Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.
1 PETER 3:7
But what happened?!”
Have you and your husband ever had this wake-up call in your relationship? Have you experienced a sobering moment when you realized you aren’t exactly the same couple you were during the early days and years of your marriage? And you wonder…
“What happened?” One day you and your husband-to-be were best friends. You couldn’t wait to get married and be together. And when you were separated, you called each other nonstop. You texted and skyped every minute you had free. Whatever means and methods you could devise, you used all of them to communicate with each other.
Everything focused on your upcoming wedding day. (Afterward, no husband or wife ever forgets that day. Well, your husband may forget the date, but certainly not the event!) If your wedding was like mine, it was a somewhat traditional wedding preceded by months and months of finely tuned planning in preparation for that oh-so-brief ceremony where you repeated vows to each other, pledging to love and honor each other till death do you part.
All of the vows and promises that you made to each other were meant to be binding and were made in the presence of God and multiple witnesses. And the exciting thing is that you and I’m sure your husband meant every word you both uttered. Those vows were not idle statements. They were spoken sincerely from hearts filled with love and devotion. You both genuinely meant every promise you made to each other.
And yet sooner or later the day comes when you look up and wonder, “What happened?”
Well, my friend, what happened, was life. Things don’t always turn out the way we think they will when we “fall in love.” Life comes along—life with all its ups and downs, trials and triumphs, joys and sorrows, disappointments and failures. Most marriages, including yours as well as mine, experience bumps along the way.
In addition, as time goes along, we tend to forget our wedding vows and what they require of us. It’s easy to think of your vows with regard to the other person’s obligations and not your own. As a result, if you are not careful, you can eventually begin to view your marriage in terms of yourself and your wants and needs and not about your mate.
So what is the solution? As you continue to pray your way through your husband’s life and his roles and responsibilities, you know by now that you cannot change your husband’s attitude about your marriage. But you can change your attitude. There are some things you as a wife can do to refocus your heart and thinking on your marriage. The number one thing you can do immediately—right now—is pray for your husband. You can aggressively and faithfully ask God to work in your husband’s heart and deal with his actions and his attitude toward your marriage. And, of course, you are actively praying for God to do the same in your heart too!
A Prayer for Your Marriage
In the books Jim and I write on the subject of marriage, I write to wives and point out what God’s Word says to wives. In his books, Jim takes on the role of writing to husbands and addresses what the Bible says to husbands.
However, because this book is about the prayers you as a wife pray for your husband, I am using a few scriptures that are directed to husbands. As you go through the prayer that follows, keep in mind it is meant to help you pray for something you know is God’s will for your husband. Your role is not to use this scripture to chastise your husband or to show him everything in the verse he is failing to do. No, your role is to love your husband and pray and plead with God on his behalf. Then trust God to do the work. When God works in your husband’s heart, there will most definitely be real change and transformation!
Now for our prayer. Take a minute to read the verse at the top of the opening page of this chapter. Then read on.
1 Peter 3:7
Dear Lord, help __________ to realize that we are heirs together of the grace of life, equal spiritual partners. I pray that as __________ and I live togerther, __________ will want to follow Your plan and care for me and honor me as his wife. And Lord, please help me to remember to praise __________ often, and to live out my role as his wife, his partner in life.
As you begin your prayer for your husband and your marriage, you are essentially asking God to remind your husband of five areas of responsibility he is to assume in his marriage relationship with you.
You are praying for your husband’s physical relationship with you—“Husbands, likewise, dwell with them.” You are praying for your husband to “honor” and be “understanding” of you, but this cannot be separated out from the physical area of your marriage. A true marriage relationship is much more than just sharing the same address. Marriage is fundamentally a physical relationship: “The two shall become one flesh” (Ephesians 5:31). This prayer is as much about intimacy as it is about understanding.
Of course, Christian mates enjoy a deeper spiritual relationship, but the two—physical and spiritual—go together (1 Corinthians 7:1-5). You are asking God to give you a truly spiritual husband who will fulfill his marital roles and love you as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25).
In your prayer that your husband would “dwell” together with you, you are asking God to give your husband a desire to make time to be at home with you and the children. This is a prayer many wives should be praying. In fact, I read somewhere a survey that revealed the average husband and wife spend 37 minutes a week together in actual communication! (I’m not sure I believe this, but you might want to do a little time-log yourself. You might be surprised at how close this survey’s conclusion is to the actual time you share real communication with your husband!) If this survey is true, is it any wonder that marriages fall apart after the children grow up and leave home? The husband and wife are left alone—to live under the same roof as strangers!
To “dwell” with a wife also suggests that the husband provides for the physical and material needs of the home. The burden of providing rests on the husband’s shoulders (1 Timothy 5:8). But, while it isn’t wrong for you as a wife to have a job or career, your first responsibility is to love and care for your husband, children, and your home (Titus 2:4-5).
You are praying for your husband’s intellectual relationship with you—God asks husbands to “dwell with them [their wives] with understanding.” There are probably at least a thousand and one jokes floating around about a husband’s failure to understand his wife, about a husband’s lament that he will never understand his wife, and about a wife trying in vain to get her husband to understand her. And yet God asks a husband to live with his wife in an understanding way—realizing that…
— she is to be honored as and because she is his wife,
— she is the physically weaker vessel of the two, and
— she is a joint heir with him of the grace of life.
You and your husband also need to understand that you are not the same people or couple you were when you were first married. Change has occurred. Both of you have gone through a variety of stages and changes during your years together. Your likes and dislikes have changed. New interests and abilities have surfaced. Perhaps children have been added to the mix. You’ve each been forced to adapt in ways you never imagined.
Here’s a simple example. When Jim and I got married, I hated spicy foods. Pepper and onions were foreign substances in my kitchen. Yet today, after living in Southern California with its spicy Mexican flavors in the local food, and living as missionaries in Singapore where chili paste is added to every food item, I now pour on the pepper and slather hot chili paste on just about everything I eat. (But I still feel ill at the smell or taste of dill pickles, which Jim purchases in the largest jars available in the market!)
And I’m sure you and your husband have also developed different tastes, habits, and interests over the years. You’ve been forced to learn new ways to live due to physical trials, health issues, the makeup of your family unit, the demands of the workplace, financial setbacks… and the list goes on.
The key in your relationship as a couple is making and taking the time to keep up with each other’s changes. It’s hard to imagine that two married people can live together and not really know each other, but it happens all the time. Ignorance of change and distance are dangerous in any relationship, but they are especially dangerous in a marriage.
And so you must pray! Pray that your husband will be sensitive to your burdens, challenges, feelings, fears, hopes, and dreams—and pray for yourself to do the same. Pray that God will help your husband listen with his heart and share meaningful communication with you. Pray that your home will have an atmosphere of openness and love and submission so that even during the times when the two of you disagree about something, you will still be happy together.
I just have to turn this coin over for a minute and look at the other side, the wife’s side and her role and responsibilities. I had to learn—and decide—not to be a whiner. It’s easy to whine and complain, to confront or verbally attack your husband for being insensitive and clueless about your “needs.” When you and I feel or act in these ways, we need to fall on our knees and pray—for ourselves! God’s grace is either sufficient for our trials and challenges and disappointments, or it isn’t. And God clearly says it is: “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9). So pray—for yourself first, then for your husband.
Then, after you have prayed, take steps to improve your communication with your husband. Start by heaping praise on your man and being his number one encourager. Be that kind of wife—the one who contributes positively. Then, as one of my mentors taught me, if you have to share something serious, the negative is always on the heels of the positive.
Best of all, be like God’s excellent wife in Proverbs 31:26, who “opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness.” These are two of God’s good communication principles for wives.
You are praying for your husband’s emotional relationship with you—The scripture you are praying goes on to say “giving honor to the wife.” When you and your husband-to-be were dating, how did he act? Hopefully, he was attentive and thoughtful, and you were sweet and charming. And after you got engaged, he was probably even more courteous, always the gentleman. All you could see ahead were blue skies, clear sailing, and wedded bliss. And with things going this well, surely things were about to get even better!
But it’s sad to say that in time, many brides join the growing number of wives whose husbands have forgotten or neglected to be kind and courteous. Unfortunately, it’s easy for a husband to start taking his wife for granted. He fixates on his demanding job and his responsibility to provide for you and any children you have. He forgets that happiness in a home is made up of many little things, including the small courtesies of life.
And so you pray! As you do, pray that your husband remembers to give you honor by respecting your feelings, thoughts, and desires. And remember you are not praying that he will always agree with your ideas or be your special built-in Yes Man. You are praying that he will leave his cares and woes behind and pay more attention to you and your marriage, that he will respect you and your views or opinions.
You are also praying that your husband will acknowledge that the two of you are meant to be a team, that you will both see the wisdom of Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 lived out in your marriage:
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm; but how can one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him.
And don’t forget to pray to fulfill your roles as a wife. Pray to take seriously your role as your husband’s “helper” and that he will see you as his helper (Genesis 2:18).
You are praying for your husband’s spiritual relationship with you—“as being heirs together of the grace of life” and “that [his] prayers may not be hindered.” If you and your husband are Christians, you are “heirs together.” Together you are “joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17). This means that in your roles as Christians you are equal: You submit to one another as joint heirs. Just don’t forget that in your marriage, you are to show submission and your husband is to show his love and consideration of you as you both submit to Christ and together follow Him.
You are praying for your husband’s priestly relationship with you—“… that [his] prayers may not be hindered.” Biblically and historically, the husband was considered to be the “priest” of the family. His job was to pray for and with his wife and children. Job, in the Old Testament, is a powerful biblical example of this priestly role. Job 1:5 tells us that, as the priest of his family, Job “regularly” offered burnt offerings to God according to the number of his children, just in case any of them had sinned.
Wow, this is a lofty prayer request! If your husband is not a Christian, you are to continue to pray for his salvation. And if your husband is nominal in his faith, so much so that you are not sure he is a Christian, pray! And if you have a husband who is sold out to God and on fire for Christ, thank and praise God while you are praying for Him to continue working in your husband’s life. Pray that nothing would hinder your husband in his role as priest for your family.
“That your prayers be not hindered” can also speak of your prayers as a couple. Peter assumes that you and your husband pray together. Praying together has a powerful impact on a marriage and can help you bypass many of the usual problems that harm a marital relationship. Here’s a thought: If unbelievers can have happy homes and marriages without prayer (and many do), how much happier could your Christian marriage and home life be with prayer?
And so you pray! According to 1 Peter 3:7, if something is wrong in the marriage relationship, the couples’ prayers will be hindered. For that to happen would be serious because you and your family are in a spiritual war against Satan and the world. It is vital that your prayers are not hindered by any sin in your lives. If something is wrong, deal with it quickly—and drastically!
Beyond Prayer, What Can You Do?
I’ve heard from Jim, my dad, and my three brothers that when a sports team starts losing games, the coach will take the team back to the basic mechanics of how they started the season. The reason for their losing is that somewhere along the way, the team lost sight of the fundamentals of their sport.
I tried to learn how to play golf several times when I was in my twenties, but I was never good at it. But I have often talked to real—and good—golfers who have said that whenever they start playing badly, they go back to the fundamentals of the game. Somewhere along the way, their swing or their putting had altered from how they were trained.
Marriage is likely no different. Getting back to those early days in your relationship with your husband may be all that’s needed to solve any problems you might be having. You started out as friends, became best friends, then finally committed to being best friends forever! So beyond praying, what can you do to rekindle your best-friends-forever status with your husband?
As we answer this question, obviously some of the suggestions that follow won’t be possible if your husband is not a Christian, or if he is only nominal in his beliefs.
But whether your husband is a Christian or not, you are going to keep praying for him. That’s your assignment from God. You can also pray to pay closer attention to your own actions and attitudes. And you can pray to make sure you are following God’s four guidelines for all wives—help him, follow him, show respect for him, and love him.1
Pray together. Suggest to your husband that the two of you start small with brief prayers together. Jim and I keep a short list of people who need prayer today, right now. We also have an ongoing list of loved ones and people who populate our days. Maybe you can start in this simple way and see what happens. But whatever you do, don’t push… or nag… or have expectations. And if it happens, throw your arms around your husband’s neck and say, “Thank you!”
Work on common interests. When you were dating, there was so much you enjoyed doing together. But with marriage, unless you both work at it, you can easily drift apart. He has his job, friends, interests, and hobbies. You have the children, neighborhood friends, girlfriends, family, and maybe a job as well. First thing you know, you and your sweetie seem to have nothing in common, especially after the children have left home. Well, it’s time to make the effort to start thinking of interests you have in common—things you can do together.
Develop couple goals. Goals are a great way to bring you and your hubby closer together. They give you both a common purpose. Setting goals causes you to think about yourselves as a couple and about the future you would like to work toward—together. You can talk and plan for everything from your next vacation to anniversary or changes you would like to make in your lifestyle. Goals are something positive you can work on together, and celebrate when they are achieved.
Spend time alone together. When our marriage hit the ten-year mark, Jim and I attended a marriage conference. One of the suggestions was that each couple go out on a date every week. Well, you can imagine all the excuses both the men and women began to express. They didn’t have the money, didn’t have the time, didn’t have a babysitter… the list was endless.
Jim and I were right in there with the same excuses—and more! I thought, Well, if we need to talk, we can do it right in the privacy of our own home, right? But home is not a good place to have serious, intimate talks about important issues. Long story short? We looked at our calendars and spotted the best time each week, made the effort to find a babysitter, and found a local fast food place that offered endless cups of coffee or soda. We were amazed at how productive and satisfying a date night could be!
Endure suffering together. This one is not something you would wish on anyone, especially yourself. But trials and suffering are a part of everyone’s life. Mutually shared heartache has a way of bearing fruit that cannot be produced in any other soil. Whenever the two of you go through a time of physical or emotional suffering, you draw closer together through the experience. One benefit of trials is experiencing together the strength and comfort that comes from the Lord Himself. That was Paul’s message in 2 Corinthians 1:3-5:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ.
Grow together. It’s no fun growing (intellectually and spiritually) and not having your spouse grow along with you. Sooner or later, one of you will be left behind, and you won’t have many things you can talk about and enjoy as a couple. This doesn’t mean you must be studying or reading or participating in the same areas or interests—or following the same sport or football team. But it does mean you always have something to share with him, and he has something to share with you. There’s a spark whenever you get together at the end of the day and have something to talk about—what did you read today? What did you learn? What did you accomplish? This is especially important in the spiritual area of life as you each grow separately and compound that growth by sharing mutual spiritual interests and considering one another “in order to stir up love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24).
Have fun together. I have to tell on myself here! For years I planned every Sunday for the week to come. I had our lives down to seven categories that I meticulously planned for each week: spiritual, physical, financial, mental, personal, family, and home. I faithfully listed things to do and projects to work on under each category. That way the urgent things got done and progress was made on things that were more in the future. One Sunday afternoon while I was working on my master plan for the next week, Jim leaned over with a pen in hand and said, “I’d like to add a category to this list.” Then he penned in the word fun.
Do you remember how much fun you had while you were dating your spouse and in the early years of your marriage? Then sometime later you began to wonder, When did life get so serious? Well, that’s what happened to Jim and me. And the epilogue to our story is, together we started planning in some fun!
Speak in the plural. Have you ever had a conversation with a woman who, by the way she is talking, you can’t tell whether she is married or single? Sure, she has a ring on her finger, but as she talks, everything she says is “my daughter,” “my house,” “my last vacation.” I always wonder, Hey, aren’t you part of a married couple?
A mentor of mine taught me the lesson of speaking in the plural. She married for the first time at age 47, and immediately went from being an independent woman and CEO to being a wife. And amazingly, her language changed overnight as everything in her life became “we.” For instance, when someone asked her “Where do you live?” her answer was “We live in San Diego.” The more time I spent with her, the more I got the “we” message!
You and your husband are a couple. Your life now has a partner. You now have joint interests. So it’s “our house,” “our daughter,” “our vacation.” Say along with Joshua: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). Then back up your talk with your actions by always worshiping together, praying together, and serving together, walking through life arm in arm, facing and enjoying life’s challenges—as one. That’s exactly where you want to be, and what you want to be.
A Word About Marriage from the Heart of God
Genesis 2:24
A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
My Prayer for My Husband 
