“These are the decrees that Yahweh commanded Moses, as between a husband and his wife, and between a father and his daughter while her childhood is in her father’s house.”
– Numbers 30:16
These decrees come in the midst of many others in the book of Numbers, but I want particularly to pray on Numbers 30:16 in light of marriages and future marriages. So in light of marriages, I’m compelled to pray based on this verse that God would help me to always keep his word in my relationship with my wife. To always obey his word and honor him in the way I love my wife. And to pray for her, that she would keep his word and honor me as her husband.
We pray for God’s grace and mercy to cause marriages to thrive all throughout the church.
I’m so thankful for my wife. I so want us to have a relationship that glorifies God according to his word. So that compels me to pray this for my marriage, and for other marriages. For others who are listening to this who are married. Even if you’re single listening to this, I pray this for marriages around you, and then for future marriages. I think about the picture here, between a father and his daughter while her childhood is in her father’s house. And I think about my daughter and my sons for that matter.
Leading Our Kids to Thrive in Singleness and Marriage
I want to love and lead and teach and train them in a way that they grow up to either thrive as singles or thrive in marriages. I pray this all the time for them and for their future spouses. If God leads them to marry, that God would be honored in their marriages, in their homes. I look around us, not just in our culture, but the church in our culture. And I see such a desperate need for God’s mercy in our marriages. So many marriages struggling, so many marriages falling apart, ending. We need the mercy of God.
Numbers 30:16: Asking for God’s Help in Our Marriages
We need to pray for marriages. So, God, we pray right now. We pray for those of us who are in marriages right now. We pray, oh God, help us obey your word and honor our spouse. God, we pray for marriages according to your design. Even as I prepare to go out on a date night with my wife tonight, God I just pray, I pray you’d help me to love her well, I pray that you’d help her to love me well. Make us the husband and wife you call us to be. God, I pray for this for other husbands, other wives. Lord, for marriages all around us. God, we pray for health in marriages all around us.
Praying for Struggling Marriages
God, we pray for struggling marriages. Please, oh God, give strength. Please, oh God, draw husband and wives and struggling marriages back to you, to your grace, to your mercy, and then to one another. God, we pray for healing where there is need for healing, for redemption amidst brokenness, for reconciliation where there is need for that. Lord, please, please do supernatural work to keep marriages together and to cause marriages to thrive.
Praying for Future Marriages
God, I pray for future marriages, that you will lead some who are listening to this now to have, and lead children. I think about my children, other children to have. God, please, please, please, we pray for Ephesians 5:22–33 kinds of marriages all across your church. In the days to come, strengthen our marriages, and help us to, especially in a culture that is saying all kinds of things about marriage that go totally against your word, help us to thrive in marriage according to your word.
God, we pray for this personally, across your church and other’s lives. And then in the process, the gospel would be clear in Ephesians 5 kind of pictures of marriages that others might know your goodness and your love, your good design for our lives and our families through the picture of marriages that we show. God, may it be so we pray. Jesus name, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
