God answered SPECIFIC prayers about my wife.
My wife is a great person, and I am a much better person today because I married her. She is a woman of God. She prays. She reads the word. She is gifted prophetically, in song writing, in discipling other women, and in many other ways. Still, there were some things about her that I had wished for a while would change and some dynamics about our relationship that I couldn’t quite put my finger on that needed to change.
I used to have an example of my most amazing prayer request back in my early 20’s. My brother and his best friend were out street witnessing and when it got close to 2 AM, they wanted to go home. I didn’t have peace about it. I prayed out loud that if the Lord wanted us to stay that he’d send someone with, I think it was a green hat, red shirt, and blue shoes. I might have inverted the color of the hat and the shirt, but I remember the shoes were blue. My brother’s best friend said that we’d be there all night waiting for that to happen. I continued praying, asking for it to happen in the next two minutes. I set my watch. He said he’d pass out if it happened. Around a minute and fifty or so seconds later, a young guy wearing those clothes. We told him the story and had him go to the white light of the restaurant in front of us to verify his shoe color. He had been considering the Gospel, and we prayed for him. I told my brother’s best friend he should pass out like he said we would, but he didn’t follow through.
I had some ‘promptings’ to pray that. I hope that wasn’t ‘cheating.’
I’ve got a new most amazing answer to prayer in my life. It’s a multi-part prayer with a specific multi-part answer. Occasionally, when my wife got PMS, or just irritated, we’d argue. She’d get frustrated with me. Sometimes she’d give me these long lectures about how I needed to improve as a husband or whatever. A lot of what she said was true. But I’d point out I didn’t like her tone of voice or attitude, and she didn’t see a problem with it. She’d also be rather critical of me and my role as a spiritual leader. I have grown a lot as a spiritual leader, partly through her keeping me accountable. She’d encourage me to pray with her and read the Bible with her and the kids. When I was younger, I just didn’t think about these things as much. Over the years, I became more disciplined in reading a Bible story to the kids and praying with them every night (with rare exceptions if there was a reason). Then I started praying with my wife every night and reading the Bible every night (just about) to her or with her, sometimes discussing, and sometimes just reading. I started doing these things diligently, but she always seemed to have a low view of me spiritually.
Our landlords had to try to sell our unit since they had difficulty with refinancing a variable rate loan. When I told my wife, she said, “What did you do?” as if God were punishing me. I believed the Lord was moving us to a better place for the baby (which seems to be the case now in our new place.)
Well, my wife is pregnant and that can be like having solid weeks of PMS in a row. We’d have these arguments, and she’d think I was just awful. She said the Lord told her that our marriage was backwards, or that our roles were reversed or something along those lines. That convicted me. I suppose I had given up a lot of leadership in the marriage since she was so capable I didn’t’ feel I had to actively lead her, and she was always on my case trying to lead and teach me I suppose.
So I started meditating on these issues and reading the Bible to consider what we were doing wrong. I also posted a few messages on Christian discussion forums on submission in marriage. It seemed like my wife had had a more submissive attitude when we first got married, and things seemed more in order when that was the case.
One night, my wife got so upset she left the house, the first time ever. She said I’d yelled at her, but it didn’t seem to me that I had. I’d disagreed with her about something, but it seemed to me that I was fairly calm. But she was freaking out. I was okay when I found out she was at a friend’s house. But this whole situation got me praying more.
The Specific Prayers
I just laid out to the Lord in prayer various issues that were on my heart. I asked the Lord to show certain things to my wife, because it was hard for her to receive from me when I talked on certain topics. I told the Lord He could to my wife about all these other things, so could He speak to the Lord about certain things in our marriage.
Here are things I prayed about.
· My wife’s negative view of me. I prayed about how my wife always saw me as unspiritual and it seemed like she viewed herself as more spiritual than I was. I realized she seemed more discipline in some ways in her prayer-life perhaps and in certain other areas, but it didn’t seem right and I asked the Lord to speak to her about it. Also, if I slipped up in my thought life, sometimes I could sense the Lord wanted me to confess it to her—of course the last person I’d choose to pray with about such a thing—and that would be difficult for her and she’d have a negative view of me for a long time.
· Saying “You always…” and “You never…” when I she got upset. The rest of the sentence wasn’t true. It’s not true that I never listen to her. Sometimes I’d try to stop things that would lead to more arguing if we were in an argument, but I listened to her a lot.
· Helping her realize when the devil (or a demon) is putting thoughts in her mind. I had an experience where this happened to me, and sometimes I can just tell when it is happening. This can happen to anyone, even believers. Our mind is a battleground. Recently, she had been saying things that just weren’t true as she meditated on how bad I supposedly was.
· From some things she had said, it felt like she sometimes prayed against me rather than for me. If we had a disagreement, I wondered if she was praying that God would ‘teach me a lesson’ instead of interceding. A job I had was not renewed once. I’d blamed her for something, not telling me about something she said she’d told me, and she prayed, and she just said she knew I was going to lose my job. She considered it the Lord dealing with me. This was some time back.
· Respect for me and submission to authority.
[FONT="]o [/FONT]I laid out my case. I reasoned with the Lord from scripture. I pointed out that the submission passages told slaves to submit to masters, children to parents, and scripture told women to submit to their husbands as to the Lord. Wives are to submit to husbands as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him Lord. My wife was deferent to authority in general. She would defer to pastors, Bible study leaders. But when we’d argue, she’d talk to me in a tone of voice I did not consider appropriate and dismiss the idea when I’d bring it up. If I brought up the issue of submission to authority, she’d insinuate I was domineering, when I am far from it.
[FONT="]o [/FONT]I reasoned like this, would a slave talk to his or her master like my wife had been talking to me? Should a child talk to his or her parents that way? Wives are to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord. My wife wouldn’t talk to Jesus the way she’d been talking to me. She wouldn’t be bossy talking to him or talk to him in a disrespectful tone of voice.
[FONT="]o [/FONT]If I’m wrong in my thinking, I prayed for the Lord to show me where I was wrong. Otherwise, I asked him to explain this to my wife.
Amazing Specific Answer to Prayer
It was probably two or three nights later. Maybe a few more, may wife came to me and said she wanted to confess a few things to me. My wife had been going to this ‘Life Change’ meeting, a program at our church. It sounded really good. Someone had prayed for my wife, and it seemed like a word of knowledge but it was on the topic of the lesson, and asked her if she had ever spoken curses when she should have been speaking blessings. She then realized several negative things she’d said about me. She realized I’d pray for her before I left the house and bless her, but she would sometimes say negative things about me. She was getting blessed, but some times bad things would happen to me, which she’d consider the Lord’s discipline. This was in line with that point I prayed about her saying negative things about me.
At life change, they had talked about how you should say “You ALWAYS” do this or that when it isn’t true, and “You NEVER do this or that” when it isn’t true. She admitted that she had done this to me. I had specifically asked the Lord to show her this.
At some point in recent weeks, said that she realized that recently, some things she had thought about me weren’t right, and she had let the devil put thoughts into her mind. I had specifically asked the Lord to talk to her about this very issue.
She also shared about how she needed to pray differently for me. She didn’t use the words ‘I prayed against you not for you’ but that was certainly the gist of it, and she realized that she needed to intercede instead of asking God to do things to me to correct me, because it seemed like the Lord was actually answering some of these prayers even if what I did was something that seemed insignificant to me.. I wonder if part of that might have been to teach her something.
I shared with her that I’d just prayed about those things that the Lord would show them to her. It was amazing how specific this was.
She also came to realize that she should still be able to accept me if I am human and have flaws, and she realized that sometimes she can have a problem with anger that relates to how she grew up, and figured out ways to deal with anger rather than expressing it toward other people.
Submission/Respect Issues
We found an apartment to move into and moved furniture. I sure am glad the arguing stopped before then. After we got moved in, the Lord dealt with my wife about something. A couple of nights ago she shared this with me at night, and it really blew me away. She said was in the kitchen/dining room area and the Lord spoke to her heart. He said since He was her Master. She wouldn’t speak disrespectfully to her Master, be bossy or criticize Him would she? Then He showed her that he had put me in her life as her 'atasan'. That is a word in her language that means someone 'above', like someone who outranks you in the workplace, for example. Then she realized that she needed to be careful about the way she had been talking to me, to make sure she wasn’t critical of me as she had been and that she treated me with the proper respect. She needed to respect my God-given authority as her husband. This was in line with my prayer about God teaching her about masters and slaves, parents and children, and submitting to her husband as unto Christ. She didn’t remember anything about the Lord saying about the parent child argument or the Abraham Sarah part of the argument I mentioned to the Lord when I asked Him to share with her. But He knows best, even picking the appropriate word from her language to explain the concept.
Things have changed in our relationship. If someone asked me a while back, “Do your wife submit to you?”—I don’t usually tell my wife to do stuff or give a lot of orders, so it’s kind of hard to tell. The issue would only come up if we were having a disagreement. But now I can notice things she says where she defers to me.
Something she said that was really touching to me was that referred back to when we were going through that period of arguing, while her pregnancy hormones were out of whack and I could do no right in her sight it seemed to me. When she was upset with me, I’d still pray for her at night even if she did not pray with me. I’d still read the Bible to her. She said the Lord spoke to her about the husband loving the wife as Christ loved the church and pointed out how I had loved and forgiven her during these times of argument.
Her whole attitude toward me as a spiritual leader and as a Christian has changed. She has resolved to bless me and speak positive words toward me. I believe the Lord has done a good, purging work in my heart over the past few weeks and gotten rid of some of the junk. My wife now seems to appreciate the spiritual leadership I offer in the home and the spiritual disciplines I practice with her and the kids more. A few weeks ago, if I’d have asked her if she felt I was spiritual qualified to teach other believers about marriage, she probably would have said ‘no.’ I had the opportunity to share this in my men’s group, and I asked her later if she thought I was spiritually qualified to teach on marriage. She said “Yes.” She said I was still learning and growing but she believed I was qualified to teach on that. That really means a lot to me. I think she is more qualified to teach the younger women than she was before.
I am really thankful to the Lord for all these changes in my wife. One night recently, we were both tired, but we stayed up to 1 AM talking about all these things the Lord was doing in our lives. It was hard to stop talking because we enjoyed it so much. I feel like it was when we first got married. Our love for one another feels more intense. The meek and quiet spirit is really appealing and attractive, and so is the heart-felt respect she has for me as her husband and as a man of God. The Lord has been so good to us.
If you have problems in your marriage or in any relationship, it might be hard to believe God to move on someone else’s heart through your prayer. It can be easier to believe that God will answer prayers about things rather than people. But God has people’s hearts in His hands, too, and He can answer those prayers as well.
Btw, I generally don't like to tell negative things about my wife. She is an amazing person. But we talked about it, and she thought I should share this testimony and I believe she will also share what she has learned to encourage others.
My wife is a great person, and I am a much better person today because I married her. She is a woman of God. She prays. She reads the word. She is gifted prophetically, in song writing, in discipling other women, and in many other ways. Still, there were some things about her that I had wished for a while would change and some dynamics about our relationship that I couldn’t quite put my finger on that needed to change.
I used to have an example of my most amazing prayer request back in my early 20’s. My brother and his best friend were out street witnessing and when it got close to 2 AM, they wanted to go home. I didn’t have peace about it. I prayed out loud that if the Lord wanted us to stay that he’d send someone with, I think it was a green hat, red shirt, and blue shoes. I might have inverted the color of the hat and the shirt, but I remember the shoes were blue. My brother’s best friend said that we’d be there all night waiting for that to happen. I continued praying, asking for it to happen in the next two minutes. I set my watch. He said he’d pass out if it happened. Around a minute and fifty or so seconds later, a young guy wearing those clothes. We told him the story and had him go to the white light of the restaurant in front of us to verify his shoe color. He had been considering the Gospel, and we prayed for him. I told my brother’s best friend he should pass out like he said we would, but he didn’t follow through.
I had some ‘promptings’ to pray that. I hope that wasn’t ‘cheating.’
I’ve got a new most amazing answer to prayer in my life. It’s a multi-part prayer with a specific multi-part answer. Occasionally, when my wife got PMS, or just irritated, we’d argue. She’d get frustrated with me. Sometimes she’d give me these long lectures about how I needed to improve as a husband or whatever. A lot of what she said was true. But I’d point out I didn’t like her tone of voice or attitude, and she didn’t see a problem with it. She’d also be rather critical of me and my role as a spiritual leader. I have grown a lot as a spiritual leader, partly through her keeping me accountable. She’d encourage me to pray with her and read the Bible with her and the kids. When I was younger, I just didn’t think about these things as much. Over the years, I became more disciplined in reading a Bible story to the kids and praying with them every night (with rare exceptions if there was a reason). Then I started praying with my wife every night and reading the Bible every night (just about) to her or with her, sometimes discussing, and sometimes just reading. I started doing these things diligently, but she always seemed to have a low view of me spiritually.
Our landlords had to try to sell our unit since they had difficulty with refinancing a variable rate loan. When I told my wife, she said, “What did you do?” as if God were punishing me. I believed the Lord was moving us to a better place for the baby (which seems to be the case now in our new place.)
Well, my wife is pregnant and that can be like having solid weeks of PMS in a row. We’d have these arguments, and she’d think I was just awful. She said the Lord told her that our marriage was backwards, or that our roles were reversed or something along those lines. That convicted me. I suppose I had given up a lot of leadership in the marriage since she was so capable I didn’t’ feel I had to actively lead her, and she was always on my case trying to lead and teach me I suppose.
So I started meditating on these issues and reading the Bible to consider what we were doing wrong. I also posted a few messages on Christian discussion forums on submission in marriage. It seemed like my wife had had a more submissive attitude when we first got married, and things seemed more in order when that was the case.
One night, my wife got so upset she left the house, the first time ever. She said I’d yelled at her, but it didn’t seem to me that I had. I’d disagreed with her about something, but it seemed to me that I was fairly calm. But she was freaking out. I was okay when I found out she was at a friend’s house. But this whole situation got me praying more.
The Specific Prayers
I just laid out to the Lord in prayer various issues that were on my heart. I asked the Lord to show certain things to my wife, because it was hard for her to receive from me when I talked on certain topics. I told the Lord He could to my wife about all these other things, so could He speak to the Lord about certain things in our marriage.
Here are things I prayed about.
· My wife’s negative view of me. I prayed about how my wife always saw me as unspiritual and it seemed like she viewed herself as more spiritual than I was. I realized she seemed more discipline in some ways in her prayer-life perhaps and in certain other areas, but it didn’t seem right and I asked the Lord to speak to her about it. Also, if I slipped up in my thought life, sometimes I could sense the Lord wanted me to confess it to her—of course the last person I’d choose to pray with about such a thing—and that would be difficult for her and she’d have a negative view of me for a long time.
· Saying “You always…” and “You never…” when I she got upset. The rest of the sentence wasn’t true. It’s not true that I never listen to her. Sometimes I’d try to stop things that would lead to more arguing if we were in an argument, but I listened to her a lot.
· Helping her realize when the devil (or a demon) is putting thoughts in her mind. I had an experience where this happened to me, and sometimes I can just tell when it is happening. This can happen to anyone, even believers. Our mind is a battleground. Recently, she had been saying things that just weren’t true as she meditated on how bad I supposedly was.
· From some things she had said, it felt like she sometimes prayed against me rather than for me. If we had a disagreement, I wondered if she was praying that God would ‘teach me a lesson’ instead of interceding. A job I had was not renewed once. I’d blamed her for something, not telling me about something she said she’d told me, and she prayed, and she just said she knew I was going to lose my job. She considered it the Lord dealing with me. This was some time back.
· Respect for me and submission to authority.
[FONT="]o [/FONT]I laid out my case. I reasoned with the Lord from scripture. I pointed out that the submission passages told slaves to submit to masters, children to parents, and scripture told women to submit to their husbands as to the Lord. Wives are to submit to husbands as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him Lord. My wife was deferent to authority in general. She would defer to pastors, Bible study leaders. But when we’d argue, she’d talk to me in a tone of voice I did not consider appropriate and dismiss the idea when I’d bring it up. If I brought up the issue of submission to authority, she’d insinuate I was domineering, when I am far from it.
[FONT="]o [/FONT]I reasoned like this, would a slave talk to his or her master like my wife had been talking to me? Should a child talk to his or her parents that way? Wives are to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord. My wife wouldn’t talk to Jesus the way she’d been talking to me. She wouldn’t be bossy talking to him or talk to him in a disrespectful tone of voice.
[FONT="]o [/FONT]If I’m wrong in my thinking, I prayed for the Lord to show me where I was wrong. Otherwise, I asked him to explain this to my wife.
Amazing Specific Answer to Prayer
It was probably two or three nights later. Maybe a few more, may wife came to me and said she wanted to confess a few things to me. My wife had been going to this ‘Life Change’ meeting, a program at our church. It sounded really good. Someone had prayed for my wife, and it seemed like a word of knowledge but it was on the topic of the lesson, and asked her if she had ever spoken curses when she should have been speaking blessings. She then realized several negative things she’d said about me. She realized I’d pray for her before I left the house and bless her, but she would sometimes say negative things about me. She was getting blessed, but some times bad things would happen to me, which she’d consider the Lord’s discipline. This was in line with that point I prayed about her saying negative things about me.
At life change, they had talked about how you should say “You ALWAYS” do this or that when it isn’t true, and “You NEVER do this or that” when it isn’t true. She admitted that she had done this to me. I had specifically asked the Lord to show her this.
At some point in recent weeks, said that she realized that recently, some things she had thought about me weren’t right, and she had let the devil put thoughts into her mind. I had specifically asked the Lord to talk to her about this very issue.
She also shared about how she needed to pray differently for me. She didn’t use the words ‘I prayed against you not for you’ but that was certainly the gist of it, and she realized that she needed to intercede instead of asking God to do things to me to correct me, because it seemed like the Lord was actually answering some of these prayers even if what I did was something that seemed insignificant to me.. I wonder if part of that might have been to teach her something.
I shared with her that I’d just prayed about those things that the Lord would show them to her. It was amazing how specific this was.
She also came to realize that she should still be able to accept me if I am human and have flaws, and she realized that sometimes she can have a problem with anger that relates to how she grew up, and figured out ways to deal with anger rather than expressing it toward other people.
Submission/Respect Issues
We found an apartment to move into and moved furniture. I sure am glad the arguing stopped before then. After we got moved in, the Lord dealt with my wife about something. A couple of nights ago she shared this with me at night, and it really blew me away. She said was in the kitchen/dining room area and the Lord spoke to her heart. He said since He was her Master. She wouldn’t speak disrespectfully to her Master, be bossy or criticize Him would she? Then He showed her that he had put me in her life as her 'atasan'. That is a word in her language that means someone 'above', like someone who outranks you in the workplace, for example. Then she realized that she needed to be careful about the way she had been talking to me, to make sure she wasn’t critical of me as she had been and that she treated me with the proper respect. She needed to respect my God-given authority as her husband. This was in line with my prayer about God teaching her about masters and slaves, parents and children, and submitting to her husband as unto Christ. She didn’t remember anything about the Lord saying about the parent child argument or the Abraham Sarah part of the argument I mentioned to the Lord when I asked Him to share with her. But He knows best, even picking the appropriate word from her language to explain the concept.
Things have changed in our relationship. If someone asked me a while back, “Do your wife submit to you?”—I don’t usually tell my wife to do stuff or give a lot of orders, so it’s kind of hard to tell. The issue would only come up if we were having a disagreement. But now I can notice things she says where she defers to me.
Something she said that was really touching to me was that referred back to when we were going through that period of arguing, while her pregnancy hormones were out of whack and I could do no right in her sight it seemed to me. When she was upset with me, I’d still pray for her at night even if she did not pray with me. I’d still read the Bible to her. She said the Lord spoke to her about the husband loving the wife as Christ loved the church and pointed out how I had loved and forgiven her during these times of argument.
Her whole attitude toward me as a spiritual leader and as a Christian has changed. She has resolved to bless me and speak positive words toward me. I believe the Lord has done a good, purging work in my heart over the past few weeks and gotten rid of some of the junk. My wife now seems to appreciate the spiritual leadership I offer in the home and the spiritual disciplines I practice with her and the kids more. A few weeks ago, if I’d have asked her if she felt I was spiritual qualified to teach other believers about marriage, she probably would have said ‘no.’ I had the opportunity to share this in my men’s group, and I asked her later if she thought I was spiritually qualified to teach on marriage. She said “Yes.” She said I was still learning and growing but she believed I was qualified to teach on that. That really means a lot to me. I think she is more qualified to teach the younger women than she was before.
I am really thankful to the Lord for all these changes in my wife. One night recently, we were both tired, but we stayed up to 1 AM talking about all these things the Lord was doing in our lives. It was hard to stop talking because we enjoyed it so much. I feel like it was when we first got married. Our love for one another feels more intense. The meek and quiet spirit is really appealing and attractive, and so is the heart-felt respect she has for me as her husband and as a man of God. The Lord has been so good to us.
If you have problems in your marriage or in any relationship, it might be hard to believe God to move on someone else’s heart through your prayer. It can be easier to believe that God will answer prayers about things rather than people. But God has people’s hearts in His hands, too, and He can answer those prayers as well.
Btw, I generally don't like to tell negative things about my wife. She is an amazing person. But we talked about it, and she thought I should share this testimony and I believe she will also share what she has learned to encourage others.
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