Praying for Marriages (PfM)

Please pray this week for married couples with a special-needs child. These couples are often strained by a lack of physical and mental rest since caring for a special-needs child, regardless of his/her age, is often like caring for an infant or young child. Many times these couples find their finances stretched as they seek to pay for services and therapies for their child. Additionally, these couples can face hurtful acts of discrimination and exclusion, often unintentional, but still painful to bear. These couples can also become anxious and even depressed as they look into the future of their child who may never reach a level of independent living, wondering who will provide for their child’s care once they are unable to do so. Finally, those couples whose first child is a special-needs child may agonize over the decision to have other children. Pray that God would grant these couples an extra measure of rest and strength great patience in the face ...

Please take this week to pray for marriages you know personally that are struggling for one reason or another. We all know marriages going through rough times, some because of pressures from outside the marriage, some because of issues internal to the marriage. Regardless of the situation, these troubled marriages will benefit from your prayers. And as you pray, consider that you may be the one or the couple God uses to answer the very prayers you raise in behalf of these struggling couples. Thank you for your faithfulness in prayer for the most important of all human relationships, marriage.

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 siding with the non-believer ...

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 marriages have settled...