Praying for Marriages (PfM)

Please join us this week as we pray for couples that are the primary caregivers for an aging parent.  This life-situation can turn life on its head as roles are reversed and the children become the parents and the parent the child.  At best this situation can be awkward; at worst is can lead to serious conflicts.  A parent, who has had a lifetime of making decisions, now has children making decisions for him/her.  These can be small decisions (“Dad you should not climb that ladder”) or life-altering decisions (“Mom, you can’t drive anymore"). Caring for an aging parent can limit the freedom of the care-giving couple.  It can mean delaying travel plans, changing long-established schedules and learning the old “spur-of-the-moment” event now requires planning. Also, the decisions that come with caring for an aging parent can put the couple at odds with siblings who may have different ideas about what is best for the their parent....

Please join us this week in praying for the marriages of those in pastoral ministry. Because of the various demands of the pastoral role, it is easy for the pastor to become wedded to his ministry, fully believing he is doing good when in fact he is a workaholic, neglecting the needs of his spouse and unintentionally undercutting the very ministry to which he has been called. Also, in the process of being "all things to all men,” pastor and spouse can get so caught up in the busyness of knowing everyone, attending everyone's "special" events and caring for everyone during crisis that they fail to slow down and take the time to build deep, personal friendships and, consequently, miss out on the joy and support these friendships can supply. Finally, marriages of those in the pastoral ministry are lived in a fishbowl.  The business of the pastor and spouse is everybody's business.  This fact can cause those in the pastoral ministr...

Join us this week in praying for marriages dealing with infertility. Couples dealing with infertility experience drastic ups and downs, hopes and disappointments, month after month. Hormonal issues can create mental and physical weariness for the wife.   Medical testing and treatments and their side effects can be a burden to both spouses and also strain their financial resources. The marriage relationship itself can also be tested, particularly when the husband and wife cope with disappointment differently and grieve differently. Also, the spirits of couples in this life situation can be wounded by insensitive or thoughtless questions and statements made by their family and friends. Finally, despite their best efforts to rejoice with others, these couples can struggle emotionally as they see their friends becoming pregnant and having children with apparent ease, while their hopes are frustrated again and again. As you lift these couples ...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages in which one of two non-believing spouses has become a believer in our Lord Jesus Christ.  The difficulties a marriage can experience when entered into by a believer and a non-believer are many.  All of those difficulties and more can be present in the marriage of non-believers when one comes to faith in Jesus Christ and the other does not. The new believer can find being faithful to Christ difficult because the very one s/he is joined to in marriage is at the least not equipped to be supportive and at the most possibly hostile.  The non-believing spouse, even without intention, can tempt the new believer into situations that would violate his/her new relationship with Christ.  These situations can strike at the heart of companionship and cause the couple to doubt the suitability of their relationship. Non-believing friends of the unequally-yoked couple can drive a wedge between the two by ...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages that have grown emotionally cold. Emotional coldness in a marriage can be as destructive as rage and is more insidious. Rage is like a fire that ignites and is immediately recognized as damaging.  Emotional coldness, or emotional distance, as some would call it, is like freezing weather, uncomfortable for sure, but too often not identified as damaging until frozen pipes start to break. The growth of emotional coldness in a marriage can have its origin in any number of situations.  Excessive attention to children to the determent of that to a spouse can cause a marriage relationship to cool.  The same can be said of excessive attention to work, to a hobby or, yes, even to a ministry.  Discounting the need to give and ask for forgiveness to a spouse can also be the seed-bed of emotional coldness. Being unaware of how a spouse expresses his/her emotions can cause one to miss cues that...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages dealing with the tragedy of breast cancer.  Although cancer of any kind can create stressful situations for marriages, breast cancer does so uniquely.  It strikes the wife at the heart of her self-image and worth.  Many sufferers experience an emotional roller coaster that can cause their spouse to receive conflicting signals.  One moment a wife may long to be held and touched yet at another moment, or maybe even at the same moment, withdraw from physical contact.  The husband, on the other hand, who does not understand this dynamic, can become confused when his touch is rebuffed or his reserve is interpreted as uncaring. As with other cancers, the physical battle of fighting breast cancer is draining and demanding, on the patient particularly but also on the spouse.  Almost without fail, the physical stresses of enduring radical treatments and of caring for the patient create e...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages that have suffered the excruciating pain of the death of a newborn baby.  In past weeks we have called on you to pray for those who have had a child to die as well as for those who have suffered the painful disappointment of a miscarriage.  Many of the issues experienced by couples that have faced those tragedies are also common to those who have lost a newborn. The circumstances of this particular tragedy can be quite varied.  In some cases the death has been long expected and to some degree prepared for because of prenatal testing.  In other cases the death is totally unexpected but comes quickly after birth.  And yet, in still other situations, the newborn’s death, though almost a medical certainty, is delayed for days or even months. One of the hardest things about infant death is the sudden and absolute reversal of emotions.  Joyful expectation is usurped by gut-wren...