You may have the perfect marriage and be sublimelyhappy, and still be less than what God wants in your attitudetoward your wife. One of the bestways to honor your wife is to pray for her from a heart that is cleanbefore God.Īsk God to show you whatever you need to see about the conditionof your heart. Many men have not seen answers to theirprayers because they have not learned this key step. This means all of your prayers, notjust those for your wife. When youdon’t, your prayers are hindered. And because you are heirs together of God’s grace, youneed to honor her in your thoughts, words, and actions. Part of dwelling with your wife with understanding means recognizingthat your wife is in need of your covering, protection,and love.
The Bible says, “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them withunderstanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, andas being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may notbe hindered ” (1 Peter 3:7). He does that so nothingwill separate us from Him.
That’s why,when we come before Him to pray, God asks us to first confess anythingin our hearts that shouldn’t be there. What is in our hearts when we pray has more effect on whetherour prayers are answered than the actual prayer itself. We all-menand women alike-jeopardize our own prayers when we don’t praythem from a right heart. Our hearts have to be right when we pray. If there is one thing I have learned about prayer, it’s that if wehave any unforgiveness, bitterness, selfishness, pride, anger, irritation,or resentment in our hearts, our prayers will not be answered.“If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear” (Psalm66:18). Fervent and honestprayer causes the depths of our hearts to be exposed. It means thatany negative thoughts, bad attitudes, hardness of heart, or selfishmotives are going to be revealed by the Lord. This means we can’t get away with anything. The good thing about prayer-or the problem with prayer,depending on your perspective-is that we have to go to God todo it. Thisis the most important place for a man to begin praying. In my survey of wives, 85 percent of them said the most importantprayer their husband could pray was that he would become theman, husband, and head of the home God wanted him to be.
Shewants you to trust that with God nothing is impossible, and becauseof that you will never give up hoping for the impossible to happen.When your wife knows you are praying, she is confident of allof these things. And she wants the security of knowing that when things aretough and down to the wire-even when the enemy is already celebratingyour demise and all appears to be lost-you have the faithto believe that up to the very last second everything can turn around.She needs the assurance you have a play in your pocket that can takeyou down the field with the ball for a possible winning score. Your marriage is like that football game. It was so amazing that news reports of it even referredto it as a miracle. Instead they pulled an unlikely play outof their book, and through the most astonishing sequence of events,the home team made a winning touchdown in the last few secondsof the game. But the losing team and coach didn’t giveup or let their morale fall. Some people wereeven leaving the stadium. The game appeared to be over, and theopposing team and fans were already celebrating. They needed atouchdown to win, but everything was against them making a scorein that amount of time. I once saw a football game where the home team was losing andthere were less than 15 seconds left in the game.