Start Your Day with Prayer

One of the standard pieces of marriage advice that many Christian counselors give is to make sure that you take the time to pray together. While that is great advice, many couples struggle to find a time when they can actually take a few minutes to sit down and pray. Our hurry-up-and-wait schedule seems to make it extremely hard to find time to say “Hi” to each other, let alone sit down and pray together.

My wife and I work out of our home. In addition to the ministry, we both have businesses that we run out of our home. You’d think that would make it easy for us to find time together, especially time to pray. Unfortunately, it’s not all that easy. Even though we share an office, share a bedroom, and even occasionally eat together, it’s hard to find time to pray together. Not that we don’t pray, but we have trouble finding a time to pray together. Our schedules just don’t seem to mesh all that well.

We find some great wisdom for this in Genesis, where it says that God “walked with Adam in the cool of the day.” I had always thought of that as the evening; that is, I thought that way until I moved to South Texas. Evenings here aren’t cool, their hot. The cool of the day is the early morning, before the sun has a chance to heat things up.

So, in other words, Adam communed with God before doing anything else. If you think about it, that really makes sense. Why do anything else, before taking time out to talk to God about it? If we don’t take the time to get with God, then we’re setting ourselves up for problems.

Okay, so what does this have to do with marriage? Well, an important part of your prayer every day should be to pray God’s protection over your wife. So, make sure you do that. Before either of you leave the house in the morning, grab her hand and pray for God’s protection and blessing over her.

Even if you only take a minute to pray together, that’s probably better than what you’re doing now. Granted, it would be much better if you could spend some serious prayer time together. But, you know something? If you wait until you can find some serious prayer time that you can have together, you’re probably never going to find time that you can pray together. However, if you start out small, you’ve got the opportunity for growth.

Your wife needs your prayers. The world in which we live is a dangerous one, especially for women. That few minutes of prayer in the morning might be the only thing that keeps your wife safe that day. Would you deny her that? No, not willingly, but you might do so by forgetting to pray.

Cover Her with Your Prayers

As the priests of our homes, one of the important things we need to do is make sure that we keep our wives and children in prayer. Of all the things we do as men, this has to be one of the most important. Yet, it’s hard to get men to pray, much harder than it is to get women to do so.

When we pray for our wives, it gives them a sense of security, knowing that we are seeking the greatest power in the universe, on their behalf. It is one of the most selfless acts there is; one in which we lay down our lives, in the sense of our own desires, for those of the other person.

When you pray for your wife, it’s important that she knows you are doing so. Not just that you tell her “I prayed for you today;” but that she sees and hears you doing so. Not that her hearing it will make the prayer any more effective, because it won’t. But her hearing that prayer will let her know how serious you take your responsibility to be priest over her.

God has given us as men the capacity to be aggressive and violent; not that we might use it against our families, but for them. Prayer, especially prayer to protect our families is a violent act. It’s not just mumbling some petition to God, but rather standing in the gap, rebuking all that might try and come against them. Quite literally, it’s telling the devil, if you want to get to them, you’ve got to go through me first.

Although the women’s libbers will get mad at me for saying so, God never intended for women to be alone. In ancient times, a woman who was unmarried lived at home. A widow would go back to live at home, or live with another family member. This wasn’t because of male chauvinism, but rather so that the woman would have provision and especially protection.

A woman alone is vulnerable to many attacks. Yet, women whose husbands don’t pray for them are just as vulnerable. Without her husband’s prayer covering, it is much too easy for the enemy to come after her; attacking her health, her security and especially her emotions.

Pray for your wife. Let her see you doing so. Let her know that she is so important to you, that you go to the most high on her behalf, each and every day.

Save Her from the Stress

Just in case you haven’t noticed, life contains a surfeit of stress. Yes, it’s true, we all face problems, each and every day. Even the people you might think don’t have problems to worry about; movie stars, athletes and rich people all have problems. In fact, most of them have more problems to deal with than you and I do.

Stress can cause us a number of problems; everything from eating disorders, to high blood pressure, to total emotional breakdowns. It appears that these problems are even worse for women, than they are for men. Of course, none of us need these problems and we need even less for our wives to have them.

As men, we actually need a bit of stress to function. A man without any stress is called a couch potato. He just sits on the sofa, channel surfing, and calling out to his wife to bring him another Coke when his bottle runs dry. Stress is what causes us to get off the sofa and do something with our lives.

Not so for women. There’s a definite difference between how men and women deal with stress. While men can set a problem for which they don’t have an answer aside, women can’t do that. That problem grows and grows before their eyes, becoming bigger and bigger, until it’s all they can see. Instead of being able to deal with it, they often get to a point where all they are doing is worrying about it.

Now, I’m not saying that women aren’t capable of getting things done. We’re not talking the 1850s here, where women were thought of as being incapable of doing anything. Women are just as capable to deal with things as we are, sometimes even more so. What I’m talking about is how dealing with those things can affect them. By and large, women are far more skilled at worrying then men are. So, when faced with a problem, they tend to worry.

By the way, that’s why women nag their husbands; they see the problem, but they don’t see their husbands doing anything about it. The fact that you’re mulling it over in your mind or waiting for something to arrive, which you need to solve the problem, doesn’t count. She can’t see it, so it isn’t happening.

Part of our responsibility as men is to protect our wives. While that clearly means protecting them from physical harm, I’d have to say that it goes much farther than that. One of the areas where I have found it important to protect my wife is in the area of stress. Her mother is a world-class champion worrier, and she taught both her daughters well. So, it is very easy for my wife to fall into that habit. If I don’t protect her from worry and stress, it can destroy her.

One of the biggest areas of worry and stress for most couples is in the area of finances. It bothers me when I see couples in which the woman is the one handling the finances. Not because she’s not capable, but because of the stress which is associated with that job. If you ask these couples why they are doing things that way, they either answer that he’s irresponsible or she’s a better administrator.

Okay, those sounds like good reasons, but are they really? If that’s causing her stress, which ultimately leads to health problems, are they making a good decision? Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if he learned how to take care of the finances, so that she wouldn’t have to?

In our home, I do that. Now, I don’t keep my wife totally in the dark about our finances, she knows all of our accounts and about how much the bills are every month. She knows in general how much income we have (it varies from month to month). But, I never burden her with “I don’t know how we’re going to pay for this.” Instead, I figure out how we’re going to do it, and let her know. I take on the responsibility, instead of dumping it on her.

I’m not saying that she has no say in our finances, either; she does. When we sign up for some service or membership or whatever, it’s usually because she wants to. She comes to me, tells me what she wants, and I determine if we can afford it. If not, I tell her. If she still wants it, then we sit down together to decide what we’re going to give up, so that we can afford it.

When we run into a situation where money is a little tight, I just tell my wife that we need to be careful about our spending for the next few weeks. I don’t get into detail; I don’t dump it on her: I just tell her to put off any unnecessary spending for a bit. Likewise, for things like Christmas shopping and going on vacation; I tell her what we can afford to spend, and that’s what we work with.

Please don’t get me wrong here. I’m not treating my wife like a child or treating her like she’s irresponsible. What I’m trying to do is protect her from the stress associated with dealing with our finances. Our books are open. She can ask me at any time what we have and what we don’t have. She can ask me if such-and-such a bill has been paid. She can know how much cash I have in my wallet (and there’s no “she money” in there). I’m just protecting her.

How can a woman, who doesn’t feel secure in the family finances, feel secure in her marriage? She can’t. That’s why I’m protecting her. I want her to feel secure, that she doesn’t have to worry and that everything is going to be all right.

Maybe you can’t do it the same way that I am. You have to find what works for you. But, I will tell you this; if you have your wife paying the bills, you’re wrong. You’re dumping your responsibility on her, along with all the stress that goes with it. Learn how to take care of things, so that your wife can relax and feel secure. That will help her feel loved, as well.

Check Out Her Car

I’m sure you’ve noticed how non-mechanical your wife is. I mean, unless she’s one in about 10,000,000, she doesn’t know more about the car than where to put the gas in and where the ignition key goes. It’s like the joke about the woman who walked into the auto parts store to ask for “the 710 part.” The clerk was of course baffled and asked her to explain. Exasperated with his density, she said, “It’s a round thing on the top of the engine that has the number “710” on it.” Well, of course, she was talking about the oil cap and didn’t even know it.

If we expect our wives to do things like check the tires and oil on their car, we’re heading for a major repair bill. My wife tells me that she thinks the tires are low all the time, just because they’re radials. Checking air, oil and water isn’t within a woman’s makeup and there’s really no way that they’re going to do it.

However, we both know that she needs her car, and probably needs it every day. So, somebody has got to make sure that it’s running good and that somebody is you. When you check her car, it’s a way to make sure that she is safe. She needs that from you; she needs to know that you are her protector. While that no longer means carrying a sword around to dual anyone who dares come close to her, there are still many ways of protecting her. This is just one of them.

I make a point of driving my wife’s car when we go to church. That way, I’m able to listen to the motor and make sure that everything is working fine. If I don’t do that, there could be a steadily worsening problem that neither of us is aware of. It’s not fair of me to expect her to recognize those problems.

While you’re at it, why not give her car a quick bath and vacuum it out? While it may not make much difference to you, she’d rather drive around in a nice clean car. Don’t stop there though; put one of those air fresheners in it for her; something with a nice floral scent. Women’s noses are more sensitive, so that’s an important little detail.

Don’t forget about other things that could make her car more comfortable for her to drive. I’ve installed pads on the shoulder straps, because those can be rather uncomfortable for a woman. Where I live, there’s a shop that has a sign up, which says, “Your Wife is Hot!” Then in small letters, it adds, “Tint her windows.” If you live in a hot climate like I do, that’s good advice. Remember, romance is about the little things that you do to make her feel like she’s important to you. Taking care of her is part of that.

One final step, when you go back in the house, make sure that you tell her that her car is okay. You want her to know that you’re doing this to protect her; not just the car. By telling her that, it isn’t that you’re avoiding spending time with her, it’s that you’re taking care of her; a huge difference.