Praying for Your Marriage is Essential (Part 2 of 2)

Focus on the Family with Jim Daly

In this episode, Jodi Berndt joins Jim Daly and John Fuller to discuss practical applications of prayer within marriage. The conversation co

Key takeaways

• Jodi Berndt shares that even 'angry prayers' are a valid way to bring marital conflicts to God.
• Financial decisions, such as housing or even small purchases, can be viewed as spiritual acts of stewardship.

Main topics

• Praying through financial conflict
• Mutual submission and service

Notable quotes

Money is just money. It's a tool to be used for other things.

Conclusion

The episode provides actionable spiritual strategies for couples to us

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Next year marks 50 years of ministry for Focus on the Family, encouraging families and helping them thrive in Christ every day. How has God used Focus on the Family to strengthen your marriage, guide you in your parenting, restore a relationship, or bring hope in a difficult season? We want to hear your story. Call now and share how Focus on the Family has made an impact in your life. You'll find the details and the link in the show notes. Speaker 1 (0:30) So we might not be intentionally saying, okay, bow your head, we're going to pray. But as we're talking about ways we can grow in love, we can grow in support, we can reflect this covenant of love that God loved us first, and we're only loving because He loved us. I think you can receive that as a prayer, and I think God can work in our marriages. Speaker 2 (0:49) This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and our guest today is Jodi Berndt, describing ways that you can pray more frequently and more effectively. in your marriage. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller. Speaker 3 (1:00) John, it's so great to have Jody back. We had a wonderful conversation last time. We discussed how praying the scriptures for your spouse is a vital element to your marriage. I think even within the Christian community, we don't value it as much as we need to. We touched on how to do that when personalities are different. You know, you have introvert, extrovert. Maybe the husband's a little uncomfortable. Maybe the wife's a little uncomfortable, whatever it might be. And she gave some great examples of how to work through that and still pray together. Today, we're going to discuss how to pray over your finances, your service to one another. Let me say that again to the husbands, your service to one another. And also praying through both the joys and... the trials that come into life. It's going to be a great discussion. Speaker 2 (1:45) It will be. And if you missed part one, stop by our website. You can listen to the download or find the link to the YouTube version or get the Focus on the Family app, and you can listen anytime. As we shared last time, Jody Berndt is a public speaker, a Bible teacher, and the author of the best-selling series of books, Praying the Scriptures. And today we'll hear more about one of those books in the series. It's called Praying the Scriptures for Your Marriage. Jodi, welcome back. Speaker 1 (2:12) Thank you so much for having me. It's good to have Speaker 3 (2:14) you. And okay, so we kind of said what we're going to do today, so let's get into it. Can't Speaker 1 (2:19) wait. Speaker 3 (2:19) One of the big responses we receive here at Focus on the Family with marriage difficulty. are the finances. Sometimes there's not enough and we get that. And sometimes it's mismanagement. Somebody is medicating through buying a lot, whatever it might be. But let me just ask you, I think you had a friend that you mentioned in the book who I think saw her dream house and something went wrong. Speaker 1 (2:45) Yeah, yeah. They had moved to a new town and she was fine with moving. It was a job move for her husband. And she got there and she was really excited when she found what was, she thought, their dream house. And he looked at it and said, you know, we can't even consider that. That is too showy. It wasn't even a budget thing. He just thought we shouldn't live in that fancy of a house. That would look proud. And she thought, wow, it's everything I ever dreamed of in a house. And that created real conflict for them. And she found herself. taking it to the Lord, not in a humble, sweet prayer, but in an angry prayer. And God can handle those prayers, right? And she's saying, why is he being, and she used the word ogre. She said, why is he being such an ogre? Why is my husband not understanding how much his house means to me? And so the two of them had to really work through that. But what was so neat in their marriage was that they really valued unity, unity in their decision-making. And she thought to herself, if we're not united on the purchase of this house, I don't want to press it through. That's never going to be a good outcome. Speaker 3 (3:59) Right. The difficulty there, though, is not letting that bitterness build up. Yes. Whatever it might be. Other couples, it may not be a house that one of you really wanted to buy and the other didn't. Right. But it could be. a car it could be other things you know christmas presents gene and i you know right Speaker 1 (4:15) we Speaker 3 (4:15) tend to spend a lot at christmas and you know it's something we'll talk about typically it's my pouty face. She Speaker 1 (4:21) gives it away. Well, Speaker 3 (4:23) yeah, I'm like, okay. But she loves to bless the kids and friends and things like that. It's a good thing. And there's nothing wrong Speaker 1 (4:29) with that. You probably know, I used to write books for Ron Blue. He was kind of Dave Ramsey before there was Dave Ramsey. A finance guy. And Robbie thinks that's just the greatest joke from the Lord in the world because I don't know a whole lot about money management. But thanks to that writing, I learned stuff. And one of the things I learned was that money is just money. It's a tool to be used for other things. And so the question we need to ask ourselves in our marriages as we're considering, all right, how much are we spending on Christmas gifts? What kind of house are we living in? What sort of vacations we take? All of that stuff is just, are we using our money, our tool, the way God wants us to? Who are we ultimately serving? Are we serving ourselves? Are we serving other people? Are we serving the Lord? Because honestly, buying a new pair of sneakers can be a spiritual decision, just like tithing because it's money. We all live in a world where there are limited resources to spend on unlimited. needs and wants. So everything becomes a spending and a spiritual decision when we look at it that way. Some of these Speaker 3 (5:33) sneakers are ridiculous. Speaker 1 (5:34) That is a little mortgage payment, Speaker 2 (5:37) isn't Speaker 1 (5:37) it? I'm Speaker 2 (5:37) not Speaker 1 (5:37) spending $400 Speaker 3 (5:38) ,000 on sneakers. You're right. Maybe that's not the Speaker 1 (5:41) best example. No kidding. Speaker 3 (5:43) The big thing is how can praying for our spouse help us with those financial decisions? I think that's a really good thing. Jean and I have been pretty good with that. There's a big... big thing. Maybe not as strong on the smaller things, ironically, now that I think about it. But speak to the power of prayer when it comes to financial decision-making. And Speaker 1 (6:02) backing Speaker 3 (6:02) up a Speaker 1 (6:02) little bit from that, too, is you do have different desires a lot of times. And when Robbie and I were... younger, we used an envelope system of what cash goes in where. And we also said to one another, and this was a million years ago, but that any decision under $50, we didn't have to be in unity for. We could just get what we wanted on that. And bigger than that, we should talk about it. I'm sure today's couples might have a higher limit than that. But for us, that's what it was. But when there was time where there was tension, where one of us thought, okay, we should buy this, and the other one didn't. Prayer really was a way for us to be humble, to say, you know, not my will, not even His will, but Thy will, Lord, and bring us into unity, bring us into understanding. And you never lose when you give time. And