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 will be with during Christmas and/or as 2017 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 about whose marriages you know little. 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 a blessed Christmas and you experience the full goodness of God as you seek to live obediently before Him in 2018.

Please join us this week in praying for marriages in which one of two non-believing spouses has become a believer in our Lord Jesus Christ. The difficulties a marriage can experience when entered into by a believer and a non-believer are many. All of those difficulties and more can be present in the marriage of non-believers when one comes to faith in Jesus Christ and the other does not. The new believer can find being faithful to Christ difficult because the very one s/he is joined to in marriage is at the least not equipped to be supportive and at the most possibly hostile. The non-believing spouse, even without intention, can tempt the new believer into situations that would violate his/her new relationship with Christ. These situations can strike at the heart of companionship and cause the couple to doubt the suitability of their relationship. Non-believing friends of the unequally-yoked couple can drive a wedge between the two by si...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages that have settled. First let me explain what I mean by “settled” for I admit “settled” can be both a positive and a negative term. Positively it can mean “settled in” as in “settled in for a long winter’s nap”. Negatively it can mean “settled for” as a new college graduate “settled for” a lower-paying job until s/he gains experience. In this blog I am using the term in the negative sense. We need to pray for marriages that have “settled for” less. You are right in asking, “Settled for less of what?” Well, less of a lot of things. Some marriages have settled for less physically. The spouses have gotten lazy or take each other for granted. They have assumed their spouse desires them even though they make no effort to be desirable. The old flame is a flicker. These couples don’t need to renew their vows. They need to renew their wows! Some marria...