Episode 3: Chapter One Godly Marriage Complete

We finished chapter one.

Transcript

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Good evening and welcome back to Praying for Them, Your Godfrey and Spouse, this evening. Um, we left off in chapter 1, page five, and I'm going to pray before we get back into reading the book. Amen. I hope you all had a great day today. I hope you felt God's presence and God's love over your life. Let us go to the Lord in prayer. Helen Father, we thank you for this evening. We thank you for this book reading of Praying for Them, your God, Fear and Spouse. Honey Father, I pray that someone is touched by this book reading. I'm praying that someone can feel you, hear you, and be in your presence. Oh God, if they're looking for an answer, Hunter Father, I'm praying that anything that you want to be said during this podcast through this word, Honey Father, I pray that you reveal it to their hearts, mind, souls, and spirit. Honey Father, just thank you for this journey. I thank you for newness. I thank you for new beginnings. I thank you for trouble don't last always. I thank you because just because we fell on one thing doesn't mean you can't build us up and bring us back ten times better than what we fell into. Health Father, I thank you so much for your presence. I thank you so much for this opportunity. And Holy Father, I just pray that you have your way, touch every heart, mind, soul, and spirit under the sound of my voice. I pray that they fill you in this very moment, oh God. I pray. Amen. Chapter 1, a godly marriage. Matthew 19, 4 through 6, the NIV version states, Haven't you read, he replied, that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh, so they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. Amen. Page 5, second paragraph. As for me, I was too busy envisioning what I would gain from the world instead of envisioning what I will obtain from the Lord for being obedient, but I was being disobedient in that moment. God will not bless any mess, and he will not forgive you. He will not give you his blessing to marry the wrong person, I believe. Therefore, people stir away from asking God to show them or to tell them if their current significant other is the one he has ordained for them to marry. People do not want to chance God telling them, I'm sorry, this is not the person I have for you. To wait until I reveal that person. When we do not listen to God and we do not ask him for permission, it will be the rockiest road to the altar and even a harder road after saying thy dues. Trust me. I know. I'm getting there in a second. God will try to warn us, give us another chance to get out of it before we go against his will of marrying the wrong person. However, we avoid his warning signs and then we suffer the consequences on down the road. I remember praying, pleading, and asking God to give me signs if this is the person he will have me to marry. And I remember all the warning signs God placed in front of me not to marry my high school sweetheart. And it would have been okay. However, I never listened to the warning signs. I turned my head to the warning signs that God kept placing in front of me to stop me from walking down that aisle. And all I could see at that time was what the world was offering and telling me versus what God was trying to show me and tell me. God knew what was best for me, but I was too scared to trust what I could not see. Trust me when I tell you, God will show you if you're about to enter a worldly marriage or a God-ordained marriage blessed by Him. If we only will be still and trust what He is showing us, we can save ourselves from years of heartache, pain, and frustration. God knows what's best for us, and if we do not obey, He will chastise us along the way in order for us to learn from our mistakes and to get on the right path. We had our ups and our downs in our marriage, but I tried. I prayed, I pleaded, I beg God to save our worldly marriage, to change it over to be a Christian marriage. However, during the five years of my marriage, I realized it was not meant to be. I wanted to go to church and he wanted to hang with the fellas. I wanted to pray over our issues and he wanted to turn to the streets for the answer. I remember when he told me during an argument, that was your wedding. I didn't even want to be married in the first place. I only did it for you. At that moment, I felt like Donkey in the movie Shrek when he said, You cut me deep, Shrek. You cut me real deep just now. Shrek, that movie that first came out in 2001. It was like God smacked me in the back of my head in that very moment and said, What he just told you, I was trying to show you five years ago. He was not the one I had planned for you to marry. I took a seasonal period in my life and turned it into more seasons than what God had called me to be in with this person. Once I really realized that our marriage was a worldly marriage, I still tried to save it. Praying still, begging still, God turned this marriage into a godly marriage because I did not want the world to see that my marriage had failed. I tried, I cried, but it was time for me to let go. God had to show me what the husband that I picked was not the one that He had ordained for me from the beginning of time. God's will will be done. So I quit fighting, I let go, and I told God, I surrender. Your will, oh God, will be done. I released my soul and my spirit into the Lord, unto the Lord. My husband at the time and I shared 16 years together, three kids, and a wacky but loving relationship that ended in divorce. He was living and loving the worldly life, and I was too busy introducing our kids to Christ, rekindling our Christian relationships, and deepening our relationship with God. God became my number one priority. I started praying for a godly marriage that could be an example of God's grace, mercy, favor, and love. It was time for me to embrace my life, to get ready for what God had in store for me, and to rely on God solely. I know I'm not by myself when it comes to wanting a God-ordained relationship that will lead to a godly marriage. I started writing down what I wanted for our wedding and in our marriage, as long as it was aligned with the will of God. I wanted to be in a marriage that was built and created by God, a marriage that would stand on the words of God from within the Bible, a true God-centered marriage. I started praying for God to send me my God for any spouse, someone who feared the Lord and would care for me as God had called for them to care for me. Ephesians 5, 25 through 28 states, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her from by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. Amen. I wanted to be in a marriage that recognized God on the daily, a marriage that was indeed allowing God to be the head of our lives. I wanted a husband who would pray for me, for me, through me, and with me. I didn't want to be in a marriage that was just a healthy marriage. I wanted to be in a marriage that was healthy and addicted to Jesus Christ, spirit-filled, God-centered, with a praying and fasting core. With this being said, God had to show me how to pray, fast, and grow in love to receive what He had in store for me. God placed in my spirit, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and all his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well. Amen. Matthew 6 and 33. Seeking God first will bring the right spouse along, the right person along. The best way to pray for your God-ordained marriage and God friends' spouse is to understand what God said about marriage throughout the Bible. If we would only be still, study the Word of God, He will speak to our souls. He will whisper sweet music, songs, words, and scriptures into our ears. It's time to listen to God and ask yourself these questions and write down a prayer about what you want in your marriage and spouse. First question is, what am I looking for from a spiritual perspective in my marriage? How do I want my spouse's prayer life to be? Do I want a fasting spouse? Do I want a spouse with a servitude mentality, willing to serve others before themselves? Do I want a spouse who is striving to be like Jesus Christ? Do I want a spouse after God's own heart? Take the answers to those questions above and write down a prayer for your marriage and spouse. I am a firm believer if it be the will of God, if it be the will of God, and you trust and believe in God, he will hear and answer our prayers in due season. Please listen and take heed to God's warning signs. He understands the road you must travel along the way. Genesis, the second chapter, states, the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. But for Adam, no suitable helper was found. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. This reminds me that I belong to someone extraordinary in God's eyes because God created me just for my spouse, and my spouse just for me. Another scripture that helped me pray over my future marriage was Ephesians the fifth chapter. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleanseth her by the washing with water through the word. Marriage is not about gaining a new last name or getting a certification to hang on the wall. Marriage is about becoming one with Jesus Christ and your spouse, being entwined with the love of God and serving the Lord. I never want for myself or our children, and when I say our children, I'm always talking about me and the Lord because I'm just our overseer here on earth. So I would say, God, these are your children. We're your children, our children. So I really want our children to experience a worldly marriage. I always pray for God to send us true, equally yoked spouses and not earthly spouses. We live and we learn, and that's the port of life. This is how we grow in our faith is that we grow stronger in the Lord and draw near to Him when we get tests through trials and tribulations and our own mistakes, right? So we have to believe and know that God knows what's best for us. I could have saved myself a lot of frustration, heartache, and pain. It's all good though, because even though I stayed in an extended season that God did not call me into helped change me for the better, I was able to grow and learn. I realized I didn't know much about what marriage meant, and I didn't know the true meaning of what being in a marriage was all about. We grew together in marriage. I grew stronger in the Lord through my marriage, and and I thank the Lord for that. I thank God for those lessons. And I want you to know that I was still kind, sweet, huggable, lovable, supportive wife, but I could have been a better person and a Christian before God and my worldly husband back then. Since I thought I was grown, God had to take me through some phases, seasons, trials, and tribulations, and tests in my life for me to understand what being grown came with and what being a wife was all about. Once you know and understand what God has said about marriage, you can turn scriptures into prayer for your current or future marriage. Trust God and His process. Amen. We have completed the first chapter. Amen. And I hope you got something out of it. Um, I'm going to close with prayer, and then tomorrow we're going to start on chapter two, which is overcoming self. Amen. So I thank you all for tuning in. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Honey Father, I thank you for this evening. I thank you for allowing us to read through chapter one. Come Father, I'm praying right now, this very moment, that you will put scriptures in our heart to help us to see how we should pray over our current marriages and our future marriages, Henry Father. God, I'm praying that you give us spiritual perspective of how our marriages should be. Like you said in your word, you didn't come down here to be served. You came down here to serve. And Hunter Father, we won't have that same mentality to serve others, Henry Father, when you call us to serve. That your their thoughts are aligned to your thoughts and their ways are aligned to your ways. We pray. God, we just pray for your guidance. God, we pray for in your due season, you align our paths to where we're all on the same page in our relationships. While they're current and when they're about to come into play, Hunt Father, we rebuke Satan right now in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The devil's alive. God, we pray you continue to build up marriages, strengthen marriages, grow them stronger in you, Heavenly Father. Help them to be entwined with your word, with what you said, with your presence, and with your covenant. We thank you so much for gifting us your word, giving us your word to help us through each and every day, and show us how to pray too. So, Ham Father, we just thank you so much for what you have done and what you're about to do. Amen. Thank you for tuning in, and we pray that we hear once again through the book tomorrow. Have a blessed evening. Amen.