By Johanna Vann
We all love to be right, don’t we? Sometimes, being right can feel like a spiritual gift.
We think we know what’s best for our loved ones (and even strangers!) so it’s hard to understand why they don’t submit to our wisdom. Yeah, I’ve felt that way a time or two!
But, you know what? That mindset just doesn’t work in relationships—especially in marriage. Pestering, arguing and other petty methods of “getting your way” usually don’t work. And if it ever does, it probably leaves your spouse feeling wounded and bitter.
That’s why I want to encourage you to try a new method: Prayer. I know, I know. But, hear me out!
There’s no one who loves your marriage more than God Himself, and yet it’s so easy to leave him out of our decision-making process because we’ve got this. Even when we most certainly do not got this!
In Philippians 4:6, Paul exhorts us to take all of our petitions to the Lord in prayer, and that includes disagreements with your spouse both big and small. God desires for us to have unity in our marriage, that’s why we have to be diligent in pursuing Him and pursuing unity through wisdom, discernment, humility, forgiveness, and a whole lot of prayer.
Last year, I wanted to do something major with our finances. I felt like this one action would set us up well for the future even though it would cause a few months of “pain.” My husband was not about it—at all. I did my best to communicate why I thought this decision would be good for us, and afterward, I felt God tell me not to mention it again but to just pray. So that’s what I did. I prayed for wisdom and I prayed that God would change my husband’s heart toward this idea if it was in fact a wise decision.
About two weeks later, we were riding in the car and out of nowhere my husband brought up the idea I’d laid out and said he’d thought about it some more and that he was now okay doing it.
Y’all, I was flabbergasted! Truthfully, I wasn’t super confident this was going to happen, and I’d made peace with that. In the past, I’ve told myself (and my husband) that I love him more than I love whatever thing I want us to do. In other words, our unity is more important than getting my way.
It was a gift that in this situation, I didn’t have to choose between the idea I had and unity with my husband. God aligned our goals, put us on the same page and brought unity in the process.
Now, I have to clarify something: Prayer should never be used as a method of manipulation. We don’t pray so that others can do what we want them to do. We pray so that we can more closely align our decisions and our steps with God’s will for our lives—whether what we want makes us right or wrong.
If my husband would have never brought it up again, that would not have given me permission to start nagging. It would have been my duty to release that desire to God and allow Him to make the decision for our family or show me what next step to take.
Rarely does arguing “your side” convince the other person to do what you want them to do . . . in marriage or elsewhere. So, don’t waste your time breeding bitterness and resentment in your marriage by being more annoying than a leaky faucet (Proverbs 27:15).
Take your desires, your petitions, and your fears to God and let Him do the changing, the fixing, and the molding. We’ll all be better for it.
Johanna is a big fan of words—speaking them, reading them, and (especially) writing them. When she’s not helping clients grow their brands with the power of words, she’s blogging about all things dating and marriage at johannavann.com. Johanna is also the author of Something Beautiful: 30 Days of Prayer Before Your Wedding Day, which is available as an e-book on her blog. Her desire is to use her gifts to restore hope and joy in marriages present today and those to come. Johanna lives and writes in Nashville, TN with her favorite human (who also happens to be her husband), Daniel.