My Prayer today...

My devotion happened to be on MARRIAGE today. Hmm....Marriage. These definitions come quickly to my mind: wonderful, God plan, soul mate, godly example for others, (Last BUT NOT least), hard work!!!

Don't get me wrong...I'm happily married to my hubby. I'd like to believe the "submissive, gentle, loving wife" comes natural for me....but it doesn't. It's funny....I didn't realize I was stubborn, hard-headed, or selfish .....UNTIL I got married!!

However, on the flip side, I didn't know I could love, laugh, dream, and have such a great friend either.

While reading this devotion and prayer, I realized God has given me a wonderful story to live and play out. And, my co-leading actor in this story happens to be the person God hand picked for me. No, it's NOT my anniversary!! I'm thankful for my guy and this is my prayer for us:

Father in Heaven, thank you for Mark and my commitment

to Christian marriage. As we look ahead, we pray that our future will never lack the convictions

that make a marriage strong.

Bless my husban, Mark. Bless him as provider and protector. Sustain him in all the

pressures that come with the task of stewarding a family. May his strength be my boast

and pride, and may he so live that I find in him the haven for which my heart truly longs for.

Bless me. Give me a tenderness with a deep sense of

understanding, and a strong faith in You. Give me that inner beauty of soul that never fades, that

eternal youth that is found in holding fast to the things that never age. May I so live that Mark may be pleased to reverence me in the shrine of his heart.

Teach us that marriage is not living for each other. It is two people uniting and joining hands

to serve You. Give us a great spiritual purpose in life. May we seek first Your kingdom and

Your righteousness, knowing that You will sustain us through all of life’s challenges.

May we minimize each other’s weaknesses and be swift to praise and magnify each other’s

strengths so that we might view each other through a lover’s kind and patient eyes. Help us

every day to be kind and gentle, more like You. Give us a little something to forgive each

day, that our love might learn to be long-suffering.

Bless us and develop our characters as we walk together with You. Give us enough

hurts to keep us humane, enough failures to keep our hands clenched tightly in Yours, and

enough of success to make us sure our walk with You throughout all of our life

.

May we never take each other’s love for granted but always experience that breathless wonder

that exclaims. “Out of all this world, you have chosen me.” Then, when life is done and the sun

is setting, may we be found then as now, still hand in hand, still very proud, still thanking You

for each other.

May we travel together as friends and lovers, brother and sister, husband and wife, father and

mother, and as servants of Christ until He shall return or until that day when one shall lay the

other into the arms of God. This we ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, the great

lover of our souls. Amen.

To