The Power of a Praying Wife Devotional (39 page)

L
ORD
, I confess to You as sin any time I have ever allowed even one thought of divorce to stay in my mind as a viable solution to our problems. I know divorce is not Your will and You hate a broken covenant. I ask that You would pour out Your Spirit on my husband and me, and teach us to love and respect each other enough to communicate well and work things out between us. Change each of us in every way we need to be changed so that we can be better together.

Where it feels that something has been mortally wounded between us, I pray You would breathe new life into our hearts and minds. Take away all hardness and work a miracle of forgiveness in each of us. Help us to apologize and ask forgiveness every time it is warranted. Teach us to want to serve and please You more than we want to serve and please ourselves. I pray that there will be no divorce in our future. Where there has been a divorce in either of our pasts, I pray You would forgive us and teach us how to keep it from ever happening again. Keep us both from falling into the trap of thinking that divorce is the only way out of pain.

In Jesus’ name I pray.

74

I will go in the strength of the Lord God;
I will make mention of Your
righteousness, of Yours only.

P
SALM
71:16

I
KNOW A YOUNG WOMAN
whose husband is in the military, serving in Iraq for his second deployment of fourteen months. This is a great sacrifice for a newly married couple with a toddler and a baby on the way. She handles it well, even though it must be unbearably hard for them, because they both know the Lord and believe in the power of staying close by praying for each other.

There are many reasons a man might have to be away from his wife and family for an extended period of time—work being probably the most common one. If you have to be separated from your husband by a great distance or large blocks of time, prayer is what can keep you closely connected. If it is a separation that you both agree is the right thing, then the results will be good. If one of you doesn’t think the separation is right, this can present a problem. However, if both of you agree to pray for each other during the time you are apart, good things will come of it.

If you are praying for each other every day, then after the separation is over it will almost be as though it never happened because you are able to pick up right where you left off. Praying for him is something
you
must do, even if your husband is not doing it along with you. No matter how far away your husband is, or how long he is gone, pray that he goes and comes back safely.

My Prayer to God

L
ORD
, I pray any time my husband and I have to be separated by a great distance or for a long time that You will keep him protected. Bring him home safe and uninjured. Help him to do well in all that he must do, and enable him to do what is right. Give him wisdom to work well with the people around him, but keep him from all temptation. Draw him closer to You during this time, and don’t allow him to drift away. Even though we are separated by time and space, I pray You would draw us closer together than we even were before he left.

Help me to grow in You while he is gone, so that when he returns I am a better person. Help me to make our home a welcome place for him to return to. When he comes home, I pray he will be able to readjust quickly. Help us to immediately be compatible, comfortable, and in harmony with each other. If there are any tensions, unresolved conflicts, or hard feelings that have not been resolved before he leaves, I pray You will resolve them in us by the power of Your Holy Spirit, even as I am praying for him every day.

Help us to remember the best in each other and not the worst, and think about the good times and not the bad. Protect our marriage so that we continue growing together and not apart. Protect his going out and coming in so that he returns “in the strength of the Lord,” and enable him to not forget for a moment about You and Your ways.

In Jesus’ name I pray.

75

I will give them one heart,
and I will put a new spirit within them,
and take the stony heart out of their flesh,
and give them a heart of flesh, that
they may walk in My statutes and
keep My judgments and do them;
and they shall be My people,
and I will be their God.

E
ZEKIEL
11:19-20

G
OD
’
S
W
ORD SAYS
He made a husband and wife to be one (Genesis 2:24). That’s the way He sees you and your husband. But it’s important that you both see yourselves that way too. As a couple, you must choose to move in the same direction of oneness. The other alternative is to
not
make any such choice and then watch yourselves automatically move in separate directions. That’s because in the busyness of your lives, self-focus will be the natural outcome. But if you deliberately make the choice to become one, and pray for that, it will cause you and your husband to grow deeper in love and respect.

How often do we see marriages progress in the exact opposite direction, where what grows between a husband and wife is contempt and dislike? Far too often. It’s heartbreaking to watch that happening when God wants to prevent it or reverse it. If you and your husband ever allow yourselves to become critical of each other, constantly judging all that you dislike about each other, or refusing to put the other person before yourself, ask God on behalf of your husband to give you both a new spirit and a united heart. Ask Him to take away any hardness of heart that has developed and to soften your hearts toward each other. Pray that He will help you grow together in love, respect, communication, esteem, and friendship.

It is crucial to pray that God will work complete forgiveness in your hearts toward each other so that all resentment, judgment, and contempt are gone and His Spirit can unify you. Even if none of this has ever happened to you and your husband, pray that it never will. Pray that every day you will continue to become more and more one—just as God sees you now.

My Prayer to God