“Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. A lovely deer, a graceful doe.”
– Proverbs 5:18–19
Now, this next part in 19, I’m actually not going to read because when I think about my kids, if they were listening to this podcast episode, they probably don’t want to meditate on that particular part of verse 19, so I’m just going to skip that part. Husbands and wives, go back and read the middle part of Proverbs 5:19. It’s a great verse. It goes on to say, “Be intoxicated always in her love.” The whole point is these verses, Proverbs 5:18–19. They’re a beautiful picture of God’s design for marriage and enjoyment of love between a husband and a wife, intoxication with one another in love, rejoicing in one another, blessing in marriage.
Proverbs 5:18–19 Leads Us to Pray For Intoxicating Love
Let us pray for ever-increasing intoxication to mark marriages.
I want us to pray this word today because I know there are many marriages that struggle to experience that kind of intoxication in love and rejoicing. There are some marriages, people who are listening right now, who are totally engrossed in that. There’s just health and strength in marriage. Others, there’s not. I know just from all the people I have the privilege before God of pastoring, of the hurt in divorce when this is not the case. I want to lead us just to pray for our marriages.
Proverbs 5:18–19 Reminds Us to Be Content In Singleness
If you’re single, even as we pray for just a joyful contentment in Christ in your soul until he leads you to be married or in singleness for the sake of his glory in a 1 Corinthians 7 way. I want to encourage you even in your singleness to pray for marriages around you, to pray for husbands and wives, to be intoxicated with one another in love and in this to be guarded from all the attempts of the adversary to pull our love, our affections, our delight and joy away from this marriage relationship toward someone else.
This Verse Leads Us to Pray For Our Marriage
O God, I pray for my own marriage. I pray for every marriage represented in those who are listening right now. We pray that you would help us in this fallen world of sin and all the attempts of the adversary to pull us away from our spouses. God, we pray Proverbs 5:18–19 for just a blessed rejoicing and intoxication in one another’s love. Please just continually rekindle that in our marriages.
Help us to love one another selflessly. Help us to love our spouses selflessly, beautifully, joyfully. We just pray for health and strength of marriages. God, I pray for marriages that are struggling right now. God, I pray for humility for husbands and wives to say, “We need to work on this. Proverbs 5:18 and 19 is not the case for us right now, but we want it to be.” God, I pray for churches to help nurture those marriages.
This Verse Leads Us to Pray For Churches
I pray for this in the church I pastor and other churches represented in those who are listening right now. God, please help us to nurture this in marriages. We pray for not just church on a big kind of a big structure system but church like the people of God. Help us to be in relationship with other followers of Jesus where we are praying for each other’s marriages and we’re helping each other in marriage.
In all this, O God, guard us from wandering thoughts. And guard us from wandering desires. Guard us from wandering actions. God, guard from sexual immorality, from adultery. So, please, O God, we pray for your design for marriage to be our experience in marriage. We pray for Proverbs 5:18 and 19 to be more and more and more, ever-increasing intoxication. May that be what marks our marriages. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all 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, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
