How To Pray For Him

Series: When He Doesn't Believe

Leslie Basham: God always answers prayer 100% of the time, but our guest today on Revive Our Hearts reminds us that His answers aren’t always what we want or expect.

Nancy Kennedy: When we pray for a situation to change, God changes us.

Leslie Basham: Today we’ll look at how a wife can pray for a husband who doesn’t share her spiritual beliefs.

It’s Thursday, February 23rd, and this is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

Yesterday, Nancy Kennedy spoke about how to “win your husband without a word,” as the apostle Peter put it. But if you missed it you can listen to it later online at ReviveOurHearts.com. Today though, we turn our attention to using words, words not aimed at our husbands, but God. Here’s Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I know from many of the e-mails that we receive here at Revive Our Hearts, and the letters as well, that there are many women who listen to this program who are praying for their husband to come to faith in Christ or for their husband to grow in his walk with Christ. Some of you have perhaps been praying for years and have never seen any visible evidence that God is hearing and answering those prayers.

Our guest today is Nancy Kennedy who’s written a very helpful book for women who are in unequally yoked marriages, women who are married to unbelievers. The book is called When He Doesn’t Believe. Nancy, thank you for being with us this week on Revive Our Hearts. We so appreciate the insight and the wisdom that God’s given you and how you’ve shared out of your own marriage the things that God has taught you.

Nancy Kennedy: Well, thank you Nancy.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: You have a very important chapter in this book on prayer. I’ll just add here, by the way, that this book though it’s specifically targeted to women with unbelieving husbands, I believe this is a book that every married woman would be helped by reading.

All of us as women have things on our hearts for our family members, husband, parents, children, in-laws, and to know what it is to pray for maybe an extended period of time and not see results. Nancy, as you’ve dealt with this in your own marriage, praying for years for your husband and for his coming to faith in Christ, how do you deal with this seeming ineffectiveness at times of prayer?

Nancy Kennedy: Well, first of all I had to realize what prayer isn’t. What prayer isn’t: it is not a magic formula. Sometimes somebody will say, “Well, my grandmother prayed Ezekiel 26, or whatever, for 40 years; and that’s what brought my grandfather to faith.” Or somebody will say, “You have to claim a promise in Scripture and pray that and hold fast to it.” Prayer doesn’t work that way.

Also, prayer is not an obligation for God to answer. Just because you pray something doesn’t mean that God has to answer. The Scripture says, “Ask and it will be given to you.” But you can’t say, “Well, I’m asking, so You have to give.” God is God, and He’s going to do what He wants to do.

Also, we don’t pray because we want to change God’s mind. Just because God knows what He’s doing and He has a plan to do it doesn’t mean that our prayers will change His mind.

Why pray? Because we’re commanded. Because it’s a privilege. Because it is our lifeline. Because it draws us close to the source of our very life. Because when we pray for a situation to change, God changes us.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: As you think about how you’ve prayed for your husband over all these years, how did you pray differently 20 years ago than the way you pray for your husband now?

Nancy Kennedy: First of all, I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, and I didn’t really understand prayer. To me prayer was something you memorized and something you recited.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: It wasn’t from the heart.

Nancy Kennedy: No, it wasn’t from the heart. The Bible calls it vain repetition. So when I started praying for my husband, I was under the impression that there was a certain number of prayers that I needed to pray, and once I got to that magic number—cha-ching! God would answer my prayers: whatever I wanted, whatever I was praying for, not just for my husband. So I didn’t really understand prayer.

Then once I started getting into the Scriptures and seeing what the Bible says about prayer, I was still wrong because I wanted my husband to share my faith in Christ because I wanted my life to be more fun. I prayed, “Lord, change him . . .”

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: So my life will be . . .

Nancy Kennedy: “. . . so my life will be better.” I think it’s only been in the last five, six, maybe ten years where my prayers have changed to, “Lord, I want him to be at peace with You.” I realized that as I’m praying for my husband to come to faith in Christ, bottom line is I want him to be in heaven. Yes, I want him to experience all the wonderful grace of God on earth, but if that’s not God’s plan for his life, to me that’s okay.

So my prayer is, I still have the tendency to be self-centered because I’m human, but they have greatly evolved to now I want the best for my husband.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: And you find yourself praying more based on the character of God and the plan of God and the purposes of God than on your own personal desires?

Nancy Kennedy: Absolutely, because I realize that prayer isn’t a means to get what I want. Prayer is connection with a Father who loves me. I think prayer begins with God, and He puts a prayer in our heart to pray because He knows how He’s going to answer it. When we see that—it inspires us; it fans our faith. It’s like wow, there really is a God. He really does answer prayer.

I remember one woman telling me she was praying for her husband. She was particularly discouraged and not seeing any answers to prayer. She said, “God, just show me something, anything that You’re doing in John’s life. As soon as she prayed that, her husband, who had a job out of town, said to his wife as he was getting ready to go back home, back to his job.

He said, “Oh, by the way, if you ever call me on a Wednesday night and I don’t answer, I might be at this” (and he named the church down the street). And she said she looked at him and her mouth kind of fell open, and she said, “You don’t go to church.” And she just kind of laughed. Then she realized that whether he really does go to that church or not, God had answered her prayer. “Show me something that you’re doing in his life.”

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: The fact is: God is at work even when we can’t see it.

Nancy Kennedy: Right.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: He’s gracious to give us those occasional glimpses into what He is doing. But I think one of the hard things is when you just have to take it by faith that God is at work, that He has a purpose, and He is fulfilling that purpose. So if we can see that and can trust that, that’s what will help us endure and be patient and not get all bent out of shape. We tend to be so controlled by what we can see that’s happening around us right now rather than fixing our eyes on what is beyond and what is above—what only God knows and what only God can see.

If we can just have those eyes of faith to see what God sees and to know what God knows, of course, if we could see all that and know all that, it wouldn’t take faith. But if we could only exercise faith that God really is at work and that God’s purposes are greater than me and my marriage or my situation, if we could see that God is intensely jealous for what will bring Him the most glory. Sometimes God knows that means keeping some spiritually unequal marriages the way they are.

Nancy Kennedy: I have all these years . . . I have come to appreciate my marriage as a gift from God because He has shown me so much grace and so much mercy, and He has given tremendous grace to my husband. My husband just absolutely supports me 100%. And to know that yes, we don’t share the same level of spiritual commitment, but that doesn’t mean that God is not being glorified in our marriage. God will bring glory to Himself, and we just have to trust that He knows what’s best.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: In the process of your staying in that spiritually unequal marriage through these years and accepting it as a gift rather than spending all these twenty-some years resenting and kicking and fighting, you could have lost that marriage easily, and I think many women would have. But because you’ve been willing to stay the course and to find your ultimate companionship spiritually with the Lord, and to love your husband and to focus on building that marriage and glorifying God, you’ve seen God change you through that process.

Nancy Kennedy: And that’s been the most exciting thing: that God can change me, that God can change a hard heart like mine. It’s just amazing.

Leslie Basham: Well, that’s our guest this week, Nancy Kennedy, with a great reminder about what or who changes when we pray. I hope you do pray for those you love.

Well, do you love this program? Did you know that you can sign up with Revive Our Hearts as a prayer partner? When we call Revive Our Hearts a listener-supported program, we’re talking about more than just financial support. We need you to pray for us, too.

If you’d like to partner with us in prayer, go to our website, ReviveOurHearts.com, and click on “Make a Difference.” That's also where you can donate to Revive Our Hearts. Nancy Kennedy’s book is available at ReviveOurHearts.com as well.

If the Internet and browsers and clicking here or there is all Greek to you, that’s okay. Just pick up the phone and call us at 1-800-569-5959. We’ll do our best to help you.

Tomorrow, what to do when your situation feels absolutely hopeless. Thanks for listening today. Here’s Nancy Leigh DeMoss to close our time in prayer.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Oh Lord, my heart goes out to women who are living in a marriage with a man who does not share their faith or who is not responding to You in the way that he ought spiritually.

I pray that You will give those women courage, that You will give them faith, that You will fill them with Your Spirit, that You will show them how to pray, how to wait on You, how to let You do the work that You want to do in their lives, how to love their husbands regardless of his spiritual condition. And Oh Lord, thank You that You are able to take circumstances that seem so hopeless and helpless and frustrating, and You are able to bring a thing of beauty in our lives and in the lives of those around us as we link arms with You, cry out to You, and wait on You to do that which only you can do.

So Lord I pray that You would give the grace of encouragement and Your peace to every woman listening to this program who’s in a marriage that is struggling. May there be rest and peace in her heart even while all around her may be storms. I pray it for Jesus’ sake and for the sake of Your glory, amen.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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