Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Col. 3:12-14 (NIV)
Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. 1 Thess. 5:11 (ESV)
Dear heavenly Father, failure to pray for and nourish our marriages is like failing to drink water, get sleep, or breath air. The outcome is predictable, and not pretty. There’s no other relationship with greater power to expose our brokenness and reveal your grace, than marriage. And there’s no other relationship that Satan is more determined to crash and burn.
So we come to you today, praying for our marriages. Father, forgive us for believing there was only one person in the universe we were “supposed” to marry. No marriage can sustain that weight and freight. And forgive us for thinking that if we’d married the “right” person, it’d be enough. No person can carry that burden and deliver that load.
You’ve made us for yourself, Father and our deepest, most powerful, and most insatiable longings for relationship can only be met in relationship with you. So our prayer is simple and essential. Once again, Father, inundate our hearts and marriages with the only love that is better than life, the only love that will never let go of us, the only love that is enough—your great love for us in Jesus.
Because we are “chosen, holy, and dearly loved,” fill our marriages with your “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” We want our marriages to declare the beauty and bounty of the gospel. Until the day you take one of us home, help us to encourage each other and build each other up. Help us to outdo one another in kindness, forbearance, and forgiveness. So very Amen we pray, in Jesus’ merciful and mighty name.
