Praying for Marriages (PfM)

Please join us this week as we pray for couples who are the primary caregivers for an aging parent.   This life-situation can turn life on its head as roles are reversed and the children become the parents and the parent the child.   At best this situation can be awkward; at worst is can lead to serious conflicts.   A parent, who has had a life- time of making decisions, now has children making decisions for him/her.   These can be small decisions (“Dad you should not climb that ladder”), to life-style-altering decisions (“Mom, you can’t drive anymore).    Caring for an aging parent can also limit the freedom of the couple.   It can mean giving up travel plans, changing long-established schedules and learning that the “spur-of-the-moment” now requires planning.   All the decisions that come with caring for an aging parent can also put the couple at odds with siblings who have different ideas about what is best.   Additionally, if th...

Join us this week in praying for marriages dealing with the issue of infertility.  Couples in these marriages experience drastic ups and downs, hopes and disappointments, month after month.  Hormonal issues can create mental and physical weariness.   Medical testing and treatments and their side affects can add to this weariness and also strain couples' financial resources.  The marriage relationship can also be tested, particularly when the husband and wife cope with disappointment differently and grieve differently.  The spirits of couples in this life situation can be wounded by insensitive questions and statements made by others, both knowingly and unknowingly.  Finally, despite their best efforts to rejoice with others, these couples can struggle emotionally as they see their friends becoming pregnant and have children with apparent ease. As you lift these couples up, pray that they will have one or two close friends who understand and rem...

Please join us this week in praying for the marriages of those in pastoral ministry.  Because of the various demands of the pastoral role, it is easy for the pastor to become wedded to his ministry, fully believing he is doing good when in fact he is a workaholic, neglecting the needs of his spouse and children and unintentionally undercutting the very ministry to which he has been called.  Also, in the process of being "all things to all men" and pastor and spouse can fail to build personal friendships and miss out on the joy and support these friendships can supply.  Finally, marriages of those in the pastoral ministry are lived out in a fishbowl.  The business of the pastor and spouse is everybody's business.  This fact can cause those in the pastoral ministry to put up a false front and fail to live authentically before their congregation. As you pray for these couples, pray that they will be able to set priorities, reserving family time and couple t...

We are asking this week that you pray for marriages that are dealing with the issue of pornography.   Most frequently husbands have a more difficult time with pornography addiction than wives.   They often see it as a personal issue that does not affect their marriage partner.   But this attitude is far from the truth.   Pornography easily creates unrealistic expectations that no wife can meet.   The husband will come to the marriage bed looking to re-experience something he has seen, giving little thought to the needs and desires of his spouse.   Sex can become a cold, performance-driven encounter instead of the warm, intimate relational union it should be.   One too-frequent result of this impersonal sex is infidelity.   If the wife becomes aware of her husband’s addiction, it can create in her a feeling of inferiority and also a feeling of being just another of his sexual playthings.   She can feel she is no longer the one, uniqu...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages that deal with chronic pain.  Couples in these marriages struggle many times to identify the situation as the burden and not the suffering spouse.  Financial pressures often assail these marriages.  Couples can find just the day-to-day grind of managing pain physically and emotionally exhausting.  And finally, chronic pain can steal a couples’ hope, and, where hope is absent, depression can rush in to take its place.  Please pray with us that these couples will have faithful prayer warriors to lift them up consistently will rightly identify the situation as the burden, not the suffering spouse will not be crushed by financial pressures will not lose hope but rejoice in the hope they have in Christ Jesus will find joy in service and freely express gratitude as they receive service