The Power of a Praying Wife: The Power

Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her; so he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life. ~Proverbs 31:1-12

Welcome to the first week in our Bible study of the Stormie Omartian book, The Power of a Praying Wife.

I am so excited to begin. For your information, the comments section will be closed on this post, but this link here will take you to Hallee’s Daily Brew, my forum that my husband, Gregg, created so that we can have more freedom of conversation than what is available in the comments section. The reason that the comments are closed is so that we keep all discussions in one spot.

I’ve created an introduction post on the message board that you can find here. Please respond giving us your own introduction so that we can all get to know one another. If you are participating anonymously for any reason, we understand if you don’t want to fill that out and we’re happy to have you.

If you’re coming into this study after it’s already begun, that’s wonderful! The glory of doing this over the internet instead of in a classroom setting is that if you miss a class, you can still jump right in on it.

≈WEEK ONE: THE POWER≈

As I read this introduction to the book, I was overwhelmed. For those of you who have not read my testimony, when our youngest son, Johnathan, was an infant, Gregg and I went through a terrible time in our marriage. Gregg was suffering from a terrible depression that was manifesting itself in destructive ways. Since we only saw each other on weekends, I had no idea about how much he was suffering. I was just going through my happy life never believing for a moment that my marriage might be in trouble, that my husband might be in agonizing pain, that Satan was wielding his destructive ways and working on both of us.

By the time I discovered how bad things were, our marriage was in the midst of the fire. Most marriages don’t or can’t recover from what we experienced. At one point, I packed the kids in the car and left him. I was an hour away when I was overwhelmed with the urgency to return. I know now that God was speaking to my heart, urging me to fight for our marriage. Even though at one point I pulled away from God because things seemed to be getting worse instead of better, I can look back now and see all of the ways God worked for us.

Gregg’s depression grew so much that right before he left for Afghanistan, he confessed to me that he felt nothing. No love, no hate, no nothing. That was the point I decided to trust God again. I went to Him, begging Him to save my marriage. When Gregg left, I didn’t know if we would still be married when he came back. For weeks he and I prayed and prayed – we prayed for ourselves, we prayed for each other, we prayed for our marriage and for our family. About two weeks after he left, he and I both went through a spiritual renewal, an awakening, a metamorphosis. For the last year, we have really focused on praying for each other – even going so far as to type out our prayers and emailing them back and forth so that we can pray together.

We both feel, very strongly, that we have a ministry in our future that is going to magnify and glorify God. We believe that our children will have amazing ministries and will be forces to be reckoned with in God’s kingdom. And we believe that the enemy knows this and shot firery darts and arrows at us until we were so succumbed by flames that we almost lost everything. But like the finest metal, it wasn’t until our marriage went through the heat of the fire, took a bit of a beating and sharpening, that it emerged pure and stronger than ever.

Please read the introduction, “The Power,” and consider the following discussion questions. I understand that some of the questions are very personal. Please don’t feel obligated to answer all of them “out loud” if you don’t want to.

In the introduction, Stormie says, “We don’t have authority over our husbands. However, we have been given authority ‘over all the power of the enemy,’ (Luke 10:19) and we can do great damage to the enemy’s plans when we pray.” What do you think this means?
Stormie explained that the problem in her marriage was her husband’s anger, and that she and her children were targets for his temper and his anger. But she also said, “I’m not saying that I was without fault – quite the contrary. I’m sure I was as much to blame as he…” How do you feel about that statement?
Stormie says, “They [a husband and wife] are a team, one unit, unified in spirit. The strength of a man and wife joined together in God’s sight is far greater than the sum of the strengths of each of the two individuals. That’s because the Holy Spirit unites them and gives added power to their prayers.” Read Matthew 19:3-6 in your Bible. Do you believe that you and your spouse are one in the sight of God? Are there places that you and your husband are not working together as a team? If so, on a sheet of paper, list those places. Write out a prayer to God asking Him to show you what you can do to facilitate that unity. As you pray for your husband, pray this prayer daily. As you and your husband are brought together in those places in your life, take them off of the list and continue to pray for the other areas.
Stormie says, “You have to decide if you want your marriage to work, and if you want it badly enough to do whatever is necessary, within healthy parameters, to see it happen. You have to believe the part of your relationship that has been eaten away by pain, indifference, and selfishness can be restored. You have to trust that what has swarmed over you, such as abuse, death of a child, infidelity, poverty, loss, catastrophic illness, or accident, can be relieved of its death grip. You have to determine that everything consuming you and your husband, such as workaholism, drug abuse, or depression, can be destroyed. You have to know that whatever has crept into your relationship so silently and stealthily as to not even be perceived as a threat until it is clearly present – such as making idols of your career, your dreams, your kids, your selfish desires – can be removed. You have to trust that God is big enough to accomplish all of this and more.” Most Christian authors who write on marriages from Kendrick (The Love Dare) to Mark Gungor (Laugh Yourself to a Better Marriage) to Eggerichs (Love and Respect) and everyone in between all agree that love is not a “destiny”, not “chance,” not, “fate” – but that love is a CHOICE. You don’t “fall” in and out of love – you actively choose to love. You decide to love your spouse and you make it a verb. Do you believe that it is that simple, as simple as “deciding” to love and forgive as Stormie says in this quote from her book?
Did reading this introduction make you feel excitement about what prayer can do for your marriage? Is there anything that we as a group can collectively pray about for you within your marriage?

If something else other than the above questions stood out to you while reading this chapter, please feel free to start your own thread. Just make sure the chapter number is at the beginning the title (in this case, “Introduction”).

Hallee

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