Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth.
– Proverbs 5:18
This is one of multiple proverbs here in the very beginning. Especially of this book that warns against adultery or unfaithfulness in marriage. Specifically, here in verse 15, God is giving us an exhortation for husbands and wives to rejoice in one another.
Proverbs 5:18 pictures marriage as a reflection of Christ’s joy in his church.
And remember the whole picture of marriage that God has painted on the canvas of human history. It is a picture of his love for his church. A husband’s love for his wife is intended to be a reflection of Christ’s love for the church. And a wife’s love for her husband is intended to be a reflection of the church’s love for Christ. And the relationship between Christ and his church is to be marked by joy.
Jesus rejoices over his church. The church rejoices over Jesus. And so I want to lead us to pray. Certainly anyone who’s listening to this, who is married, who is a husband or a wife. You should pray, ask God for this kind of rejoicing in your marriage. And at the same time, I want us to all pray regardless of whether or not you’re married. Let’s pray together for marriages around us. Pray for parents, pray for friends, pray for siblings’ marriages, pray for others in the church.
Just think of other marriages. Whoever the Holy Spirit brings to your mind. Let’s just pray. Proverbs five 18 over those marriages that they would be marked by joy, the kind of joy that Jesus has for his church and the church has for Jesus, that that would be evident and a husband’s joy in his wife and a wife’s joy in her husband.
Proverbs 5:18 pictures God’s design for delight within marriage.
God, we pray for this kind of joy in marriages. We pray God for husbands who rejoice in their wives. Lord, we just pray for any of us who are husbands and for every husband who you’re bringing to our mind right now to pray over. We pray that they would rejoice over their wives. They would love their wives with joy laying down their lives with joy for their good.
And God, we pray for wives, for anyone who is a wife right now, for wives, you’re bringing to our mind. God, we pray that they would rejoice in their husbands, that they would find joy in this sacred relationship you’ve made for them with their husbands. God. We know that all this proceeds from joy in you, joy as your church in you, Lord Jesus as our bride. So God, we pray for husbands and wives to experience ever increasing, ever deepening joy in you that leads to joy in marriage and one another.
This verse urges couples to pursue joy with humility and action.
We pray especially knowing there is an adversary who wants to rob marriages of joy and God, we know that many of the marriages, even representing those who are praying right now or those we’re praying for are struggling. And joy feels really far from those marriages.
God, we pray for restoration of joy, bring about this miracle of restored joy in marriages and we pray that in our lives and our marriages, you would help us to humbly do whatever we need to do to restore that joy, to take whatever steps needed to restore that joy and God help us to work for the joy of others’, marriages. And God, we pray all of this in light of what your word teaches about marriage in Ephesians five, so that the gospel and the love of Jesus for his church might be put on display in marriages here around the world.
Prayer for the Memon People
God, we pray for the Memon people of Pakistan, the Sindhi speaking people group of 173,000, God knowing, especially knowing based on recent conversations I was having with those who serve and planting churches in Pakistan that so many times women are devalued and hurt in different ways. God, we pray. We pray for husbands who know the joy of Jesus to rejoice in their wives. And we pray for wives who have experienced your joy to have joy in relationship with the husband. God, we pray for the spread of the gospel of joy to all the nations, including among the Memon people of Pakistan. Oh God, may all this be so. We pray according to your Word in Proverbs 5:18. In Jesus’ name, in the name of the One who gave his life for us joyfully as his Bride. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that makes Jesus known among the nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
