We are already into the second week of the New Year, and most people are striving for more.
For me, this time of year is a symbol of new beginnings. It’s an opportunity for us to learn from last year’s mistakes, and I’m excited about the fresh start it brings.
With that being said, this year I’m striving to improve the approach I take in my relationships. Especially, when it comes to the two most important ones; God and my husband. That’s why this morning I started reading “The Power Of A Praying Wife” by Stormie Omartian.
I’ve read this book a couple of times over the past 3 years. Each time, it’s helped me remember how much we need God in our relationships. Also, it has shown me how important my prayers are for my husband’s spiritual well being.
Do You Build Up Or Tear Down?
The Bible says in Proverbs 14:1 “The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands.”
I want to be a woman who builds up her house and the close relationships in my life, not tear them down. And my attitude plays a big part in which outcome prevails.
For this purpose, I keep coming back to Stormie’s book because it helps me see the right attitude I should have.
In her first chapter titled “His Wife” the prayer she wrote is the way I desire to be in my relationship with my husband. However, if you are not married, it’s still a prayer you could glean from for any relationship.
Omartian’s book is filled with insight of the ways of a man. But in this first chapter, she really hones in on women examining their own heart and motives first.
I think it’s good every now and then to do what I call “a heart tune-up”. And this is why I want to share with you the opening sentence to the chapter, and then her prayer. The prayer is a little lengthy but I promise it’s worth the read.
“The hard part about being a praying wife, other than the sacrifice of time, is maintaining a pure heart.”
The prayer:
“Lord, Help me to b a good wife. I fully realize that I don’t have what it takes to be one without Your help. Take my selfishness, impatience, and irritability and turn them into kindness, long-suffering, and the willingness to bear all things. Take my old emotional habits, mindsets, automatic reactions, rude assumptions, and self-protective stance, and make me patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. Take the Hardness of my heart and break down the walls with Your battering ram of revelation. Give me a new heart and work in me Your love, peace, and joy (Galatians 5:22,23). I am not able to rise above who I am at this moment. Only You can transform me.
Stormie Omartian
Show me where there is sin in my heart, especially with regard to my husband. I confess the times I’ve been unloving, critical, angry, resentful, disrespectful, or unforgiving toward him. Help me to put aside any hurt, anger, or disappointment I feel and forgive him the way You do-totally and completely, no looking back. Make me a tool of reconciliation, peace, and healing in this marriage. Enable us to communicate well and rescue us from the threshold of separation where the realities of divorce begin.
Make me my husband’s helpmate, companion, champion, friend, and support. Help me to create a peaceful, restful, safe place for him to come home to. Teach me how to take care of myself and stay attractive to him. Grow me into a creative and confident woman who is rich in mind, soul, and spirit. Make me the kind of woman he can be proud to say is his wife.
I lay all my expectations at Your cross. I release my husband from the burden of fulfilling me in areas where I should be looking to You. Help me to accept him the way he is and not try to change him. I realize that in some ways he may never change, but at the same time, I release him to change in ways I never thought he could. I leave any changing that needs to be done in Your hands, fully accepting that neither of us is perfect and never will be. Only You, Lord, are perfect and I look to You to perfect us.
Teach me how to pray for my husband and make my prayers a true language of love. Where love has died, create new love between us. Show me what unconditional love really is and how to communicate it in a way he can clearly perceive. Bring unity between us so that we can be in agreement about everything (Amos 3:3). May the God of patience and comfort grant us to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus (Roman 15:5). Make us a team, not pursuing separate, competitive, or independent lives, but working together, overlooking each other’s faults and weaknesses for the greater good of the marriage. Help us to pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another (Romans 14:19). May we be “‘perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment'” (1 Corinthians 1:10).
I Pray that our commitment to You and to one another will grow stronger and more passionate every day. Enable him to be the head of the home as You made him to be, and show me how to support and respect him as he rises to that place of leadership. Help me to understand his dreams and see things from his perspective. Reveal to me what he wants and needs and show me potential problems before they arise. Breathe Your life into this marriage.
Make me a new person, Lord. Give me a fresh perspective, a positive outlook, and a renewed relationship with the man You’ve given me. Help me see him with new eyes, new appreciation, new love, new compassion, and new acceptance. Give my husband a new wife, and let it be me”
It’s a very humbling prayer. But Stormie covered all I want to strive for as a wife in this up coming year.
I hope what she wrote will inspire you as it has me. Giving you a desire to be more understanding, extend more grace, and show more love in your relationships.
Related Pages: 99 Ways to Show Your Husband Respect
