Gracious Father, we confess our desperate need and dependence upon you, your promises, and your power. This is particularly true as we consider the high calling, privilege, and responsibility to sacrificially love our spouses like you love your bride, the church. We confess, left to our fleshly ways, at best our motives are centered around a mutual give and take rather than the supernatural, selfless sacrificial love you demonstrate and call us to in our precious marriages.
Father, deepen our conviction and call to love our spouses well. May we find ourselves so richly overwhelmed with your loving presence producing within us satisfaction, assurance, and peace that we can look beyond our own desires and concentrate on the needs of our spouses.
Father, the evil one hates Christ-centered marriages and the glory they bring to you. When he is the primary source of turmoil and division, give us quick awareness of his antics and in the name of Christ Jesus protect us from him.
Bless with a wholehearted prayerful passion to see our spouses fully embrace the riches of their hope in Christ. Yield within us your mind and your discernment to listen and hear their inmost heart-cry. Give us insight and wisdom on how to best point them to you, Christ Jesus. Make us quick to lay down our own ego and fleshly pride and demonstrate a humble, caring, and serving spirit. Slow our pace down allowing us to concentrate on our spouses, our highest call as believers. Give us keen discernment when facing differences to know which issues are merely preferences verses wisdom or conviction and how to proceed with a loving attitude toward unity and agreement.
Father, bless us with the overflow of your Spirit yielding true kindness driven by tenderhearted compassion for our spouses. And further, grant us your supernatural heart to forgive, laying all indiscretions as far as the east is from the west, completely satisfied.
In Christ,
Blessings!
Ephesians 5:25-28
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
Ephesians 4: 32
32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.