Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits.
– Song of Solomon 4:16
So I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but this is imagery describing a married couple, a husband and a wife experiencing physical intimacy with one another and joy in one another. Which is God’s good design for marriage between a husband and a wife, to experience physical intimacy with each other in a way that is joyful for them and glorifying to God.
Song of Solomon 4:16 teaches us physical intimacy is part of God’s design for marriage.
Now, here’s the deal. If you’re a child, a teenager listening to this, this is not something I know you want to think about. My kids don’t want to think about it. You don’t want to think about your parents enjoying physical intimacy with one another. And really, you don’t need to think about it, but you can pray for it. And not just for children to pray this for your parents, but for all of us who are married to pray this for our marriages and to work to cultivate this in our marriages, knowing this is God’s good design for our marriages, and for us to pray this over other married couples.
Again, not to dwell on it in our minds, but yes, to say God, help this couple to experience enjoyment in one another according to your Word. Knowing, and we’ve mentioned this at different points in these episodes, praying through Song of Solomon, there is an adversary who doesn’t want husbands and wives to experience this delight in each other in marriage. And he has all kinds of ways. The adversary has all kinds of ways of keeping this intimacy from being enjoyed and experienced. So there’s spiritual warfare at work here. We need to pray for this in our and in others’ marriages. So let’s do so according to God’s Word in Song of Solomon 4:16.
Song of Solomon 4:16 illustrates the beauty and enjoyment of physical intimacy in marriage.
Oh God, we praise you for the beauty and the enjoyment that you have made physical intimacy for in marriage. And God, we pray over our marriages, for those who are married, and we pray this over others’ marriages, whoever comes to our mind as we pray for their marriages. God, we pray that you would guard this physical intimacy with one another, that it would be exclusive just for each other in our marriages and others marriages. Oh God, that there would be just thoughts and desires exclusively from a husband for his wife and a wife for her husband, that you would guard the adversary’s attempts to divide that desire and to give those thoughts and desires or actions to others.
God, we pray for your guarding of physical intimacy in marriage and for the cultivation of that physical intimacy. Oh God, that you would help couples to work to experience that, knowing there’s an adversary who wants to keep that from happening, your good design. Knowing that this intimacy is part of a much bigger picture of your love for your people in marriage, your commitment, your exclusive commitment to faithfully love your people in a way that leads to their joy and their delight.
God, we praise you for loving us like you do. We praise you for the pure privilege and joy of intimacy with you, of closeness to you, oh God, of knowledge of you, of you seeing all of who we are and loving us and caring for us and providing for us. All glory be to your name, oh God, for sending your son to die on a cross for our sins so that we can experience intimacy with you. We want to experience that to the full in each of our lives. And God, we want that to be evident in marriage according to your good design.
Prayer for the Hausa People
So God, we pray for our marriages, others’ marriages… And we pray for the spread of a close relationship with you through Jesus… An intimate relationship with you through the gospel all around the world. We pray specifically today for the Hausa people, 55 million of them in different countries in Africa. This Muslim people group where there are so few believers, and so many of those who are believers are persecuted. God, we pray for the spread of the love of Jesus as Savior and Lord throughout the Hausa people… That they might know you and enjoy you. Oh God, please may it be so. And God, help us to lead somebody today to experience close relationship with you through Jesus. Help us to share the gospel today. Oh God, we pray all of this according to your Word in Song of Solomon 4:16. In 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.
