This prayer is from the Book  The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie Omartian.  I have enjoyed reading several of Stormie’s books on prayer and I am now challenging myself to lift my husband up in prayer regularly.  I am going to post a prayer every Monday.  Please join me in praying for your spouse on Mondays and everyday for that matter.

Lord, Help me to be a good wife. I fully realize that I don’t have what it takes to be one without Your help. Take my selfishness, impatience, and irritability and turn them into kindness, long-suffering, and the willingness to bear all things. Take my old emotional habits, mindsets, automatic reactions, rude assumptions, and self-protective stance, and make me patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. Take the hardness of my heart and break down the walls with Your battering ram of revelation. Give me a new heart and work in me Your love, peace, and joy (Galatians 5:22,23). I am not able to rise above who I am at this moment. Only You can transform me.

Show me where there is sin in my heart, especially with regard to my husband. I confess the times I’ve been unloving, critical, angry, resentful, disrespectful, or unforgiving toward him. Help me to put aside any hurt, anger, or disappointment I feel and forgive him the way You do-totally and completely, no looking back. Make me a tool of reconciliation, peace, and healing in this marriage. Enable us to communicate well and rescue us from the threshold of separation where the realities of divorce begin.

Make me my husband’s helpmate, companion, champion, friend, and support. Help me to create a peaceful, restful, safe place for him to come home to. Teach me how to take care of myself and stay attractive to him. Grow me into a creative and confident woman who is rich in mind, soul, and spirit. Make me the kind of woman he can be proud to say is his wife.

I lay all my expectations at Your cross. I release my husband from the burden of fulfilling me in areas where I should be looking to You. Help me to accept him the way he is and not try to change him. I realize that in some ways he may never change, but at the same time, I release him to change in ways I never thought he could. I leave any changing that needs to be done in Your hands, fully accepting that neither of us is perfect and never will be. Only You, Lord, are perfect and I look to You to perfect us.

Teach me how to pray for my husband and make my prayers a true language of love. Where love has died, create new love between us. Show me what unconditional love really is and how to communicate it in a way he can clearly perceive. Bring unity between us so that we can be in agreement about everything (Amos 3:3). May the God of patience and comfort grant us to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus (Romans 15:5). Make us a team, not pursuing separate, competitive, or independent lives, but working together, overlooking each other’s faults and weaknesses for the greater good of the marriage. Help us to pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another (Romans 14:19). May we be “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10).

I pray that our commitment to You and to one another will grow stronger and more passionate every day. Enable him to be the head of the home as You made him to be, and show me how to support and respect him as he rises to that place of leadership. Help me to understand his dreams and see things from his perspective. Reveal to me what he wants and needs and show me potential problems before they arise. Breathe Your life into this marriage.

Make me a new person, Lord. Give me a fresh perspective, a positive outlook, and a renewed relationship with the man You’ve given me. Help me see him with new eyes, new appreciation, new love, new compassion, and new acceptance. Give my husband a new wife, and let it be me.

Amen!

 

Happy Anniversary Mom & Pop! We love you and are so grateful for your love and commitment to each other, to our family and most importantly to Jesus!

         

Deuteronomy 5:16
“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

Truly, a relaxing day.

My hubby and I were in CA this weekend.  We had a great weekend but Sunday was the highlight!  Here is a picture summary of our wonderful day:

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It started with a walk to Starbucks for a real cup of coffee!

 

Dukes for brunch:

Then a walk along the beach to work off our brunch:

Its Woman to Woman time again. Join Seeds From My Garden and My Many Colored Days for this month’s topic:

Tips and Tricks – Keeping your marriage alive: Whether you’ve been married for 38 years, 8 years or are a newlywed, you’ve probably picked up a few keys to a happy marriage, one which is nurturing and continues to grow. Maybe your marriage has struggled, but you’ve found a road back to each other and have insights to offer those in a similar situation.What would you say are the three most key elements in your marriage that keep the romance alive and the heart aflutter?”

I found it quite interesting to see how many couples wanted to get married on 07/07/07 because they thought that that would bring their marriage “good luck”.  Well – Good Luck!  It takes more than just a lucky day for a marriage to work.  Meshing your two lives with THE Bridegroom is not easy, but well worth the journey.

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Here are three keys elements that I would like to share.  There are probably many more that could be shared, but I narrowed it down to these three plus the ultimate:

1. If you don’t want it said to you, don’t say it to him.

2. Remove the words “you never” and “you always” from your vocabulary.

3. Pretend you’re married to Jesus. How would that change your approach, your reaction, your patience level, etc.  He is THE Bridegroom that we are married to – the third strand that holds it all together. When we focus on Christ rather than ourselves, our marriages and lives tighten their hold on him.  No more loose strands.

The ultimate element:  Pray daily for your spouse.  Hand him over to the Lord to mold and shape.  That is his department, not ours – ouch!

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Blessings on your marriage journey today!