Strategy 4

Your Family

Fortifying the Lives of Those You Love

If I were your enemy, I’d seek to disintegrate your family and destroy every member of it. I’d want to tear away at your trust and unity and turn everyone’s love inward on themselves. I would make sure your family didn’t look anything like it’s supposed to. Because then people would look at your Christian marriage, your Christian kids, and see you’re no different, no stronger than anybody else—that God, underneath it all, really doesn’t change anything.

My husband, Jerry, and I (we’d both readily admit) had a terrible second year of marriage. We fought early and often, long and hard. Two people so young, with so little in the bank of shared experiences with which to accumulate much ammunition. . . . Yet we still seemed to find plenty of it to go to battle with. And battle, we did. Against each other. All the time.

But we made it through by the skin of our gritted teeth. And the tough patches we endured, once we settled back down, only seemed to make us better. Closer. More committed. More complete. Fourteen years later, three kids later, we seemed to be fully hitting our stride as a family of five. We still had stuff to deal with, of course, like everybody does. But for the most part? All good. Happy.

Then came last year.

With my family’s blessing I had accepted, much to even my own surprise, a part in a major faith-based film. I was shocked to be invited to participate, shocked that I was willing to risk saying yes, and shocked even more, after the directors saw my acting abilities, that they still wanted me to take the role. Took me about as far out of my comfort zone as this girl had been in a long, long time, maybe ever. The movie, as you probably know by now, is on the theme of prayer—the power of strategic prayer, the kind of prayer power God can activate in His people, and specifically the kind of prayer that can rescue a family before it careens off a cliff of near certain destruction.

The directors of the film wrote me a long e-mail before shooting began, filling me in on details to help me prepare for what was ahead. And among their many notes was a warning. They wanted to make me aware of Satan’s penchant for targeting the people who’d been involved in their previous films and how he’d taken aim at the areas of their personal lives that were connected to the message of that movie. Since this particular project was on the theme of prayer and family, they encouraged me to be vigilant about praying for my own family, praying against any assignments the enemy may have trained against us.

Soon summer arrived. We packed our bags and moved to another state to begin a couple months of filming. I was the novice on set—didn’t know what to expect as far as all the acting and directing and moviemaking were involved. But even having been forewarned, I didn’t fully realize how that summer of on-site shooting would affect some of the dynamics in my family. Gosh, we were just having fun in our new surroundings, soaking up the fresh adventure of it, not really thinking about the unique set of stressors placed on all of us—being away from home, out of our element, out of our usual rhythms. But pretty soon the slightest things would set off a disagreement, a misunderstanding. Hot feelings. Short fuses. By the time we made it through our final wrap on the film set, we were exhausted, not just physically but relationally.

OK, freeze here. Get this picture of what was happening in our family at the time and how it contrasted with the message of the movie we were involved in portraying. Can’t you see the enemy’s strategy at work? Of course he would want to turn up the background noise to try complicating the work we were doing in expressing God’s truth for a global audience. Of course he would want, if possible, to water down this important message by dismantling the relationships of the people participating in it—just as we’d been told to expect.

So since we knew who was behind the tension, we made the deliberate choice to stop fighting with each other and to fight instead with that doggoned enemy. We vigilantly asked God to make our marriage and family (and the families of all those involved in the film) bulletproof against these incessant attacks.

Too much was at stake. It was a big deal.

But you know what? It’s always a big deal. All of our marriages and families are a huge deal. Yours and mine. They’re all that big of a deal . . . because each one is a billboard for the eternal, unchangeable love story between God and humankind. Each of their successes or failures is of great importance, both in God’s eyes and, therefore, in our enemy’s eyes.

So he targets them. All of them. He targets our role as wives, targets our husbands, and targets our children. He brings dissension, infuses tension, unravels our sense of peace with disunity. Because ultimately he wants to destroy our families—all of our families—so that the billboard message they’re designed to project to the world is a picture that is, at best, laughable.

Now if you’re a single woman, thinking you might just flip ahead to the next chapter since this one doesn’t apply to you, think again. There’s more that pertains to you on this subject matter than you may realize. We’re all a part of it, married or not, or just not married yet. We need everybody praying—even for a marriage and family like yours that may be still to come in the future.

Here’s why: According to Scripture, the number-one purpose of marriage—more than even the unique, time-honored partnership it creates between a man and woman, more than even the conceiving and raising of children, more than any Prince Charming fairy tale in any little girl’s head—is how it represents the mystery of the gospel in active, living form.

That’s what a beloved professor of mine, Dr. Dwight Pentecost (who’d also been a professor to my father decades earlier) said to Jerry and me in a typewritten letter that I still treasure in a keepsake box of wedding memories. “I scarcely need remind you,” he wrote, “that marriage was instituted by God to be an object lesson to the world of the relationship of a believer to Himself. Each of you will play a significant role in living out this lesson.”

A man chooses a bride, loves her, makes a covenant with her, and gives himself completely to her. The woman responds by receiving his love, surrendering to him, entering into this covenant bond with him, and becoming one flesh with him. It’s not a perfect representation, of course, since the best marriage we can possibly make on earth still involves a pair of fallen, broken people. But in its deepest sense, at its deepest level, this primary human relationship between husband and wife is meant to be a living witness to others of the love of Christ for His church (Eph. 5:22–33).

Marriage stands for the creation of unity among two people who were once separated in every way before love reached out and found the other—the way God reached out and found us, and covenanted with us, and loved us, and despite who we are, despite what we’re like, still loves us. This image, more than almost anything, is exactly what the enemy wants to denigrate.

When Scripture counsels husbands to love and lead their wives, even when it counsels us wives to submit to our husbands—[gulp!]—the ultimate motivation for these lofty directives is not just so we’ll get along better on the weekends but that our homes will reflect on earth the order of God’s relationship with us. Husbands are to love their wives “just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). Wives are to submit to their husbands “as the church submits to Christ” (v. 24 nlt).

Again, big deal, all around. Much bigger deal than we thought.

So when you and I begin feeling pressure and tension and splintering and conflict at home, when little trifling things start bunching together to become this one big thing—when the nitpicking turns into bickering; the bickering into outbursts; the outbursts into rude, below-the-belt unkindness and bitterness; the bitterness into slow, seething pullbacks of silence and isolation—is it just your husband being terrible? Acting awful? Is it just you being overly sensitive, slow to relinquish a foothold of cherished, hard-fought ground? Is it just your child pulling away into isolation or overt rebellion? Is it just all of you going to your own rooms—disconnected, disjointed, fragmented?

No, it bears all the marks of an outside enemy—one who hangs around your family but isn’t part of your family. He’s the one who wants your marriage to suffer. He’s the one who wants your home to be a dueling battleground. He’s the one who’s most invested in sending each of you out the door every day vulnerable and susceptible to temptation, needy for the unconditional love and acceptance you’re supposed to be giving and receiving from each other.

But is he the one on the receiving end of your frustration? Is he the one you’re splattering with juicy comebacks, spoken with disgust against the inside glass of your windshield while you’re driving down the road, rehearsing the script for your next altercation? Because the fact is, he’s most likely the one who’s pulled the wool over your eyes, fooling you with a crafty bait and switch, leading you to focus all your indignation on your man or your kid instead.

He wants you miserable and exhausted and joyless and undone. He wants that picture of the gospel—the one you call your marriage and your family—he wants it tarnished. Ripped up. Smeared in the mud of failure. Held up as fresh meat from the kill. Turning you against each other and tearing everybody in half. As much as the Father loves and embodies unity, your enemy loves and embodies division. Wherever discord is present, he’s never too far away. And as most of us sadly know from far too much personal experience, no wounds cut as deep or cleave us at the core of our existence more than the wounds we receive at the hands of our family.

You’d better believe he wants a piece of that action.

But maybe he wasn’t counting on this: a woman who’d had enough, enough to start taking some prayer action. For her marriage, for her husband, for her children—for all her family.

So here we go. This is it. Bring your family issues right up to the line here, and let’s get some stuff out in the open. Let’s get specific. Let’s put a bead on the bull’s-eye where the real source of your family strife and discomfort and unmet needs are originating from, and let’s show him the kind of resistance that a steady dose of prayer is able to exact against his demolition plans.

Is it your marriage? Then quit trying to be the Holy Spirit in your relationship, responsible for poking and prodding that husband of yours until he finally sees things the same way you see them. I’ll admit I spent some of my first years as a married woman convinced that my primary spiritual gift in life was to change Jerry . . . in Jesus’ name! It’s taken me nearly two decades to begin realizing I was wrong. Changing Jerry, as it turns out, is not my spiritual gift. Nowhere in 1 Corinthians 12, or anywhere else in Scripture where the divinely infused gifts of God’s Spirit are listed, does “improving thy husband” appear as even a footnoted selection. And if we didn’t know this to be the case from its obvious absence among the catalog of spiritual gifts, haven’t we all discovered from exhausting experience that the Holy Spirit all by Himself can do a much better job of it than we ever could?

No, our job—my job, your job—is not to change that man but to respect him and then leave the rest to the Lord. When you do this, you’re not letting him off the hook at all—you’re just leaving him to God. You’re also well on your way to discovering something else: he’s likely not the only one who needs to do some changing. In fact, he probably isn’t the one (at my house, at least) who needs changing the most. The more you pray for your husband, the more the Spirit will shine a spotlight on the places in your own heart and actions that need a bit of work too.

The only effective way to fight in marriage is to pray. The way to see the real truth behind whatever’s happening in this whole situation of yours . . . is to pray. The way to get the wheels moving again that have clogged up or perhaps totally come off . . . is to pray. Prayer is how we isolate the real problems. And prayer is how we get up behind those problems and attack them at the roots. It’s how we isolate the real enemy. It’s how we keep him on his heels and off our man.

And prayer is also how God gets through to us, even while we’re praying for our husband, convincing us that maybe what our husband needs most right now is for his wife to become a soft, safe place for him to land, rather than a prickly, nagging source of contention that only agitates him and makes things worse.

So even if things are going pretty well for you right now, even if you don’t have a lot to complain about or feel upset over, the enemy is still there, whether in full-on attack mode or lurking in wait for the next possible opportunity to infiltrate. So pray. And pray fervently.

Is it your children? The Bible says our children are “like arrows in the hand of a warrior” (Ps. 127:4). We raise them up to shoot them out into the culture, bearing the image of Christ to the world. Sounds again, then, like a place that would qualify as a major area of concern for an enemy who doesn’t want any vestige of Christian valor and virtue running loose out there where . . . I don’t know, they might take bold stands of faith and influence around their college friends. Might pastor a church or run a business or become involved in missions and ministry opportunities that honor Christ and actively serve hundreds of people. Worst of all, they might marry and raise up a whole other generation of little Christ followers, keeping your family burning red hot on enemy radar long beyond your lifetime, spinning up a legacy of faith that spirals forward undaunted into the future.

Your enemy can’t be having any of that, now, can he?

So don’t be surprised when he starts coming after your kids. And don’t think it’s all because they’re being headstrong or peer dependent or careless or lazy. Satan knows the parts of their character—both their strengths and their weaknesses—where he can worm in and try stunting their growth, their potential, and their confidence.

One of my sons, for example, has always been prone toward fear and anxiety. Ever since he was a small child, he’s shown a noticeable bent toward this kind of emotional response to external stimuli. Knowing this—spotting this—I’ve been very specific in praying for him, out loud over him, even when he was just a baby. I’ve routinely asked the Holy Spirit to instill courage within him, to be a wall of protection against the enemy’s attempts to exploit my son in this sensitive area.

Three or four years ago, night after night, he started seeing something he described as a man in his room. It couldn’t really be a man in there, of course. The outside doors and windows were locked. Nobody was getting inside. Part of me wanted to write it off as nothing, tell him to go back to sleep and not worry about it. But he was able to tell me in rather striking detail what this “man” looked like, where he was standing in relation to my son’s bed, how paralyzing it felt when he sensed this presence in the room, as if a heavy blanket had fallen on him, suffocating him.

That did it. I started to pray over him even more specifically, to pray over their room while the boys were away, to command this spirit of fear to leave my son alone in the name of Jesus. One day in particular when this issue seemed to be reaching a climax of intensity, I stormed into that bedroom like a rocket. I paced the floor, I quoted Scripture, I posted passages on the wall, I laid hands on the doorposts and window ledges.

And I’m not joking here, that was the last day my boy ever mentioned that man. As far as I know, he’s never been bothered by it since to that degree or in that precise way.

Let the enemy run roughshod over my kids? No way. And I have a strong feeling you won’t allow him to do it to yours either.

An enemy is after your children, I’m telling you. Believe it. Know it. But most important, deal with it—by tunneling deep into your prayer closet and fighting back with every parental and spiritual weapon at your disposal.

Is it an issue with other family members? Perhaps your most pressing family issues right now pertain not to your husband, not to your children, but to other members of your extended family who are unsaved, feeling the brunt of enemy attack on themselves, or who are participating (intentionally or unintentionally) with the enemy’s designs on you as their daughter, their sister, their cousin, their daughter-in-law, whatever. The forms that these sorts of conflict can take are as numerous as the number of people involved in them. But just as much as the devil loves stirring up trouble in churches, he loves stirring up trouble in families. He knows it’s a Christian witness killer, an energy zapper, a time eater, a relationship destroyer. The amount of senseless hurt and distraction he can cause per square inch in your family is one of his most desirable economies of scale. He can do more damage with less effort by attacking us here, within these relationships, than in any other context. But if we’re wise, we can use his own geometry against him, putting prayer into effect in places where we’re close enough to touch the very people involved. Then as God’s Spirit does His work in us and in these situations, the others in our family will be standing close enough to watch it all happen in real time, to see the kinds of change and impact our prayers are able to accomplish.

Again, if you’re a single woman, don’t think this chapter doesn’t apply to you. If you’re wise, you’ll discern that it most certainly does. Praying for your mate shouldn’t begin when you’ve walked down the aisle. It should start now, before you’ve been on the first date or even know his first name. Pray for the man God may be positioning as your future husband. Pray that he’ll be set ablaze with love for Christ and a heart for leading you well and making your marriage a devoted priority. Pray that God would guard his friendships and those who will influence the path he is taking even right now. Pray that his passions would be attuned with an authentic faith, that his purity would be a matter of deep commitment, and that God would superintend the circumstances that bring the two of you together . . . all in His perfect plan and His perfect timing.

If you don’t have children of your own, pray for the little ones (nieces, nephews, neighbors) who are in your life and whom God brings specifically to your attention. And yes, begin praying now for the child or children He may entrust to you at a later time, through whatever means He leads you to take. I once knew a guy who began setting aside $100 a month for his children when he was in his mid-twenties—and he didn’t even marry until he was in his early thirties! He was preparing a nest of security in advance for his child to be born into. Prayer allows you to do the same thing in the spiritual realm, to prepare an environment of spiritual security and the first stirring of a family legacy before your child is even stirring in the womb. Can you imagine what a gift it could be, years from now, for your children to see your handwritten, fervent prayers for them before they even took their first breath?

The family is one of the key axis points of God’s purposes on earth. And your family, at the point of your sphere of influence, is a major component of what He is doing right here where you live. In order to make sure you’re fully cooperating with Him and with the enormous opportunity embodied in your family structure and its people, they need you to not be on their backs, not be up in their faces, but be down on your knees.

Assume a new fighting position.

Call to Prayer

If for some reason you’ve only been skimming through these early chapters so far, not really stopping to turn to the pages in the back of the book and formulate your own strategies for praying against Satan’s attacks on your passion, your focus, your identity, I hope this will be the place where you really do take time to pull off to the side, break away from just trying to finish another book that you started, and spend some concentrated effort in crafting specific, strategic, personalized prayer approaches for your family. Person by person. Name by name. The stakes are simply too high not to do it.

I think we’ve all resorted at one time or another to the roll-call system for covering our family in prayer. Lord, bless my husband; Lord, bless my kids; be with my aunt and uncle in Ohio; be with my dad and his knee replacement rehab; be with my brother who’s looking for work. Quick. Easy. Over and done. Better than totally ignoring them perhaps, but hardly a satisfying confidence that you’re going all out, participating mightily with God in their future, their provision, or their rescue.

“Beloved,” the apostle John wrote, “I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2). “May He give you what your heart desires and fulfill your whole purpose” (Ps. 20:4 hcsb). The Scripture is full of eternal truths, made even more relevant when framed against the context of your family’s life, specific needs, and dilemmas.

There are verses and counsel related to how a wife treats, blesses, thinks about, and responds to her husband. Pray them for yourself.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Cor. 13:4–7)

Encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. (Titus 2:4–5)

You wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. (1 Pet. 3:1–2)

Don’t you wives realize that your husbands might be saved because of you? (1 Cor. 7:16 nlt)

The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will not lack anything good. (Prov. 31:11 hcsb)

There are verses, particularly in Proverbs, that speak to the blessings of a man’s integrity, his quest for wisdom, the leadership of his family, and God’s desire to prosper him as he commits his many responsibilities to the Lord. Pray them for your husband.

Commit your works to the Lord,

And your plans will be established. (Prov. 16:3)

When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord,

He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. (Prov. 16:7)

Don’t abandon wisdom, and she will watch over you;

love her, and she will guard you.

Wisdom is supreme—so get wisdom.

And whatever else you get, get understanding.

Cherish her, and she will exalt you;

if you embrace her, she will honor you.
(Prov. 4:6–8 hcsb)

Let your eyes look directly ahead

And let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you.

Watch the path of your feet,

And all your ways will be established.
(Prov. 4:25–26)

[Wisdom] will rescue you from a forbidden woman,

from a stranger with her flattering talk.
(Prov. 2:16 hcsb)

Don’t fear sudden danger

or the ruin of the wicked when it comes,

for the Lord will be your confidence

and will keep your foot from a snare.
(Prov. 3:25–26 hcsb)

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

And do not lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge Him,

And He will make your paths straight. (Prov. 3:5–6)

There are other verses that lead a mother, a parent, to keep her children before the Lord and their protection in His hands. Pray them for your children.

In the fear of the Lord there is strong confidence,

And his children will have refuge. (Prov. 14:26)

Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts. (Isa. 8:18)

They were to rise and tell their children

so that they might put their confidence in God

and not forget God’s works,

but keep His commands.

Then they would not be like their fathers,

a stubborn and rebellious generation,

a generation whose heart was not loyal

and whose spirit was not faithful to God.
(Ps. 78:6–8 hcsb)

I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth. (3 John 4)

Then there are other passages that caution us not to fight with old weapons but to keep ourselves under control and trusting God’s authority as we relate to one another:

Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. (Eph. 4:29)

Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person. (Col. 4:6)

The end of all things is near; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaint. (1 Pet. 4:7–9)

Pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another. (Rom. 14:19)

Not paying back evil for evil or insult for insult but, on the contrary, giving a blessing, since you were called for this, so that you can inherit a blessing. (1 Pet. 3:9 hcsb)

Homes and families, marriages and children can all too easily devolve into combat zones—which was the last thing in the world you ever foresaw when you pledged your life to your husband at the wedding altar, when you brought home that bundle of joy from the delivery room. What I’m telling you is this: You may not be able to control all the discord and unwise choices that occur in the various corners of your house or among the people you share a family with. But you can make sure the only place you engage in combat is in the heavenlies, in prayer, in secret. The enemy who’s intent on disrupting the peace in your home doesn’t flinch when you try to force your own fixes upon it, but he does start worrying when a wife, a mother, a daughter, or a sister starts avoiding the noise at the periphery and starts making some noise of her own, right outside the door to the devil’s workshop.

I urge you, for the sake of your family, take the fight into your prayer room rather than your living room. Rip out one or two of those sheets in the back of this book, or grab your own stash of memo paper or sticky notes, and write down what you want to be sure your enemy hears you praying. Use the biblical promises and passages from this chapter as a framework to get started. Then take your vocal pleas to God instead of making your vocal presence such a common fixture around the house. Get ready to go to war for your family. And get ready to see some changes you’ve never seen happen before.