Go back over the last two months of it.
He would soften. He would notice. He would understand what that sentence did. He would come to something. He would see it.
Every one of them a good prayer. Every one of them about a man.
And in two months, and probably in ten years, there has not been one prayer whose subject was the marriage itself. Not him and not you. The thing between you, which is where the promise actually lives.
I want to be careful, because there is a version of this article that tells you off, and you have had enough of that from your own head.
Praying for a husband is not a mistake. It is what love does with the tools available. Nobody should feel foolish about a decade of asking God to help somebody they live with.
What I want to say is smaller and more useful. There is a subject you have never brought Him, and He is a party to it, and it has been sitting there the whole time.
In every thing
There is an instruction in Philippians about the scope of what a person may bring, and the scope is the part I want.
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God (Philippians 4:6, King James Version)
In every thing. Not in every person. In every thing.
That is deliberately wide. It includes situations, arrangements, conditions and states of affairs, and not only the individuals inside them.
You are permitted to bring the thing itself and not only the people in it, and Philippians has never once narrowed the scope to persons. Philippians 4:6 says in every thing let your requests be made known, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman widen a prayer she has been narrowing for years.
And notice what the verse does not promise. It does not say God will fix what you bring. It says bring it. The instruction is about the bringing, and the outcome is left entirely alone.
You have been given somewhere to put this without being promised a result, and the word has never once made the bringing conditional on the answer. The passage puts the requests in God's hearing and stops there, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that enough for a woman who has stopped expecting anything.
Why it never occurred to you
Let me say why this is such a common gap, because I think it will take the sting out.
A marriage is not a person. It has no face. When you close your eyes to pray, a face arrives, and the face is his, and so the prayer forms around him without anybody deciding anything.
There is also this. Praying about the marriage as a thing requires admitting there is something wrong with the thing, and praying about him lets a person keep the trouble located in somebody else. That is not calculated. It is just easier, and most of us do it.
And there is a third reason, and it is the tender one. To pray about the marriage is to bring your own half into the room, and you have not wanted to look at your own half while you are this tired.
You are allowed to bring a thing with your own half inside it, and no verse has ever once required you to have sorted your part first. Philippians 4:6 keeps the scope at every thing without any qualification about the person praying, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives a prayer that includes the one praying it.
You were never doing it wrong, and ten years of praying for a man has never once been ten years misspent. It is written that in every thing our requests may be made known, and the Spirit of God is the one who widens a prayer without rebuking the one who prayed it narrow.
One sentence, in the room
Here is the assignment, and it is one sentence long, and there are two things about where it happens that matter.
Say one sentence of prayer out loud about the marriage, in the room where the two of you actually live.
Not about him. About it. Something like: God, this thing between us is Yours, and I am bringing it to You for the first time.
You are bringing a subject that has been available the whole time, and Philippians has never once narrowed the scope to people. Philippians 4:6 says in every thing let your requests be made known unto God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who widens a prayer without rebuking the one who prayed it narrow.
Out loud, so that it is a spoken thing rather than a thought. In the room, because the room is where the marriage is, and a decade of this has happened in a car.
And when he is not there. This is not something to do in front of him and it is not something to ask him to join. It is between you and God.
You are able to bring the thing itself into the room where it lives, and it has never once needed the other person present to be prayed about. Philippians 4:6 sets the scope at every thing without conditions, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a front room when a woman prays about a marriage for the first time.
Do not add a request for an outcome unless one comes naturally. The bringing is the assignment.
Here is what I believe is going out over somebody this morning.
You are not a woman who has been praying badly, and ten years of asking for a husband has never once been a decade wasted. Philippians 4:6 says in every thing let your requests be made known unto God, and it is the Holy Spirit, not my telling you, who widens a prayer without rebuking the one who prayed it.
And this, which is what I came with.
You have a third party to this who has never once been outside it, and the thing itself has always been available to be brought. The word sets the scope at every thing with no qualification at all, and the same Spirit who moved Philippians is standing in your hallway this morning.
Say one sentence. In the room.
Declare this over yourself
- Years of praying only about him, you were never wasted. Philippians 4:6 says in every thing let your requests be made known unto God, so by the Holy Spirit I widen the subject today, in the name of Jesus.
- Habit of standing outside my own prayers, you are finished this morning. The word sets the scope at every thing with nobody excluded from it, and by the Spirit of God I am done keeping the trouble located in somebody else.
- Father, You are a party to this and not a spectator of it, and I have never once brought You the thing itself. Your word says in every thing by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God, so by Your Spirit I say one sentence out loud about this marriage, in the room where we live.
Philippians 4:6
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
