IN THIS TOGETHER â—½ MARRIAGE
(This was written over a decade ago, and since the content goes with the current After 40 Years article, it’s being republished this month! Enjoy…)
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Have you ever worked in an office and gotten a memo, and at the top it reads “Re:” and then on the line is written what the memo is regarding? It might be about a staff meeting, time off, or pay scales; and it serves its purpose well to inform you of the content you’re about to read.
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Our prayers for our husbands are often just like that. We start out by letting God know that the content of our prayer is going to be regarding our husband: his behavior, his lack of initiative, his waning romantic side, etc. We’ve got an agenda for our prayer regarding our husband and we want God to take note, respond to each request, and wrap up the answer in a memo back to us, stating “Done.”
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I’ve spent a good part of my married life praying prayers regarding my husband, just like that. First, I tried telling my husband what it is that I want and need, and then if he didn’t respond like I expected him to, I wailed and wept to God, hoping he would then take up my cause and make me happy.
However, it came to my mind one day that maybe I should be praying for my husband, instead of regarding him.
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In other words, what if I started asking God to speak to my husband and let him know how much he is loved, to encourage my husband with favor at work, to heal my husband’s wounds from his childhood, or to bless my husband with rain from heaven? What if I changed up my prayer life to include petitions for my husband’s well-being instead of regarding my own desires and demands?
This may seem like a small thing – the difference between “for” prayers and “regarding” prayers – but it’s anything but small.
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When we pray regarding our husbands, we’re usually frustrated, disappointed, and angry. We can’t remember the last time he actually asked us out on a date, we can’t forget the way he screamed at the kids, or we are still fuming that he forgot to take care of that important item we asked him to do…and now we have to do it. It’s the same with the memos at the office. When they arrive in our inbox, we know someone somewhere has complained, noted a problem, or there’s a change in policy about to take place.
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But what if…one day we were sitting at the computer and a memo arrived with nothing on the subject line, and the content was full of compliments, praise, and bonuses we had no idea our boss was sending us? Wouldn’t that be a great place to work, where we received those kinds of messages daily?
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That’s the kind of message and memo we need to send up to God, our heavenly father, who loves marriage, loves the family, and loves us. We need to petition God for our husbands, so that our husbands receive God’s love, acceptance, forgiveness, power, and maturity that only comes from walking close to Him, hearing his voice, and responding to his direction.
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Somehow, when we begin to take the focus off of ourselves and start focusing on our husbands and their needs…our own needs begin to fade…and we realize something huge.
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Our husbands have difficulty being all that we need them to be, often because they never measure up, and we let them know about it way too often.
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God usually works in complete opposite ways from the norm, and our marriage connection is no different. The more silent we are in the ears of our husbands and in God’s ears “regarding” all of his faults, and the more verbal we are in petitions “for” blessing and goodness to follow our husbands every day, the more our own needs are met.
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God has a way of getting our husband’s attention that doesn’t include our memos regarding him. All we have to do is pray for our husband and his relationship with his Father, and the rest falls into place. And the quicker we learn to place our husband’s pitfalls at the foot of our Father, trusting in his goodness and mercy to follow us daily, the more satisfied we become in our walk with Him…and our walk with him.
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Next time you start to pray for your husband, check and see what’s on the memo line you’re sending up to God. Is it blank, allowing God to fill it in with what he sees is necessary and good for the moment? Or is that line full of your complaints, notices, and changes you want done…pronto?
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It’s a hard thing to do, for sure. And it requires making a choice daily. But it’s a lot easier and fulfilling when we learn the secret of praying for…and not regarding.