When I Pray for Your Marriage

When I double tap the picture of the sweet college girl and her God-fearing boyfriend. When I give the thumbs up on a post about how your relationship has now become a beautiful engagement. When I listen to you try to work out a disagreement between you and the man that you're madly in love with. When I pray that your marriage would grow and transform into an image even more like Christ.

That's me working through the bitterness and feelings of insecurity. That's me letting the Holy Spirit have its way and stopping my selfish desires from getting in the way. That's the Lord doing something amazing in my heart because of you. 

But truthfully, I wish I could have the argument you're having with your husband. I still wonder why the young girls who have a loving family pouring into them are blessed with a husband so soon in life. I complain to God that I'm the one who needs a husband. 

The Lord is not my source of love and security. Because if He was, then those prayers wouldn't be so hard to pray, those pictures wouldn't be so hard to look at, and the jealousy wouldn't overtake my heart the way it does. But by praying for you and your marriage, I'm learning to love God more than I love myself. I'm learning to lean on Him instead of wishing my life to be so different. I'm learning that my thoughts are not His thoughts and that my ways are not His ways (Isaiah 55:8). 

My {theoretical} husband deserves a wife who has sold herself out to being the bride of Christ. I can't be the wife that scripture has so clearly instructed me to be until my cup is to the brink without a husband. So when I pray for your marriage, please know that you're teaching me peace, patience, and humility. Without knowing it, you are helping the Lord change my heart. But also be blessed that when a single woman prays for your marriage, that those prayers are the most sincere and selfless prayers she knows how to pray. 

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