This presentation shares a form of prayer that aligns us with God’s will and helps prepare us for a healthy marriage instead of being set up for a terrible one.

<p>This presentation shares a form of prayer that aligns us with God’s will and helps prepare us for a healthy marriage instead of being set up for a terrible one.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Freedom Health Ministries

Singleness, Dating, and Relationships in the Church

Gabriel Arruda

The Jezebel Spirit & Modern Dating

Swipe Right, Part 1

Swipe Right, Part 2

Swipe Right, Part 3

How to Pray for A Godly Spouse

Okay, the title of this message is how to pray for a godly spouse.

As you know, we've been doing an extended series on Christian versus worldly dating and courtship and marriage and singleness and all that good stuff and God, I believe has been bringing up this topic to me over and over and over Because he's wanting me to put this series together you know just a little of Backstory information on me.

I've been single for a little over 4 years since the passing of my wife, which honestly for me has felt like an eternity.

And that sounds really silly to some of you, some of you who have been single, you know, double that time or you've never been married, you probably want to slap me right now, but just to give you a little context you know I know to you 4 years sounds like nothing but it's the longest I've been single since like junior high in high school.

I went through a single stretch in early high school largely because of my involvement with drugs and alcohol it just really put my head in a place where I wasn't at a place to really think about relationships to be honest.

But since the time I sobered up at 18, it pretty much was 1 girl after another.

I've either always had a girlfriend or someone I was dating or what the youth today would call a situationship.

We used to call it friends with benefits.

So from like 18 to 40 I really had no single time And the single space has been very strange.

And though it's been just a little over 4 years, to be honest, the amount of loneliness I have felt in this short span has probably been the equivalent to the amount an average single feels in about 10 to 15 years.

Well, because I had just come out of a 15 year marriage and my wife Jennifer and I were just what I call unusually close.

We were constantly, I was constantly swimming in like fellowship and affection every day.

And in the beginning after she passed, just something as simple as like sitting in church by myself felt like I was in the twilight zone.

I mean, just driving by myself was weird.

And so, you know, this day after day of, you know, just me, it was a really bizarre experience for me.

But I think part of the reason why God has allowed me to have this single space for as long as I have is so that I can walk in this experience and create content to encourage the singles in the church.

I meet quite a few young adults who are single.

In some circles, it feels like the majority of the young adults in the church are single.

And I can definitely say that if I was still happily married there would have been really no reason for me to create this content and I really wouldn't have been known what to say because I Was so far removed from singleness.

I mean since high school So it took me some time to recover from the loss of my wife But eventually I opened up to the idea of being remarried again.

Also, I started reading lots of books on marriage and relationships, which felt strange to me, why I felt so impressed to do that, because I had just come out of a very successful 15-year marriage.

So why do I need to go back to Marriage 101?

I kind of, you know, have a lot of experience in that department, but I felt really impressed, too, anyways.

And so I read a lot of really good books.

Of course, The Spirit of Prophecy was at the top of my list, but some of the books that I have enjoyed the most were the books by Dr.

And the data that he's come out with out of his Washington State Love Lab research is just so fascinating.

I mean, to the point where they can predict with 94% accuracy who's gonna get divorced and who's gonna stay married within about 5 to 10 minutes of watching a couple interact.

And you know prior to this the marriage relationship area didn't have a lot of solid data behind it.

It was just a lot of, you know, personal interviews and questionnaires and people's own independent thoughts and ideas.

But they got a huge amount of really hard, interesting data with this Seattle Love Lab and I'm going to talk more about that later in the message.

And so I had been reading his books and I was in prayer 1 morning and the light bulb went off in my head.

I realized that in many ways my prayers for another spouse was very shallow and very surface-level.

And I was praying for a spouse the way pretty much everyone else prays for a spouse.

And often I would go a little deeper and a little bit more meaningful.

Lord prepare us to be right for each other, prepare us to be a good missionary team together, you know, that's good, but honestly that's still very shallow.

It's a very shallow prayer, and you know many times the ways singles pray for a future spouse is actually very selfish.

Make them even look like this or be like this.

Now it's not necessarily wrong to pray for a godly or even an attractive spouse, But if all of our prayers for our future spouse center around make them, you know, dot, dot, dot, make them this, make them that, it's selfish, it's selfish.

And our prayers center almost entirely on what we want them to be for us versus what we need to be for them.

And we approach it with a what's-in-it-for-me perspective.

You know, because the marriage hasn't even started yet and we're already approaching the relationship with selfishness.

When God showed me that I was just like, good night.

But in 1 prayer session, friends, God completely transformed the way I pray for a spouse.

And what God showed me is that you start preparing for a good marriage now by how you're currently praying for it.

You start preparing for a good marriage now by how you're currently praying for it.

So how you're praying for the marriage now will already set the trajectory of how you will behave in that marriage.

And really there's 2 different kinds of marriage prayers.

There's praying for a fantasy marriage, and then there's praying for the reality marriage.

And a lot of marriage prayer is praying for a fantasy marriage.

But we need to be praying according to the reality of marriage.

And by the way, when I say the reality of marriage, I don't mean a terrible 1, just a real 1, you know, what they're really like.

And in many ways, reality marriages are much better than fantasy ones, in many ways.

But I'm going to share with you 3 different ways that you can start praying for the reality of a great godly marriage.

I call it smart prayer, and I call it that because it has purpose and intelligence behind it.

The more you're praying for the reality of a marriage, the more quickly and likely God is going to give it to you.

And I'm making a PDF of this prayer available, so if you're listening to this via Audioverse, there should be a link or something where you could download the PDF of this prayer attached to where this sermon is.

I'm not sure exactly how Audioverse does it, but somewhere around where you access this sermon, there should be a PDF of this prayer you could download.

Number 1, don't just pray for a spouse, pray for your spouse.

Pray for your spouse, not just for a spouse.

Let me ask you, how many of you are praying for a future spouse?

But how many of you are praying for your future spouse?

For me and for most singles, it's safe to say because I've prayed with a lot of singles, we pray for a future spouse but almost never for our future spouse.

And we should be praying for our future spouse now as if they were already in our lives.

I mean, why wait till they're actually in our lives to pray for them, right?

If you love them so much, if you're gonna love them so much, why not pray for them now?

Maybe they're going through some really intense struggles right now.

Wouldn't it be amazing for them to know that you were already praying for them before you even met?

You were praying for them during that difficult time that they were going through.

What if you're actually ready for a marriage, but your future spouse is not?

Like you're waiting and this whole time you're actually waiting for them, but you don't know that because you haven't met them yet you don't know what's going on in their life and What if the reason you're still single is because your future spouse is currently dealing with some issues or some brokenness right now that they need to heal from before they're ready to be with you.

Series

Singleness, Dating, and Relationships in the Church

How to Pray for A Godly Spouse

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

The Great Decision: Who Should I Marry?

1h 19m

Relationship Revival

2. Loving Out Loud

1h 11m

Singleness, Dating, and Relationships in the Church

Swipe Right, Part 3

1h 40m

Three Essentials for a Strong Marriage

1h 2m

Romantic Relationship Seminar

02 How God Prepares You for Your Spouse

49m

Biblical Relationships (Afternoon meetings)

Overcoming the Myths of Marriage

32m

Marriage as a Covenant

07 Covenant Marriage and the Mission of the Family

38m

To Have and to Hold on

Holding On - Part 5

1h 13m

Mutuality

55m

Blessed are the Pure in Heart

How to Choose a Good Mate

52m

The God-Arranged and Blessed Marriage

Principles of the God-Blessed Marriage

57m

For Better or for Best

56m

Sound Doctrine