HONOR IN OUR MARRIAGES

HER HUSBAND CAN TRUST HER, AND SHE WILL GREATLY ENRICH HIS LIFE.
SHE BRINGS HIM GOOD, NOT HARM, ALL THE DAYS OF HER LIFE.
Proverbs 31:11-12 NLT ❤ (Passage on Bible Gateway)

When we first get married, we promise to love, honor and cherish each other as long as we both shall live. With sincere hearts, we vow to do everything in our power to make it good.

We believe our marriage will be different from everyone else’s.

But somewhere between our hope of ‘Happily Ever After’ and our present reality, we realize marriage is a lot harder than we thought it would be.

Kids, home, school, jobs, schedules, in laws.

We differ in our opinions on money, goals, vacations, the future.

Add to that any grief or loss.

Before we know it, our memory of a romantic ride into the sunset poofs into thin air.

Disappointments, angry words, confusion, dashed hopes and expectations.

As women, we love deeply and our love endures through some pretty heavy stuff.

But do we still honor our hubbies after the dust has settled and our marriages don’t look like how we dreamed they should?

No matter what your marriage looks like right now, God is gently and tenderly calling you to partner with Him in building it back up.

But first, before we can bring back honor in our marriages, we must acknowledge that we can’t do anything in our own strength.

If we are operating in our own strength, we are probably sending up a lot of frantic prayers, asking God to change our husbands to fit our own design.

We may have drawn up a blueprint on how our husband is supposed to look, offering God some very clear, step by step, directions on what we want to see changed.

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“The wise woman builds her house, but with her
own hands the foolish one tears hers down.”
Proverbs 14:1 (Verse in Bible Hub)

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We don’t just run the danger of tearing down our homes and marriages with what we do or don’t do.

We can do a lot of damage with our mouths, too. When we are weary, body and soul, Satan will waste no time in jumping in to encourage us (and our husbands) to speak death over our marriages.

Aside from the desperate SOS prayers that God sees ascending up to Him, we are too exhausted to pray for anything else.

That’s EXACTLY where the enemy wants us to be.

And our girlfriends are probably getting an earful of how terrible things are and how nothing will ever change.

Our words have creative power to bring honor into our marriages.

Do we really want to speak over our marriage that nothing will ever change?

The more we speak about our man’s shortcomings, the more our hearts will become annoyed and hardened. Before long, we won’t feel that he deserves to be honored any longer. 

In the middle of all that, God invites us to just pause right now and yield our will to Him. May we come to the end of ourselves so God’s power can begin to flow in our lives.

Even on our best days, our limited knowledge and wisdom is foolishness to God. The more we desperately scrape for control and operate out of our flesh, the more we can be sure that somewhere, somehow, we are unintentionally tearing our husbands and our marriages down.

God designed marriage to be a union of three … God, Hubby and Wife. Three peas in a pod. Ecclesiastes 4:12 reminds us that a triple braided cord is not easily broken! God, Hubby and Wife become a triple braided cord that is not easy to unravel.

Since He designed marriage, God knows what He is doing and desires for you to relinquish the reins to Him. Since He uniquely fashioned your husband from the ground up, He knows how to change his heart and make him into the man he was created to be.

We would be wise to join God in building our marriages back up … but in His way, in His strength and in His timing.

It takes trust to calm down and hand the entire mess over to God, doesn’t it?

May the following two verses comfort you:

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“Be still and know that I AM God … “
Psalm 46:10 (Verse in Bible Hub)

and

“I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for Me?”
Jeremiah 32:27 (Verse in Bible Hub)

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Instead of sending up desperate prayers begging the Lord to change our husbands, lets begin by petitioning Heaven with one of the most powerful prayers we could ever pray.

Just three simple words …. “Lord, change me!”

No matter how justified we may currently feel, please join me in praying these three powerful words that will untie the Lord’s hands to help us. Then we will be able to see our way clearly to begin to pray for the Holy Spirit to bless, protect, strengthen and grow our husbands into who He desires for them to be.

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“People may be pure in their own eyes, but the LORD examines their motives.”
Proverbs 16:2 (Verse in Bible Hub)

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When we are focused on fixing someone else, we become blind to ourselves and what our contribution may have been in any mess we find ourselves in. This can be super hard to take in, especially if we are going through a tough season.

For the first 17 years of our marriage, we had many serious strongholds and I didn’t trust God knew what He is doing when He asked me to release the whole messy, confusing situation to Him.

I had the misguided thought that if I released my marriage to God, then I would lose it. But doing things my way wore me out. By our tenth year, my heart started to shut down in some pathetic attempt at self survival.

We were never meant to carry the load. That’s why God asks us to release it to Him.

It took God a long time to break me of my stubbornness and get me to be still long enough to really listen to Him. God is all about our hearts and motives.

In fact, He desires for our hearts and motives to be pure.

Jesus wants us to have honor in our marriages. But before we can honor and cherish our husbands, we must first bow our hearts by honoring and cherishing the Lord Himself.

As we grow in honoring our Lord, we become more aware that Jesus is listening to every thought and every word. He sees every single tear that falls. We begin to feel Him extinguishing the desperation we were feeling in wanting to be heard and justified by our husbands.

We can then truly and lovingly pray for God’s best for our husbands and for them to become all that they were created to be. Not who we want them to be for our own comfort.

I believe God wants us to see prayer as a first course of action, a powerful partnership with Him to invite His Will and bring Heaven to Earth right here, right now in our lives! Prayer is powerful in bringing honor in our marriages.

Prayer softens our hearts and gives us hope in the Lord. We may not see much happening in the natural right now and we may not be able to trust our husbands just yet. But we can keep our eyes on Jesus and press into Him as we put our trust in HIM!

Your husband may not be honoring or cherishing you with his words or actions at the moment. But you can choose to trust God and not continue to react combatively.

Remember that, in Christ, you are an honored and cherished Daughter of the Most High King.

From this point forward, whenever you find yourself in a heated conversation, picture Jesus standing just behind your husband, looking over his shoulder at you with His steady, loving gaze.

It will help you to remember in Whom you are actually placing the entire weight of your trust (the Lord and not your husband.) This will help soften the way you talk to your spouse as you imagine yourself speaking to the Lord Himself.

Let the Lord’s presence comfort you that you are not alone in your marriage and allow Him to gently guide you in how you interact with your husband. You can’t change how another person is behaving but you can take control of your own behavior with the Lord’s help.

When you change your approach and the way you respond, after awhile your husband is going to realize he has to approach the new dynamic in your marriage in a different way.

When we don’t tie the Lord’s hands by attacking and taking things into our own hands, we free Jesus to hold a mirror up to our husbands in just the same way He is holding one up to us. We can’t ask Him to hold a mirror up to hubby when we refuse to look into it ourselves.

When our frustrations are not the loudest noise in our husband’s ears, he will be able to hear the soft gentle conviction of the Holy Spirit when he interacts with you. Lets cooperate with the Spirit and give Him a chance to operate in both ours and our husband’s hearts.

When one heart in a marriage is yielded to the Lord, there is always hope! Click To Tweet

I am praying for you! When just one heart in a marriage is yielded to the Lord, there is always hope!

God has healed my marriage so I know He can do the same for you.

As you continue in prayer and your heart softens, I pray that you will allow the Holy Spirit to minister to your deepest fears and heal you from the inside out. I pray that He helps you to forgive your husband completely. And as the honor in our marriages builds, I pray we find more peace and joy in Jesus than ever before.

You will not always get it right, but don’t let the enemy condemn you. Just immediately repent and let Jesus lift you back up to try and try again. You are beautiful, sweet sister! If you need prayer, we would be honored to pray with you!

Much Love, 

NOTE: This post is NOT meant to address marriages that are struggling with physical, mental or emotional abuse. Abuse is never acceptable! If you are in danger, please reach out for help immediately and get yourself and your children to safety. You are not helping the situation or honoring your spouse by permitting him to beat you or your children down.

There are crisis hotlines, wonderful Christian Counselors, and Pastors that can speak with you and help guide you in your next step. Please don’t let the enemy keep you isolated in the darkness where he reigns. It’s important for you to be a part of a loving Church family that can cover you and your family in prayer and tangibly help you when you need it. You are not weak because you need help. In fact, you are brave and courageous when you reach out for help, my friend!

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Honor in our Marriages @ freshgracefortoday.com

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