When Life Hits Pause: Here Are Restart Buttons In experiencing delays or stagnation, we often resort to prayers as singles or married. However, there is an additional thing you should do with praying, you are to watch.
Mat 26:41 (KJV) Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
To watch is to be on guard. To gather your faculties is what it implies. Think, reflect, examine yourself, and take the required steps to determine what could be the cause of the delay. What do you watch out for?
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When Life Hits Pause: Here Are Restart Buttons
Here are two of them.
1. Watch Your Attitudes Let’s address singles first. Attitude is a settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in a person’s behavior.
It is all about you and what makes you do certain things at any given time.
A wrong attitude can drive promising potential spouses away. Bad attitudes deter.
Before you start to pray, ensure that you have worked or are working on your attitude.
Bad attitudes will lead to breakups one after the other.
Here are a few scriptures on attitudes that can help and that you should meditate on.
Php 2:14-15 (KJV) Do all things without murmurings and disputings: [15] That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;
Col 3:23 (AMP) Whatever may be your task, work at it heartily (from the soul), as [ something done ] for the Lord and not for men,
Pro 17:22 (AMP) A happy heart is good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.
In marriage, do not allow bad attitudes to create loopholes for the devil which he can exploit to bring delay to different aspects of your marriage.
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When your spouse is making an effort after a disagreement or quarrel, do not reciprocate with annoying attitude. It is like dribbling the ball backward. Remember, you are a team. Your spouse is not the problem, the devil is!
When Life Hits Pause: Here Are Restart Buttons
2. Watch Your Preparation
Nobody will be fully prepared or ready for marriage, but there should be a certain level or preparedness.
Pro 18:22 (KJV) Whoso findeth a wife…
Not he who findeth a sister or a woman…
That shows that a lady should learn what it means to be a wife, a helper before venturing into it.
Do you really know what it means to be a helper?
Have you read books on communication, temperament, etc?
Are you ready to be a wife and not a knife?
The same applies to a man.
Are you ready to be responsible?
Are you ready to raise a family?
Do you have the spiritual clout to head and lead a family?
Without adequate preparation, delay can easily creep in.
If God sees that a marriage at an earlier time will destroy you, God himself would throw a monkey wrench in the whole thing, because He doesn’t want evil to befall you.
Your preparation actually enhances the speed at the end of it all.
As married couples, your preparation continues. Do not sweep issues under the carpet. Face issues and be scientific as well as spiritual with them. Read books, search for answers, and find out how you can constantly improve yourself!
This Must Be Present in Every Marriage. A lot of things must be implemented for a marriage to succeed.
Conscious and deliberate inputs must be in place so the marriage can bring bliss and not blisters.
Here is one of them
Prayers. This Must Be Present in Every Marriage.
A family that prays together stays together.
A husband and wife that pray together will overcome the flesh easily.
Prayer protects, shields, and connects you to your inheritance in God.
As husband and wife, pray for one another rather than tear one another apart.
Intercede for each other.
What the devil wants is a tearing apart, do not cooperate with him.
Wake up in the middle of the night and pray together.
The power of agreement is better harnessed as a couple.
In the first few years of our marriage, my wife and I would wake up by 12.00 am and pray in the Spirit.
I am persuaded that those prayers advanced our lives and ministries.
There is a purpose for coming together in marriage.
It is not just for making love and then dying at the age of ninety.
There is a purpose in the heart of God.
That purpose is not to be decided, it is to be discovered.
When you discover that purpose, you just stepped into your wealthy place.
You can only discover in the place of prayers.
The devil will do all he knows to make sure you don’t pray.
You will notice that each time you decide to pray, something else will interrupt it. Those are not natural. The devil doesn’t want you to pray at all. Prayer-less couples will leave so many cracks and loopholes open for the devil to explore.
The devil will not access your marriage. Your marriage will be preserved in Jesus’ name!
Do not let anything interfere with your prayer times. May God help you and your spouse in Jesus’ name
Be blessed!
CONFESSION FOR THE DAY I will respect my loved one
PRAYER FOR THE DAY Lord, give us a humble heart
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Jas 4:7 (KJV) Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
ACTION PLAN FOR THE DAY Start praying together if you weren’t doing that
Do you know you can be specific in the place of prayers? Yes, you can. Let’s take a look at the story of Ade. Ade mentioned his prayers to his mum as they drove home from school.
‘God should help me in my coming school examinations,’ Ade said.
‘That’s an empty prayer request,’ she said. ‘Be specific about what grades you want in each subject’
Ade wondered why he should. God said His plans for us are good. God should know what grades to give him.
‘It is good to be specific in your prayer requests to God,’ she said further.
Mum is right. Imagine if the blind man in yesterday’s story (Luke 18:40-41) asked for blessings?
The question is, what exact blessing did he need right then? What was the most important thing he needed? To see. And how did Jesus reply? Jesus said, “Jesus said to him, Then see! You are healed because you believed.”
Being specific aids your expectations regarding your wants. You have a view of the expected results in your mind and expect nothing less.
So, stop saying vague prayers and tell God exactly what you want. The blind man got what he wanted.
At once the man was able to see,… – Luke 18:43 (ICB)
A couple of years back, a certain lady called me. Let’s call her Sister Sube.
She started by telling me how bitter she is against God, that God has refused to answer all her prayers. She said despite constant vigils, fasting, and prayers, God has turned a deaf ear to her. She told me how she was on the brink of giving up.
Sister Sube went further to tell me that she has been crying for days and that she is thinking of forgetting God and moving on. She told me that no serious man has approached her in the last few months.
Then she dropped the bomb!
She said, “Even this man that I am living in his house has refused to propose!”
“Living in his house?” I asked.
“Yes now, I thought if I move into his house, it will make things fast, but right now, he has only been sleeping with me.”
Then she concluded, “Pastor, I am tired.” I pray a lot, no answer. I am even just coming from a vigil right now.”
As ridiculous as this may sound, I am telling you a true story. And I am also sure there are many people who might have found themselves in this kind of predicament.
The reality is that you cannot violate a part of the scripture and then expect His promises to work for you.
Yes, some things happen by acts of mercy, but you get to a certain point, God commands everyone to repent.
That lady above is trying to mock God. Sadly, God cannot be mocked. Such a person ends up deceiving himself or herself.
There is no point attending vigils and going to the mountain every Friday and then continuing in sin. It is just a waste of time.
Let me give you some tips that can help.
For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. – Romans 14:17 (KJV)
You cannot gallivant your way to heaven. It requires a certain level of seriousness and discipline with your spiritual life. It requires some inconvenience.
There is always a price to pay. It is not in meat and drink alone. It is not in tripping her, taking her to cinemas alone, and buying her gifts.
Meat and drinks, fun, and frolicking around are never the passwords into God’s kingdom.
It is in righteousness which is right living. You cannot cheat your way into the Kingdom. You are either for Him or against Him.
May God grant you more understanding!
CONFESSION FOR THE DAY I refuse to mock God in any way
PRAYERS FOR THE DAY Lord, help me to live with your fear in mind
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. – Romans 14:17 (KJV)
Husbands should endeavor to pray for their wives daily. This may sound religious but I have found it to work. Apart from the fact that it draws the husband to God, making him take his rightful place as the priest, it takes the pressure off the wife also.
Everybody now looks up to God who is able to transform our marriage and make us better people. The focus shifts to God. The husband sees God as the One who will answer his prayers and he’s patiently waiting on God.
It also affords the husband to pray for those virtues he likes to see in his wife. Praying together brings God into the scene where He becomes a partner with us. He sees to it that there are changes and our marriages become better.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. – Eph 5:25 – 28
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The husbands should be responsible in the transformation process of their wives. They should be committed to seeing their wives transformed to what they want them to be.
So dear wives, a little trick that works is to always ask your husband to lay his hands on you and pray for you. It gives your husband a feeling of your being submissive to him and a willingness to want to please him. It will also reduce quarrels. You can’t be fighting and your husband praying for you.
Note that the devil will try and fight this. He hates this kind of unity and agreement because of the power it generates. Even when there is a fight, make sure you apologize and ask your husband to pray for you.
For example, if your husband is always complaining that you are slow, let him begin to talk to God about it. So he prays for you that God should make you faster or quicker in doing your things.
Two things will likely happen. It is either he begins to see himself as complaining and begins to see the good side of your being slow, or he accept you that way and work on being more patient. If he still complains, you tell him, Senior, we have prayed about it.
In this way, the wife takes the pressure of performance off her and allows the process of change to take its course. You could use this method to kick start praying together for those who don’t pray together at all.
May God give us victory, Amen!
God bless our homes and marriages.
CONFESSION FOR THE DAY I cooperate with my spouse to have an award winning marriage.
PRAYER FOR THE DAY Lord, teach me how to love my husband/wife well
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Eph 5:25 [KJV]Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
