Make a conscious effort every hour of every day to submit, to respect, and to honor your husband.
Check where your heart is. Do you honestly regret making the decision that harmed the trust between you and your husband? Or is it something you feel bad about, but at the same time are okay with the decision you made? In order to do this next step, you need to truly and honestly repent as well as wanting to restore the trust out of undying love for your husband. If your heart is in the right place, then a good thing for you to do is find out what his love language is. Have him take the 5 Love Languages quiz online to see how he feels the most loved. Regardless of how you feel the most loved, regardless of how you give love towards others, shape how you show your love based on how he feels most loved.
This may sound a little like “working the system” or a little like cheating, but it’s not. Again, as long as your heart is in the right place. Here’s why, it may take immense sacrifice on your part to serve him in a way that is hard for you. For example, if he feels most loved by physical touch (not just sexually) but you don’t enjoy hand holding or hugging or even touching shoulders regularly, this may be one of your sacrifices to show him you truly love him.
Finally, pray about your situation. I don’t know exactly what may have happened to harm the trust between you and your husband, but I do know that we serve an incredible God who can mend and heal anything. We serve a God who hears our cries and our thanksgiving. So run to Him for help. Allow God to heal you and your husband and allow Him to show you how to actively become trustworthy again.
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It is so amazing when we see it play out that our husband is enriched when he trusts us with his heart. And how amazing it is to see how fulfilling that is for us as wives. It is my prayer that the trust you have between you and your husband grows daily, and that if there’s a bump in the road, his trust in you will only grow more after overcoming that bump.
I encourage you to study and meditate on Proverbs 31 as well as other passages that speak on marriage. Having a basic understanding of a godly marriage will go a long way as you work to build the trust in your relationship.
I would love to hear what you actively do to build that trust your husband has for you and how he has no lack of gain with you.
Prayer: Lord, I pray that we as followers of you will be strengthened and equipped to be Proverbs 31 women, to be women who are trustworthy to our husbands, and to be able to overcome temptations that seek to thwart and harm that trust. I pray that we will keep our eyes fixed on you, actively working to keep you as the cornerstone of our marriages. Help each of us enrich our husband’s life as we submit to him, respect him, and honor him as we do you. We love you with all our hearts forever and ever. Amen.
