Wilkinson - Prayers of Blessing over Your Husband

HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

EUGENE, OREGON

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PRAYERS OF BLESSING OVER YOUR HUSBAND

Copyright 2018 Bruce Wilkinson and Heather Hair

Published by Harvest House Publishers

Eugene, Oregon 97408

www.harvesthousepublishers.com

ISBN: 978-0-7369-7181-2 (pbk.)

ISBN: 978-0-7369-7182-9 (eBook)

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This book is dedicated to all the wives who seek the best for their husbands through their prayers, love, and support. May you find great encouragement and many helpful insights that will enable your prayers to receive an abundance of blessings from the Lord for your husband.

As this book was written, I found myself repeatedly thanking the Lord for my faithful and praying wife, Darlene, as she is the best illustration I know of everything Heather and I wrote about. The impact of her prayers, support, encouragement, and love cannot be overestimated.

Through hundreds of her prayers over the decades of our marriage, I, as her husband, have been able to serve the Lord far beyond anything either of us could ever have dreamed possible. She has continued pursuing the Lord in ever-increasing diligence and, because of that, we have experienced an amazing life together.

I would be the first to publicly recognize her as a godly woman of whom I have often quoted this passage from Proverbs 31 as coming true in her life: Her children rise up and bless her; her husband also, and he praises her, saying: Many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all (verses 28-29 NASB ).

Contents

I am delighted you picked up Prayers of Blessing over Your Husband . This reflects your desire to learn how to more positively impact your husband and your marriage! As you read through this book and then use the prayers on a regular basis, your husband is going to be one happy and even transformed man!

Prayer changes things, and as you will discover in this book, your prayers will bring about some major and encouraging changes in your husband. The Bible conveys the surprising fact that a wifes prayers for her husband are among the most powerful agents for change that exist anywhere. You may be pleasantly shocked to discover how powerful your prayers are and how carefully God pays attention to them.

If you truly long for Gods miraculous intervention in your marriage, then embrace the fact that you wear an invisible but mighty covering I call the Wifes Mantle. A mantle is defined by different dictionaries as something that covers or surrounds; an important role or responsibility that passes from one person to another; a position of someone who has responsibility or authority. One dictionary gives an illustration of the use of the word mantle with this sentence: She accepted the mantle of leadership.

The moment you walked that proverbial aisle and said I do, God placed a mantle on you of responsibility and authority within the marriage bond, perhaps without you even being aware of it. Until that moment, you did not have the Wifes Mantle. You had the role of a daughter, perhaps the role of a sister, an employee, etc. But when you became a married woman, you took on a new role.

Unless you have been married before, your marriage vows launched a new and never-before-experienced role in your life.

If you dont understand how God established the wifes role in marriage, you may never enjoy true victory and happiness within your marriage because of either role reversal or role abdication. Role reversal occurs in a marriage when the wife assumes the role of her husband, and role abdication occurs when the wife fails to fulfill her God-given responsibility or duty within the marriage.

As I helped innumerable couples and individual husbands and wives over the years, I discovered that very few people understand the importance of roles, especially within marriage.

In different circumstances, we all play different roles; that is, we act in certain ways in certain situations. Early in our marriage, I caused some problems because I forgot to change roles! I would come home from work with much on my mind and forget to change roles from president of an organization to husband of my wife. I can remember Darlene quipping, Are you still at the office? and Am I your secretary? which meant I forgot to come home and assume the marriage role as her loving husband.

After a few times of coming home in the wrong role, I invented a solution: I selected a certain restaurant that I always passed while driving home where I changed from my business role to my husband role and later added my father role. Now, it was just as important that I flip back on my way to work. Just imagine if I neglected to switch on my way to work and came into the office relating to my assistant in my husbands role!

You can either invent your own role in marriage from movies and TV or continue to pattern your role after the way your mother fulfilled her role in marriage. But if you understand Gods purposes for marriage and are wise, you can take a better path and discover the way God has established the wifes role and then pursue fulfilling it to the best of your ability. The comforting truth about embracing Gods delegated role is that His position works for all marriages, at all times, regardless of your culture, your upbringing, or your husbands or your personality or abilities.

If I asked you to explain Gods revealed truth about how He wants every wife to fulfill their role in marriage, what would you say?

Before moving any further on this topic, we need to understand that roles do not relate to importance or significance. Roles do not define you; they only are necessary within certain situations. For instance, when you are at work, you are not fulfilling your role as wife. I knew one couple in which the wife was the CEO of a big company and her husband was a salesperson at that company. In her role as CEO, she clearly could tell her employed husband what to doand the husband had no authority over her but had to submit to her as CEO. But when that CEO and salesman drove home, they had to change roles from CEO and salesman to wife and husband. Very, very different. Married women are only to assume their married role with their husband when they are fulfilling their responsibilities within their marriage.