Praying for Marriages (PfM)

This week we are taking a slight turn for the holidays.   Of course we want you to pray for marriages this coming week, but we would like you to pray particularly for the marriages of those people you were with during Christmas or and will be with as 2012 draws to a close.   In many cases those will be the marriages of family and friends, marriages into which you have more intimate insight and for which you can pray with more specificity than normal.  On the other hand, you may have had or will yet still have occasion to spend time with new acquaintances whose marriages you know little about.  Regardless, all these marriages will benefit from your intercession.  So even in this busy season, take time to lift up these marriages to our Lord who is actively about the work of renewing all things. We hope you have had a blessed Christmas and that you will experience the full goodness of God as you seek to live obediently before Him in 2013.

We are asking this week that you pray for marriages 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 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 of being just another of his sexual playthings.  She can feel she is no longer the one, unique and special person in his life ...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages that must deal with chronic pain.  Couples in these marriages can struggle sometimes because they incorrectly identify the suffering spouse as the problem instead of situation that is causing the constant pain.   Financial pressures can often assail these marriages as couples seek any and all possible solutions to the debilitating situation.  Just the day-to-day grind of managing pain is physically and emotionally exhausting.  And finally, chronic pain can steal a couple’s 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                rightly identify the situation as the burden, not the suffering spouse not be crushed by financial pressures not lose hope but rejoice in the hope they have in Christ Jesus receive t...

Join with us this week in praying for marriages in which law enforcement is the career of one or both partners.   Marriages in this life situation can face a number of difficult problems.  The spouse in law enforcement is prone to deal frequently with the darkest side of life and, consequently, can become quite jaded, finding it difficult to count on or fully believe in anyone.  This attitude can easily transfer to the marriage relationship, making intimacy and trust a struggle.  The spouse not in law enforcement often experiences the stress of knowing the other may face a life-threatening situation at any time.  These couples also live under the cloud of a profession's reputation as one that suffers extremely high rates of alcoholism, divorce and suicide. This week pray for the safety of those in the law enforcement profession that the Lord will grant these protectors of the peace the ability to see the good in life and ...