When we’re focused on Jesus, we can pray big, bold prayers that turn the world upside down for Him. The power of prayer in marriage can turn our marriages toward heaven and our husbands toward us.
Below is an adaptation of a teaching I gave in the Reflecting God’s Love in Marriage Bible study at my church. For the full teaching, please scroll down to the video and watch it.
Jesus told us that He said and did what He heard from God. We see Him praying alone, in the middle of a crowd, praying short prayers, and praying all night.
Power Filled Jesus’ Prayers
Although the Old Testament was filled with prayers, and the Jewish day was filled with prayer, Jesus’ disciples saw something different in His prayers, and they wanted to learn how to pray like Jesus. Jesus taught them how to pray in Matthew 6:9-15. Right now, let’s focus on His prayer a few hours before the cross.
Jesus knew the cross was God’s plan for our salvation. The scarlet thread of the cross is woven in every book of the Old Testament.
Knowing what the next few hours held for Him, Jesus prayed to the Father. Before Him, were the betrayal, the illegal trials, the beating, the spitting, the mocking, the scourging, the nails pounding into His hands and feet, the sins laid upon Jesus, the Perfect Sacrifice, the Passover Lamb. It was just hours before God’s wrath was poured out on those sins.
Hours before “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” Hours before “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” Hours before He released His Spirit. The tomb waited. His resurrection set before Him.
Jesus’ Hour Had Come
The hour that gave hope to the world.
The hour that gave eternal life.
Truly knowing God and Jesus.
Crucifixion – the price for sin.
Freedom from sin.
Forgiveness.
Redemption.
The hour of resurrection.
Victory over death.
Glorifying God.
Glorifying Jesus.
Displaying His authority.
Unifying God with man.
Giving eternal life.
The High Priestly Prayer
“Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: ‘Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You,’” John 17:1
Jesus is focused on glorifying God in what is coming. He’s not asking for the cross to be taken away. He’s asking that through the cross, God will be glorified.
In the pain of our suffering, how are we praying?
Powerful prayer focuses on God.
What happens when our prayers begin as Jesus taught His disciples to pray, “Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name”?
We’re focused on God and His majesty. We are asking that God be exalted. Our problems seem small, don’t they, after we focus on our Mighty, All-Powerful God.
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You; as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.” John 17:1-2
Notice, God gave Jesus authority over all flesh. Why? So Jesus could give eternal life. To who? To those God gave to Him.
Did God give you to Jesus? Have you received eternal life? What is eternal life?
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” John 17:3
Eternal life is knowing God and Jesus who God sent to you and me. Do you know God? Do you know Jesus? How deeply do you know Jesus?
“I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” John 17:4-5
Jesus glorified God on earth, and He finished the work that God gave Him to accomplish.
We have work to do. God equipped you and me to accomplish His work. He equipped your husband for work in God’s kingdom. Have you joined Him in that work?
Now it’s time for Jesus to join the Father and enjoy the glory He enjoyed with the Father before the world began. Remember John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Powerful prayer focuses on others.
In verses 6-17 of John 17, Jesus turned His thoughts and prayer to His followers. While He was in the world, the Father gave Jesus’ followers to Him, and Jesus gave them the Father’s words, and they received them.
But the world hated them because they weren’t of the world.
While Jesus was with them, He protected them. Now, He asked the Father to keep them from the evil one and sanctify them by Father’s truth (or set them apart for God).
The prayer that Jesus taught His disciples asks the Father to forgive them of their sins and to deliver them from the evil one in Matthew 6. Jesus came to bring forgiveness of sins.
In John 17, Jesus acknowledges that the Father sent Him into the world, and now Jesus is sending His followers into the world.
Powerful prayer focuses on unity.
Now Jesus turns His focus on you and me.
“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me” John 17:20-21
Jesus prays for you and me. The Father sent Jesus into the world to save you and me from our sins. Now Jesus is sending His followers into the world to spread the Good News that we can have eternal life.
What does Jesus pray for? Unity! He prays that we may be one with each other and one with the Father and Jesus! One with each other.
Does that include one with our husbands?
Prayer for Unity with God and with other believers.
With our husbands!
And why are we one with each other and the Father and Jesus? The last phrase tells us, “that the world may believe that the Father sent Jesus.”
Our unity is helping the world believe the Good News that the Father sent Jesus.
Jesus taught His disciples to pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.” Matthew 6:10
“And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” John 17:22-23
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
The glory is His presence. Remember Moses after he came from the presence of God. He had to cover his face because his face shone from being in the presence of God.
“Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” John 17:24-26
Can you comprehend the love that the Father has for His Son? Jesus prayed for that very love to be in you and me. AND Jesus prayed that He would abide in us!
Powerful prayer focuses on bringing God glory.
Jesus began His prayer focused on God’s glory, and He ended His prayer with God’s glory, love, unity, and righteousness.
How does the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples end? “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” (Matthew 6:13b)
Jesus says in John 14:12-14, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.”
Prayer focused on bringing glory to the Father—Prayer focused on the nature and will of Jesus is power-filled.
Have you prayed a great, impossible prayer? Did you have faith that your request would be answered in the way you desired? What if you prayed for your husband like Jesus prayed for you and me?
The Power of a Wife’s Prayer
Author Stormie Omartian writes in The Power of a Praying Wife:
Something amazing happens to our hearts when we pray for another person. The hardness melts. We become able to get beyond the hurts, and forgive. We even end up loving the person we are praying for. It’s miraculous! It happens because when we pray we enter into the presence of God and He fills us with His Spirit of love. When you pray for your husband, the love of God will grow in your heart for him. Not only that, you’ll find love growing in his heart for you, without him even knowing you are praying. That’s because prayer is the ultimate love language.
(Stormie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Wife, pp. 26-27).
Focused on Jesus, big bold prayers can turn the world upside down for Jesus. It can turn your marriage upside down, inside out, and right-side up.
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We can pray great prayers for our marriages. We may not be able to rise above our difficulties in our marriage with our own strength, but Jesus is our strength, and nothing is impossible with Him in our presence.
Jesus in us – Christians are one with Jesus. Husbands and wives are one with each other, and if they receive Jesus’ gift of salvation, they can be one with Jesus.
Wives, we can pray like Jesus for our husbands!
Jesus prayed for unity with God and unity in the believers. What if you and I prayed for unity in our marriages … unity with God and with our husbands?
God’s Son prayed for His followers to be made perfect through God. What if you and I prayed for our husbands to be made perfect, complete, and whole through God?
Our Savior prayed that the love that God had for Jesus would be present in His believers. What if we prayed that the love that God had for Jesus would be present in our marriages? Let’s pray thatGod’s love would shine through us onto our husbands?
Jesus, cried out to His Father on behalf of you and me – on behalf of our husbands – for unity. He wants unity for us as a church and unity in our marriages.
We can be united with our husbands as one in Jesus. Jesus is all-powerful. His prayer was focused and full of faith that His world-changing prayer would bless the Father and His followers, both then and in the future.
God-focused and faith-driven prayer transforms marriages.
Friend, we can expect great things from our Almighty God. Let’s pray for our husbands as we’ve never prayed before. Let’s pray like Jesus. Lift our prayers to Him and ask Him to strengthen our marriages.
Let’s pray for unity – that they would have unity with God and with us.
Ask God to cause our husbands see God’s love in us and draw near to God’s love for them.
Let’s pray that God will abundantly bless our husbands.
Related Links
Glowing Communication in Marriage
Featured photo by Pexels.
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