Ps.119 Prayer for My Husband

Hopefully, this is somewhat coherent as I haven't had my coffee quite yet. I'm often up at the crack of dawn these days & too excited to sleep since the wedding is 116 days away!! 

I've been thinking about this after a few conversations I've had recently with friends on prayer & singleness. I started this blog in 2011, I believe, when I didn't know what to do with my longing for marriage. Then I came across something that resonated with me, which said instead of denying your longings, use them as a springboard to fuel your prayer life. It felt bold and a little scary to admit out loud that I wanted to be married. And sometimes when I would muster up the courage to give voice to those feelings, a married woman would remind me how difficult marriage was and I should be thankful I get to "be selfish and do whatever I wanted." My jaw dropped hearing those words. And I felt guilty admitting there was something else I deeply wanted when I did enjoy my life, a great job, rich friendships & community, a family I would choose as friends, etc. It seemed selfish to ask God for more when I knew I had so much to be thankful for, but everything in me felt wired to be a wife. That's when I decided to start my Wives Praying Boldly blog as a way to consistently bring my desire for marriage before the Lord and unite both single and married women who desired to support their marriages or future marriages with the foundation of prayer. It gave me a space to share my heart, to be honest about the struggles of being single longer than I had hoped and to keep praying for the husband I believed God had for me. 

"When the day comes that your love story is celebrated by your closest friends and family, you'll know that every prayer was worth it. Every whispered word from a tender heart is precious to God. No request is ignored. No moment spent with your Heavenly Father is wasted. 

You might even wish you had prayed more. Why? Because your prayers are the first gifts you will give to your future husband. Gifts in which heaven participates. Gifts send ahead before the two of you have even met." ~ Praying for Your Future Husband: Preparing Your Heart for His by Robin Jones Gunn and Tricia Goyer.

Andrew and I are praying for each other based on verses from Psalm 119. 

Today's prayer is that "the Lord will do good to Andrew according to His Word." (Psalm 119:65)

Join me in prayer for your husband or future husband!

Envy by Paul Tripp

"Envy denies grace. The assumption of envy is that we deserve what another has been given, when, in fact, you and I deserve nothing. Envy is self-focused and self-righteous. It inserts you into the center of your world. It makes it all about you. It tells you that you deserve what you don't deserve. Envy is expectant and demanding. Envy tells you that you are someone you aren't and you are entitled to what is not rightfully yours. Envy cannot celebrate the blessing of another because it tells you that you are more deserving. Envy forgets who you are, forgets who God is, and is confused about what life is all about. Yet, having said all of that, the fact is that all of us struggle with envy somehow, some way, and at some time. Envy is universal because sin is. Envy is self-focused; because it is self-focused, it's entitled; because it's entitled, it's demanding; because it's demanding, it tends to judge the goodness of God by whether he has delivered what you feel entitled to; and because it judges God I that basis, it leads you to question his goodness. Because you question God's goodness, you won't run to him for help. Envy is a spiritual disaster. Grace reminds you that you deserve nothing, but it does not stop there - it confronts you with the truth that God is gloriously loving, gracious, and kind, that he lavishes on us things we could never have earned. Grace also reminds us that God is wise and he never gets a wrong address - he gives each of us exactly what he knows we need. For further study and encouragement: James 3:13-18 (New Morning Mercies: a Daily Gospel Devotional by Paul Tripp)

A Tribute To Carolyn

I was blessed to attend a celebration of life on Saturday for Carolyn, the mother of two of my students. The next day as I was processing the impact she had in me, I wrote a poem about her. Yesterday morning she went to be with Jesus. Please pray for her husband and children.