The Power of a Praying Wife Devotional (26 page)

L
ORD
, I am grateful that You are the Spirit of liberty and in Your presence we find freedom from whatever keeps us from becoming all You made us to be. I pray my husband will find freedom from anything that keeps him from moving into all You have for him. Enable him to understand that in Your presence he can find freedom from anything that controls him other than You. Liberate him from whatever limits him and keeps him from living Your way and doing what You have called him to do.

Deliver my husband from any wrong mind-sets, bad attitudes, negative thoughts, or unwise actions. Release him from all addictions, enticements, temptations, harmful habits, or pollution of the mind and soul. Liberate him from destructive memories of past events. Where something has taken hold of his mind or heart that is not of You, I pray You would open his eyes to see the truth about it and convict him of his need to reject it. Don’t let him pursue something that takes him away from Your will for his life. Give him a vision of the freedom You have for him. Enable him to see that liberty doesn’t mean freedom to do whatever he wants; it means freedom from anything that keeps him from doing what
You
want. Help him find the liberty that comes from being in Your presence. I know if You set him free, Lord, he will be completely free (John 8:36).

In Jesus’ name I pray.

48

Train up a child in the way
he should go, and when he is old
he will not depart from it.

P
ROVERBS
22:6

S
ERIOUS STRIFE
can happen between a husband and wife when they don’t agree over the raising of their children. What seems like a good marriage can end in divorce over the continual inability to come to an agreement about how to raise a child. And that is in every way opposite of what God wants a marriage to be. There is a right way and a wrong way to raise children, and parents have to find that
together.
There are some areas where it is not necessarily an issue of right or wrong; it is a matter of agreement between the mother and father about what is best for the child. Without this agreement, however, the wrong part of it ends up being more about what the parents are doing than the child. It is always wrong when parents cannot be in unity.

As parents, the two of you must be able to talk things out away from the presence of your child or children so you can present a united front. Kids don’t rule a marriage. If they do, then that marriage is upside down from where it should be. A marriage is supposed to provide security—a safe place for children to grow. Boundaries for children are set by parents in agreement with each other. You cannot raise up a child in the way he should go if you are sending mixed messages about what that way is.

Don’t allow your children to keep you in disunity. Decide who the adults in the family are, and who are the children, and then act accordingly. Pray for the adults to be more mature than the children. Ask God to help you both be in agreement about all aspects of parenting. If child-raising issues are not worked out, there will be irreparable repercussions for years to come.

My Prayer to God

L
ORD
, I pray You would help my husband and me to be in total agreement with regard to raising our children. Where we have disagreed in the past, enable us to come into complete unity now. If this disunity has caused problems for our children or unresolved strife between the two of us, I confess that before You as sin and ask that You would bring restoration to our entire family. Enable us to see things from Your perspective. Where one of us is completely wrong, I pray You would open that person’s eyes to the truth. Where our disagreement has been over an issue that is neither right nor wrong according to Your Word, help us to work together to see each other’s side and come to some workable solution.

Pour out Your Spirit on my husband and me, and guide us in every decision we make as parents. Give us Your wisdom. Dissolve every impasse. Lead us to make the right conclusions so that we agree on what Your will is concerning each child. We release our children into Your hands, trusting You to help us raise them solidly up in Your ways so that they will not depart from them when they are grown. Grow us up too, so that we are mature enough to be in complete agreement at all times—especially when raising our children.

In Jesus’ name I pray.

49

Comfort each other and edify one another.

1 T
HESSALONIANS
5:11

H
OW MANY MARRIAGES
break up because one person in the marriage was repeatedly made to feel bad about themselves and just couldn’t continue to live with it any longer? There are enough things that happen in life to destroy our sense of self-worth. We don’t need it coming from our spouse, who is supposed to be our greatest source of support. The Bible says that God’s Word is able to build us up (Acts 20:32). It also says that you can build yourselves up in faith, praying in the Holy Spirit (Jude 1:20). So our true source of edification and being built up comes from a relationship with the Lord. But as husband and wife, we also must hear encouragement from each other.

Ask God what you can say or do to build up your husband. You may be thinking,
What is he doing to build me up?
But you can’t let yourself go there. If you feel your husband doesn’t do enough for you in the way of encouraging or comforting, tell the Lord how it makes you feel. Ask Him to convict your husband’s heart about that. Then pray for healing of your own heart.

In spite of whether your husband has built you up or not, deliberately commend him for something good and right he has done. Thank him for what you appreciate about him. If you have trouble doing that, ask God to help you obey Him by giving comfort and edification to your husband. You may find that God is healing and building up your own heart as you do.

My Prayer to God