Notice the Stream

... of countless ways in which
Our Creator constantly romances us.

Becoming the Wife Your Husband Needs

The following prayer, from Stormie Omartian’s book The Power of a Praying Wife, is essential to any marriage. It lays the foundation of a praying wife humbly dedicated to being all she can be, trusting God to take charge of her husband’s formation. I can confidently say that my marriage would not be what it is without this prayer. We might very well not even be married anymore if it weren’t for this one.

Lord,

Help me to be a good wife. I fully realize that I don’t have what it takes to be one without Your help. Take my selfishness, impatience, and irritability and turn them into kindness, long-suffering, and the willingness to bear all thing. Take my old emotional habits, mindsets, automatic reactions, rude assumptions, and self-protective stance, and make me patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. Take the hardness of my heart and break down the walls with Your battering ram of revelation. Give me a new heart and work in me Your love, peace, and joy (Galatians 5:22, 23). I am not able to rise above who I am at this moment. Only You can transform me.

Show me where there is sin in my heart, especially with regard to my husband. I confess the times I’ve been unloving, critical, angry, resentful, disrespectful, or unforgiving toward him. Help me to put aside any hurt, anger, or disappointment I feel and forgive him the way You do–totally and completely, no looking back. Make me a tool of reconciliation, peace, and healing in this marriage. Enable us to communicate well and rescue us from the threshold of separation where the realities of divorce begin.

Make me my husband’s helpmate, companion, champion, friend, and support. Help me to create a peaceful, restful, safe place for him to come home to. Teach me how to take care of myself and stay attractive to him. Grow me into a creative and confident woman who is rich in mind, soul, and spirit. Make me the kind of woman he can be proud to say is his wife.

I lay all my expectations at Your cross. I release my husband from the burden of fulfilling me in areas where I need to be looking to You. Help me to accept him the way he is and not try to change him. I realize that in some ways he may never change, but at the same time, I release him to change in ways I never thought he could. I leave any changing that needs to be done in Your hands, fully accepting that neither of us is perfect and never will be. Only You, Lord, are perfect and I look to You to perfect us.

Teach me how to pray for my husband and make my prayers a true language of love. Where love has died, create new love between us. Show me what unconditional love really is and how to communicate it in a way he can clearly perceive. Bring unity between us so that we can be in agreement about everything (Amos 3:3). May the God of patience and comfort grant us to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus (Romans 15:5). Make us a team, not pursuing separate, competitive, or independent lives, but working together, overlooking each other’s faults and weaknesses for the greater good of the marriage. Help us to pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another (Romans 14:19). may we be “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (I Corinthians 1:10).

I pray that our commitment to You and to one another will grow stronger and more passionate every day. Enable him to be the head of the home as You made him to be, and show me how to support and respect him as he rises to that place of leadership. Help me to understand his dreams and see things from his perspective. Reveal to me what he wants and needs and show me potential problems before they arise. Breathe Your life into this marriage.

Make me a new person, Lord. Give me a fresh perspective, a positive outlook, and a renewed relationship with the man You’ve given me. Help me see him with new eyes, new appreciation, new love, new compassion, and new acceptance. Give my husband a new wife, and let it be me.

Amen!

(bold mine)

Prayer to Melt Your Heart and Reawaken Love for Your Husband

Abba,

I confess any hardness of heart toward my husband as sin. Melt it like ice in the presence of the hot sun. Burn any solid, heavy, frosty lump within me until it pours out like water before You. Take my heart of stone and give me a heart of love and compassion. Break up the fallow ground where nothing good can grow and life gets choked out. I confess to any sin of anger, resentment, unforgiveness, or criticism of my husband. Forgive me and cleanse my heart completely.

Lord, I pray that You would give me a pure heart toward You so that I may stand in Your holy place. Give me clean hands so that I may rise above my situation. Help me to not lift my soul toward an idol or speak words that are not true in light of Your Word so that I can receive all You have for me (Psalm 24:3-5). You know what is in my heart (Psalm 44:21). Take away all negative thoughts and feelings, overflow my heart with good things (Psalm 45:1). May the good thoughts in my heart cause my mouth to speak wisdom and not harshness (Psalm 49:3). Create in me a clean heart, and make my spirit right before You (Psalm 51:10). I want to bring to You the sacrifice of a broken spirit and a humble heart (Psalm 51:17).

Don’t let me succumb to being stubborn in my heart. I want to walk in Your counsel and not my own. Take away any disappointment in me with regard to my marriage and show me if I have blamed my husband without seeking to know what my part is in it. Remove all pride so that I can escape the consequences of sin and better hear from You. Change me by the power of Your Spirit. Cut away from my heart all that is not of You. Help me to love You and serve You with all my heart and soul (Joshua 22:5). Show me how to keep my heart with diligence (Proverbs 4:23).

Give me the wisdom to do what’s right so that I will walk in my house with a perfect heart (Psalm 101:2). Break down any hardness of heart in me, and I will repent of it. Restore love in my heart for my husband if ever I don’t feel it anymore. With my whole heart I seek You, and I ask that You would help me hide Your Word in my heart and keep all of Your commandments (Psalm 119:11). Help me to understand and keep Your law (Psalm 119:34). Enable me to trust You with all my heart and not depend on my own limited understanding of things.

I believe that I will see Your goodness in my life and therefore I will not lose heart. I will wait on You, Lord, and I will stand strong in all I understand of You, knowing that You will strengthen my heart (Psalm 27:13-14). Thank You that You are a God of new beginnings. Help me to take steps that signify a new beginning in me today. In Jesus’ name I pray.

Amen!

From the “If Hardness of Heart Causes Love to Die” chapter of Stormie Omartian’s The Power of Prayer to Change Your Marriage.