Day One: His Wife

Who can find a virtuous wife?

For her worth is far above rubies.

The heart of her husband safely trusts her;

so he will have no lack of gain.

She does him good

and not evil all the days of her life.

- Proverbs 31:10-12

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Better to dwell in the wilderness,

than with a contentious and angry woman.

- Proverbs 21:19

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Do not be rash with your mouth,

and let not your heart utter anything hastily before God

For God is in heaven, and you on earth;

therefore let your words be few.

- Ecclesiastes 5:2

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My soul, wait silently for God alone,

for my expectation is from Him.

- Psalm 62:5

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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 things. 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.
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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, and 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.
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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.
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I lay all my expectations at Your cross. I release my husband from the burden of fulfilling me in areas where I should 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.
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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 that 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 judgement" (I Corinthians 1:10).
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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.
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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.*
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Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands

so that, if any of them do not believe the word,

they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives,

when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment,

such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes.

Instead, it should be that of your inner self,

the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit,

which is of great worth in God's sight.

For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God

used to make themselves beautiful.

They were submissive to their own husbands,

like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master.

You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

- I Peter 1:1-6

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Ask, and it will be given to you;

seek, and you will find;

knock, and it will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives,

and he who seeks finds,

and to him who knocks it will be opened.

- Matthew 7:7-8

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Praying for your children, Day One: Becoming a Praying Parent
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*Make this prayer your own! From the book, The Power of a Praying Wife. Ordering information is at the bottom of the page.

** AND THE WINNER IS... ** Thanks to everyone who left comments to enter the giveaway for the book, The Power of a Praying Parent! The winner is a mother of 7! Congratulations to Laura from Laura Williams' Musings.