The Husband with Prayers Unhindered

Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 7. Today represents the final installment of our 10-part, marriage series. And I want to end this series by speaking to the husbands, this morning, and it's only fair, men, I've preached one sermon to the husbands and two to the wives. so we wanna, conclude our series today by Just delivering another message to our men and my goal will be to, to encourage you and give you perspective as a husband this morning.

If you want to give a title to the message, it would be The Husband with prayers unhindered. The Husband with prayers unhindered. How many of you men want your prayer life to be unhindered? Raise your hand.

All right. That's what we want. This passage will help you. to that end Several years ago, Several years ago, I met with a husband in my office who was dealing with the dying throes of his marriage to his wife.

Years earlier, he and his wife had agreed together upon a particular deception, which caused both of them over time to lose respect for each other. Their deception also began to alienate both of them from God. And began to infect their marriage with a rot. That began to manifest itself in bitterness, and fighting, pornography, and adultery, and the eventual destruction of their marriage.

I'll never forget meeting with this man after He and his wife had separated. he was trying to find his way back to God, but he was having trouble doing so. And he shared something with me in that meeting and his words haunt me to this day. He said to me, I am so angry at my wife that I can't even pray anymore.

When I pray, I normally try to imagine the face of Jesus as I talk to him. But now when I try to do that, my wife's face appears in front of Jesus. And I can't see past her face to see Jesus anymore. Even though she has moved out of my house and out of my life, her face shows up even when I try to pray, and I can't pray anymore.

I don't share this to say that this man's experience is automatically the experience of anyone. Who finds himself dealing with a broken marriage. I'm just telling you what he said. Prayer is such an important activity.

In our lives, and yet this man found himself unable to pray. As a result of his anger. Against his wife in the throes of a dying marriage. Consider a scenario on the opposite extreme of what I just shared.

HB London is a man who has served as a pastor for many years, and now he works as a pastor to pastors for Focus on the Family. In a book on pastoral leadership, he shares the following story. He says, I carry in my Bible, a picture of my great grandfather, whom I never knew, and my great grandmother whom I knew in passing because she lived to be 97 years of age. I don't know that she ever knew me, but in a couple of his books, Doctor James Dobson, my first cousin, tells the story about my great grandfather, who came to my great grandmother one day and said to her, The Lord has laid it on my heart that we should give an hour every day to praying for our family.

And so, they laid aside the time between 12 and 1 every day to pray specifically for their children and grandchildren. Then one day, my great grandfather said, the Lord has given me another impression, and that is that in our prayers, we should claim 4 generations for the Lord. And so they began to pray for those in their own generation, and their offspring, and their offspring's offspring, but they also began to pray for the generations they would never see or know. Doctor Dobson tells the story that in those generations, 4 generations, every offspring either was a minister or married one.

And we have to be careful here. The true measure of a family's spiritual success is not determined by how many of their descendants end up becoming ministers, right? But facts are facts and this is what happened in HB London's family and he's telling us the story of that. And what I love about this story is that at the helm of this 4 generation work of God, was a husband and a wife who came together and prayed.

I am sure this couple did not have a perfect marriage, but their marriage had to be at a place where they could come together and pray each day and dream big dreams and go a little crazy and ask big things from God. Satan shudders at the thought of these kinds of prayer warriors. Whether they be single or married or widowed, Satan shudders at the thought of such marriages. The marriages where the husband and wife are praying with prayers that grow increasingly bold and uninhibited with the passing of time.

This is marriage in its fullest bloom. A marriage in which a couple does not just grow old together, they grow bold together in prayer. And that's Peter's goal in 1 Peter chapter 3. Verse 7 that we'll look at today.

Peter's goal in this passage is not to tell husbands how to behave inside their marriage so that they can end up having a marriage that is more happy and personally fulfilling. His goal is to tell husbands how they need to behave. Inside of their marriages in order that their prayers will not be hindered. The opposite is that their prayers would be unhindered and unleashed.

Whether you are single or married, young or old, a man or a woman, prayer is one of the key ways that we all get caught up in the larger story of what God is doing in the world, right? So one of the biggest ways that our marriages get caught up in the larger story of what God is doing in the world is through prayer. And Peter is telling husbands in this passage what they need to do in order to nurture a prayer life together with their wives that is uninhibited. And mighty toward God.

And this is what we'll look at. Today 1 Peter 3:7, let me just read the passage to you. Peter, speaking to husbands, says you husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman, and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered. What we're gonna observe in this passage today is 5 things that you should do as a husband in connection with your wife that will contribute.

To you and you and your wife together having an unhindered. Powerful prayer life. The first thing Peter calls upon you to do, men, is live together with your wife. How are you doing on that?

Live with your wife. Live with her. He says you husbands in the same way, live with your wives. This is interesting what Peter is saying here and delivering this command.

Peter basically takes the Greek word that means house or home, and he turns it into a verb, and then he prefixes to that verb, the preposition that means together with speaking of close fellowship. Essentially, Peter is calling upon you as a husband. To make a home together. With your wife.

The command to live together with your wife obviously means the opposite of living apart from your wife. So a man obeying this command will not leave his wife. He will not divorce his wife even when the going gets tough. Divorce will not.

Even be in his vocabulary. And a man obeying this command will also seek to do more than simply live in the same house with his wife, right? We all know, those of us that have been married for any length of time, we all know that it's possible to live in the same house with your spouse and still be a million miles away from each other, right? Even to lie in the same bed and be a million miles from each other.

A husband Obeying this command will assume the responsibility of giving of himself and doing the hard work necessary to cultivate a life of togetherness. With his wife, building together with her a home and living in one rhythm with her. Some commentators on this passage suggest that we cannot altogether remove the idea of sexual relations from the language that Peter is using here. And there's some argument for this when you look at how this is used in the Old Testament.

With this nuance in mind, one writer suggests that Peter is telling husbands to live with their wives and to cohabit with them alone. And I would agree, while this expression means more than sexual relations, it clearly embodies the idea of being sexually together. With your wife. It includes that and experiencing the physical oneness that comes through physical intimacy with your wife.

Pornography Adultery are off limits. Anything that cannot sexually be enjoyed in togetherness with your spouse and which does not foster sexual togetherness with your wife is forbidden by God. As husbands, we are to turn away from everything and anything that is sexually. immoral and we are to plunge into the joys and the privileges and the responsibilities.

of building a life of sexual togetherness with our wives. There are many reasons to do this. One of them is so that your prayers will not be hindered. You say, OK, I will live, I'll obey this command and live together with my wife, but what exactly should that look like?

Well, there's a second instruction that we can draw from Peter's counsel to husbands in this verse, and this leads us to our second. Point. The second thing that you as a husband will want to do in connection with your wife that will contribute to an unhindered prayer life toward God and together with her, and that is live with your wife according to knowledge. Live with your wife according to knowledge.

Peter says you husbands in the same way, live with your wives, and the new American Standard says in an understanding way. The Greek literally can be translated, live with your wives, according to knowledge. And that's the way the King James translators translated, according to knowledge. So husbands, evidently, it's not enough to simply live with your wives.

You can't just say, hey, I'm living with her. So I'm doing good, right? No, you gotta do more than that. You have to live with your wife together with your wife according to knowledge.

But what does Peter mean by that? According to the knowledge of what? There's 3 answers to this question. First of all, Peter is clearly telling us husbands to dwell with their wives according to the knowledge of God's word.

In fact, it's God's word that's telling us this. So it obviously includes that, which means that we as husbands need to be students of God's word and get our vision from God's word and then live with our wives according to the knowledge of God's word. Men do not live with your wife according To whatever your heart tells you to do. Don't live with your wife according to what seems right in your own eyes.

Don't live with your wife according to your instincts or according to what the world says and does. Don't even necessarily live with your wife according to what you saw your dad do. That's not the standard. Peter says, live with your wife, according to knowledge and that at least includes the knowledge of God's word.

So be a student of the Bible, read and study your Bible, feast on the Bible and let it shape you and make you the husband that God wants you to be. Tied to this knowledge of God's word. You need to also live with your wife according to the knowledge of the gospel. The knowledge of the gospel.

It's interesting if you read through the length of First Peter, Peter has emphasized the knowledge of gospel truth throughout this letter, especially in chapter one. He starts his letter by taking time to review gospel truth for his readers. And then he says, as to this gospel of salvation, The Old Testament prophets. Centuries ago, spent time seeking to know.

What the Spirit of Christ was testifying to them about the coming of Christ, and the glories to follow that you, my readers are living in the good of right now. He also tells us and he tells his readers that this gospel of salvation contains things into which angels long to look. And his point is that if the Old Testament prophets sought to know your gospel and all of its fullness, and if angels are craning their necks to look into your gospel and understand these things, then we living in the good of these things, ought to be looking into these things as well, and knowing them deeply and living accordingly, right?

That's exactly why in chapter 1, verse 17 and 18, Peter tells his readers, he says, conduct yourselves in fear, knowing That you were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb unblemished and spotless.

Peter wants every Christian, he wants all of us, single or married, or widowed, young or old, men or women to conduct ourselves according to the knowledge of gospel truth. And he wants that knowledge to shape the way we live. And now here, in 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 7, Peter's talking to us husbands, and he calls upon us to dwell with our wives according to knowledge. Clearly he means by that in part, according to the knowledge of gospel truth.

To let the gospel give shape to the men that we are, and how we go about relating to our wives. Dwelling with our wife according to the knowledge of the gospel means that we understand men, that our marriage. Our earthly marriage is supposed to reflect the glory of the ultimate marriage between Christ and the church that every Christian gets to be a part of. It means that our marriage should be all about Christ and serving his kingdom purposes.

It means that our marriage should be filled with the grace. And forgiveness and hope that God has lavished upon us through the sacrificial love of Jesus. To be a good husband, we as men have to be students of the gospel, and then turn around and be a living embodiment of the grace and truth and purpose of the gospel toward our wives. This is part of what it means.

To dwell with our wives according to knowledge, according to the knowledge of God's word, according to the knowledge of the gospel. But commentators will tell you there's something else that Peter is thinking when he tells us as husbands to dwell with our wives according to knowledge. And that is that he's telling us, amongst other things, to dwell with our wives. According to a knowledge of our wives.

He's saying, dwell with your wives according to the knowledge of your wife in particular. This flavor is brought out in the NIV translation when the translators say be considerate. That's how they understand this language. I think it means more than that, but it includes this, be considerate.

As a husband Dwell with your wife in an understanding way. At least in part, Peter is telling husbands to know their wives. To be students of their wives, and then to live with their wives in a way that reflects the influence of what they're coming to know about their wives. I ask you as a husband, do your wife?

You say, yes, I know her. Well, what if I asked your wife, does your husband truly know you? Does he know your heart? What would she say?

Husbands be students of your wife. Don't just be a student of women in general, be a student of your wife in particular. Find out what your wife's love language is and love her accordingly. Don't just love your wife the way that you would want to be loved.

Love her the way she needs for you to love her, which may be very different than what you might need. If as you study your wife, you come to observe that you have offended or wounded her. Some of us husbands, as we set about to studying our wives, we discover wounds. We're like, where did those wounds come from?

They're wounds we inflicted. And if you discover as you study her ways that you have offended or wounded her, then apologize for those things and ask her forgiveness. If you study your wife and learn that she has certain opinions about things that you do, then give consideration to those opinions to where she feels understood by you and then adjust your behavior accordingly. If you discover as you study your wife that she likes to have her neck massaged.

Then do that. If in studying your wife, you discover something that you do irritates her, Then stop it already. Men, if you want to have an unhindered prayer life, and you want to pray for your wife, according to your needs, or her needs, Then you'll want to be a student of your wife. And then dwell with her and pray for her in a way that reflects a deepening knowledge of her.

As you get to know her better. There are few things more powerful for a woman. For a wife than to hear. Her husband, who truly understands her.

Who is praying for her with that understanding in the presence of the Almighty. And she will know that you understand her by how you treat her from day to day and by how she hears you praying for her. There's something else you'll want to do if you want to relate to your wife in a way that contributes to an unhindered prayer life, and this brings us to our next point, and that is live with your wife as a weak vessel, married to a weaker vessel. Live with your wife as a weak vessel, married to a weaker.

Vessel. He says, live with your wives in an understanding way as with a weaker vessel since she is a woman. Now, please notice how Peter uses the term weaker to describe the wife. The word weaker is a comparative term.

Peter does not refer to the wife as the weak vessel. As if the husband is the strong vessel and the wife is the weak one. Instead, he describes the wife as the weaker vessel, which means that both the husband and the wife are weak vessels, but of the two weak vessels, she happens to be the weaker of the two. And a husband should know this and should relate to his wife with an understanding of this.

This is part of what it means to dwell with your wife according To knowledge Well, this raises the question that is, what does Peter mean when he refers to the wife as the weaker. Vessel. let me give you just a few things to ponder. At the very least, we know two things entailed in this term, weaker.

First of all, we know that in most cases, the wife is physically weaker than her husband. I've seen some exceptions. To this role. I've seen women who could beat up their husband if they wanted to.

But in most cases, the wife is shorter of stature. And physically weaker than her husband. And this physical weakness creates a vulnerability for the woman in the marriage. And we all know that.

Because of this advantage that the husband has in most cases of physical strength, many husbands throughout history have used physical violence or the threat. Of physical violence in order to get their way. In the marriage relationship. This happens in our culture.

Unfortunately, it happens even in the church. Which is shameful There's another weakness that Peter is talking about here, and that is the fact that the wife is positionally weaker. Than the husband in the context of the marriage relationship. By God's design, according to Genesis and throughout the New Testament, the husband is called to lead.

And his wife is called to submit. Most wives and their wedding vows will promise to submit. To their husband. And because of this, one writer rightly says the wife may be considered weak because of her role as a wife.

She by marrying has accepted a position where she submits herself to her husband. Such a position is vulnerable and open to exploitation. So think about it this way, men. When Peter tells husbands to live with their wives in a considerate way as with a weaker vessel, it means that a husband should be careful not to exploit his wife's physical and positional weakness to his own selfish advantage.

Instead, he should use his greater authority to serve his wife. He should use his greater physical strength to do good to his wife. Rather than merely to obtain things from her that are at her expense and to his own selfish advantage. Man, God has given to you.

Greater physical and positional strength in the marriage relationship. Do what to do with that? I'm stronger than my wife. I've been given a position of authority in my marriage.

What do I do with that? You don't use that power to get your way selfishly at your wife's expense. You use that positional power and physical power to love your wife and to serve her. Just like Christ used his greater power and authority to do good to us.

Even though doing so, Cost him his life. And we're called as husbands to imitate him and to love our wives like he loved the church and gave himself up for her. That's what you do, men. With your power and your authority.

The wife is a weaker vessel. It's what the scripture says, we got to deal with it. At the very least, it means that she's positionally weaker and physically weaker in the sense that I have explained. In addition to the two ways.

That I've mentioned, there are likely other ways in given moments that a wife may be weaker. Than her husband emotionally or spiritually. But these weaknesses are not because at her core, she is a weaker person, but it's because of the toll that certain elements of the fall have had on her as a woman. We learned back in Genesis.

Chapter 3, that part of the curse for a woman is that she will experience multiplied instances of pain with regard to the biological processes that make a woman able to conceive. And have children. Consequently, a woman has to endure a monthly cycle that takes a toll on her body that no man could ever understand. A woman also becomes pregnant and carries a child and Her womb, that child robs from her all the nourishment of the food she eats and takes it.

For itself and grows inside. Her womb and then she delivers that child with pain. My own wife, Donna has delivered 4 children, a feat that shows tremendous personal strength that I can't even begin to imagine. In fact, when our son Brendan was being born, my job was to stand by Donna and hold her hand, and that's what I was doing.

I was doing my job. And I started to faint. And had to be taken out of the room. That's how pathetic I was.

Yet even though those pregnancies and deliveries demonstrate tremendous personal strength on Donna's part, that's actually greater than what I have. The rigors of all of that, along with the rigors of nurturing our children have taken a toll on her in ways I will never fully Understand. So on a given day I might find my wife in a weaker physical or emotional state than I am. What should I do?

Should I resent her for showing weakness? Absolutely not. I should respect the magnitude of the things that have worn her down. And then use my greater physical and positional strength to serve her and to love her.

And to build her up At the same time, we husbands looking at this passage should be reminded that Peter's language here clearly implies that both the husband and the wife are weak vessels. We both in the marriage, husband and wife need help from each other with our unique weaknesses. You as a man are a weak vessel and you will need grace and understanding from your wife, just as she will need it from you. We are weak vessels married to one another.

And man, you just understand, when you take a wife, you take a woman who possesses weaknesses. It's this thought that leads Joshua Rogers, a blogger, to speak against the tendency of some single young men to have impossibly high standards for a future mate. It's as if they're looking for a wife with no weaknesses. He confesses, he admits in one of his blogs that he had thought that way at one time, until God humbled him.

He says, let me read this to you. He says, I just wanted to follow God's will and finding a wife, that's all. Oh yeah. And I also wanted a modest version of the Cosmo girl.

And well, I didn't want her to be too needy. Oh, and she also needed to be smart, really smart, but not like so smart that she made me feel stupid. OK. And of course, she needed to be spiritually mature, like me.

And one more thing, I wanted her to have a cool and fun personality, whatever that meant. In other words, I wanted to date the perfect Christian girl, not a real woman. Well he then shares about how God humbled him. In some profound ways.

And on the other side of that humbling, Joshua Rogers gives this advice to single men who are now just as he used to be looking for Miss Perfect. He says to those single guys out there who are trying to find the ideal woman, do the world a favor and give up. You're not the ideal man, not anywhere close, and you would never get married if women held you to the same standard that you apply to them. Amen.

He goes on to say, but maybe you insist that you're not gonna settle for a woman who's not everything you're hoping for in a wife. Settle? Whatever the circumstances, believe me, she will be the one who settles for you. And all your deficits.

And until you realize this through humbling circumstances or otherwise, maybe you should take a break from dating for a while and spend some time asking God to make you man enough to love a real woman. And what, men? That's the call of Peter. To husbands in 1 Peter 3:7.

He's calling husbands to be man enough to love a real woman. who has real weaknesses and to love her over the long haul of their life together. And to make her burden lighter. To be her partner, to help make her.

To help her to make her way through a broken and a fallen world. Husbands, one of the ways we help our wives with their weaknesses is through prayer. So it's not surprising prayer shows up in this passage. Think about it in Romans chapter 8.

Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit helps us with our weaknesses. I love that. The Spirit is not repulsed by our weaknesses. He doesn't rebuke us for our weaknesses.

He's not disgusted by our weaknesses, he's actually attracted to our weaknesses, and he moves toward our weaknesses and prays for us with groanings that are too deep for words. And a husband should do the same for his wife. Rather than being put off by his wife's weaknesses. He should move towards her and pray over her and pray with her for God to help her.

A husband whose prayers are unhindered. is a man who will pray for his wife in areas where she is weak, and he'll seek to be a help. To her There's something else that you as a husband will want to do if you want to relate to your wife in a way that contributes to an unhindered prayer life, and that is honor your wife. As a fellow heir Of the grace of life.

Honor your wife as a fellow heir of the grace of life. The expression Grant her honor, means to treat your wives with respect, but it means more than that. It means to actively bestow honor upon your wife. Peter's not simply saying to husbands, hey, make sure you don't disrespect your wife.

That's not what he's saying. He's commanding husbands proactively to bestow honor upon their wives. So every husband should read this command and ask themselves, what do I proactively do? In order to honor my wife before God and before my children and before others, does my wife feel honored by me?

Would my children Say my dad honors. My mom Men, do you honor? Do you celebrate your wife? How should we honor our wives?

Peter tells husbands. To show honor to our wives as a fellow heir of the grace of life. Peter's assuming here that a wife is saved in this passage. If your wife is not a believer, you should honor her as a potential heir.

Of the grace of eternal life, and you should daily seek to relate to your wife. In a way that imparts the gospel to her through not only the words you speak, but through the man that you are in relationship with her. If your wife is a Christian, Peter's saying, honor her as a fellow heir of the grace of life. This means that husbands are to see their Christian wives as women who believe in the same savior, are redeemed by the same ransom, live by the same grace and look forward to the same eternal destiny, and husbands should treat their wives accordingly.

Peter tells husbands to view their wives as fellow recipients of grace. He uses the word grace. Man, our marriages desperately need grace. Grace speaks of something that is undeserved and ill-deserved.

Meaning it's something that someone has failed to earn, and it's something that is the opposite of what someone has in fact earned. That's grace. Every blessing I've received from God through Christ is an undeserved and an ill-deserved. Grace.

I don't deserve the goodness that God has shown to me. Nonetheless, God has given it to me and it's all of grace. I learned in this passage, and elsewhere in the Bible, that my wife is also a recipient of God's grace, the grace of eternal life, and all that's contained inside of that. She doesn't deserve it either, but God has given it to her.

So Looking at how God treats me with grace. As an heir of his grace and looking at how he treats my wife with grace, she who is a fellow heir of this grace, I am to follow God's example and treat my wife with that same grace from day to day. How can I withhold grace from my wife when God is lavishing his grace on me? And how can I withhold from my wife grace when I learn in a passage like this and elsewhere that God Himself has made her an heir of this grace.

Some of you husbands might hear what I'm saying and read 1 Peter 3:7, and you, you might be thinking, man, I, I would treat my wife with this honor if she deserved it. That's why Peter uses the word grace. You don't treat your wife based on her merit. Just like God doesn't treat you based on your merit.

You treat your wife based on the standard of how God treats her in the gospel. And it's all of grace, and you're never gonna be a good husband. Until you understand God's grace toward you, and God's grace toward your wife, and learn to treat your wife and honor her accordingly. Also, I love this and referring to our Wife as an heir.

An inheritor, someone who inherits. Peter is implying. That our wives have not fully yet received their inheritance. God is not finished with your wife.

She does not right now have all that she will have in glory. In fact, write down 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 4, Peter talks about an inheritance. That's the same root word in the Greek to the word heir that is used here in 1 Peter 3:7. An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and reserved in heaven for us.

So there is a full inheritance of glory to come that either neither I nor my wife have entered into yet. So when I see my wife, I'm not merely to see her as she is in the present, I am to see her as she will be in glory when she enters into the fullness of her inheritance. I am to see her in the context of her gospel destiny and treat her accordingly. I am to treat her today the way I'm going to wish I had treated her.

When my eyes lay. Hold of her in all of heavenly glory as she stands before Christ. Men, how will you wish you had treated your wife? When you see your wife in glory.

Let that influence how you treat your wife today and honor her. Honor the woman she's becoming. Not just the woman that she is. Man, one of the ways you honor your wife is to always think of your wife as a blood bought, precious daughter of God, whom Christ valued so much that he died for her.

Conduct yourself with her, knowing that she was redeemed. By the precious blood of Christ, a lamb unblemished and spotless. How can you mistreat? How can you verbally abuse?

How can you ever demean or devalue a woman for whom Christ shed his blood? You are behaving in an anti-Christ fashion. To ever belittle or demean. or mistreat.

A precious daughter of God to whom you are married, for whom Christ shed his blood. And you need to repent. And obtain forgiveness from God and seek forgiveness from your wife, Honor her by asking her forgiveness for ways that you fall short here, as we all do. Another way to honor your wife as a fellow heir of the grace of life is to cherish gospel truths that are true of her.

Your gospel is not just your gospel, it's her gospel. Become an expert on her gospel. When you see evidences of grace in your wife, tell her what you see and encourage her with those things. No matter how small they may be, your wife will often be the last person on the planet to ever see signs of spiritual growth in herself.

And if you don't see them and you don't point them out, who's going to see them and who's gonna point them out? Look for the tiniest brush strokes of God's artistry in her life. And celebrate the work of God. In her You also honor your wife by making yourself a student of her gospel inheritance.

Become an expert on the grace and the forgiveness and the power and the freedom from condemnation that now belongs to your wife in the present and also be a student of her destiny that awaits her. In the gospel and be ready to give to your wife what she is entitled to, as the daughter of God. That she is. Another way to honor your wife as an heir of the grace of life is to read the word of God with her and to her.

She's entitled to that. On Wednesday night of this past week, I read a chapter from the Bible to my wife and Benjamin before we went to bed. And it surprised me about 20 minutes later, my wife and I were getting ready for bed and she said to me, I need you to read to me more scripture. I need it.

I need more right now. So what do I do? The scriptures are part of her inheritance, right? I give her what's hers, and I read another chapter of the Bible.

To her until her heart is satisfied. I honor her by giving to her what she's entitled to receive from me as a precious daughter of God. And then it was my privilege to pray with her. There's one final instruction that we can infer from Peter's counsel to husbands in this verse, and that leads us to the final thing that you're gonna want to do as a husband if you want to behave toward your wife in a way that contributes to an unhindered prayer life, and that is pray for and with your wife.

Pray for and with your wife. Peter says, so that I'm telling you all these things so that your prayers will not be hindered. Think about the language, Peter. has used so far just in this verse.

If Peter tells you to live together with your wife, and if he tells you to honor your wife as an heir together with you, of the grace of life, And if one of the most important things you do in your life is pray, and if a part of your gospel inheritance is the privilege of prayer, then it would go without saying that God wants you to pray together with your wife. It's a part of living together in the gospel. In fact, we can say it this way, marriage between Christians is not just the union of two people, it's also the union of two prayer lives into one.

This is why Donald Whitney.

Looks at what Peter says at the end of verse 7 here and says that while the text includes the individual prayers of the husband, the prayers here are those prayed together by husbands and wives. Here, the text speaks of mutual prayer. It includes more than that, but it at least includes mutual prayer. And I challenge all of you, especially our men, don't view, don't look at the last clause of verse seven as something tacked onto the end of Peter's counsel.

Realize that it's only now that we get to the driving motivation behind all of Peter's counsel. We now realize what Peter's been fighting for and all the counsel that he has been giving to husbands in this verse. Peter is fighting to help husbands to have an unhindered prayer life individually and together with their wives. That's his driving ambition.

Everything he's been saying works to this end. The word hindered that Peter uses here as a military term. It means to block or blockade or to obstruct a path. And Peter saying, I don't want your prayers individually and as a couple to be blockaded or experience obstacles.

I want it to be free and unhindered. I'll just share with you guys from experience, I've learned that there are 3 places in which hindrances can be encountered. In a married couple's prayer life. Let me just pass these on to you quickly.

First of all, there are hindrances that can be encountered on the path to or toward prayer. If you as a husband are being sinful and carnal and disrespectful in the way that you're treating your wife, then you almost certainly aren't going to be praying as an individual. Carnal people usually don't pray. You also aren't likely to come to your wife at the end of the day where you're being a jerk and selfish and sinful and say, hey, honey, let's pray together.

You won't even bother and even if you did bother, she isn't likely to want to join you in that. And so because of your foolishness, the path to prayer is obstructed and opportunities for prayer are lost. Does that make sense? Another place where hindrances can be encountered is on the path through prayer.

There have been times in mine and Donna's marriage where we've really struggled. In our marriage And have needed to reach out to others. For counseling and for help. There have been moments where we've been arguing with each other about something, holding things against each other, and we weren't in a good place at all.

But doggone it, if I didn't come to her in some of those moments and say we need to pray together. Let's pray and how about both of us pray. So we start praying. And you can imagine how some of those prayer times went, right?

We would both start saying things in our prayers that were for the other person's benefit. Like finishing the argument or doing some preaching in our praying. Or maybe we weren't actually doing that, but the other person is suspecting that that's what The other is doing. There have been times where one of us has finished praying in such moments and the other has said, why did you say such and such in your prayer?

That was for my benefit, wasn't it? And in the end, we're worse off than we were before we even tried to pray together. We've actually gotten arguments after praying together. And so the path through prayer is obstructed.

And that's why Peter is giving. Wives, the counsel that he gives them here in verses 1 through 6, and why he gives husbands the counsel that he gives them in verse 7, because a husband and a wife behaving the way that Peter is instructing in this passage, creates a healthy gospel environment in which a husband and a wife can pray and not have their prayers convoluted and complicated by mistrust. And acrimony and frustration. The other place where hindrances can be encountered.

And prayer is on the path of our prayers to God. There may be times when we husbands may pray, but our prayers will truly get no higher than the ceiling because of the sinful way that we're living, as Mike referred to earlier, or the sinful way that we are treating our wives. Men, in this passage, God almost literally is putting his arm around your wife and he says to you, husband, you mess with this woman, you're messing with me. If you refuse to honor her and treat her With respect and love, I will make sure that your prayers don't even reach me.

I'm not gonna listen to you. That's very sobering, but that's how much God values our wives. Do we value them? This much Let me close with just 3 quick truths to throw your way about prayer and marriage.

That I've observed in our marriage over the years. First of all, prayer and marriage is hard, OK? It shouldn't be, and many times you're gonna find as you grow in this discipline, it gets to where it's not hard, but you will find many times that prayer and marriage is challenging. It's hard.

And it used to bother me why it's so hard to pray with my wife. In our marriage, but several years ago, it hit me, the reason why, it's because prayer in its very essence is pleading helplessness before God, and a man does not like to be helpless in front of his woman. It's hard to go before God in front of my wife and pray prayers, saying, God, I'm powerless. I don't know what to do.

I've sinned, I've failed, but my eyes are on you. But I've learned that God gives grace to the humble, and I've learned that 1000 giants and 1000 personal demons get slain when I pray broken man prayers in front of my wife. A second Truth about prayer to give you here as we close is prayer, especially prayer in marriage. Think of it this way, is the first miracle.

Most of the time when a husband and wife are coming together in prayer, they're praying because they want a miracle from God. They're desperate. We want a miracle from God, and we're waiting for this miracle. Oh, God, save our marriage.

Little do they realize it's already a miracle that they're praying together. So if you're praying together as a husband and wife, even if there's a whole lot of mess that still remains in your marriage, enjoy the fact that you're already God's miracle. Prayer is God's first miracle. And it's a harbinger of greater miracles to come.

So, Pray together. And relish the miracle that that is. Thirdly and finally, praying together is something that you get better at over time. It's something you build.

Praying together is something you grow in. If you as a husband and wife, Try praying together as a couple and things don't go well at all. don't get discouraged. Keep at it and learn and grow.

Husbands, if you pray for your wife and your prayer doesn't seem to minister to her at all, don't get discouraged. Keep praying and learning how you can truly pray prayers that minister to your wife's heart. Get to know her, to figure out how do I pray in a way that blesses my wife. Ask some older brothers in your care group or a men's meeting what they do when they pray for their wives.

This is something I'm still learning. In years past, there literally were times when I prayed for Donna. And my prayers ended up frustrating her more than they were a blessing. And I was left scratching my head trying to figure out what did I say wrong, what is missing in my prayer.

But I'm happy to say that there in recent years are a growing number of times with a real sweetness about it. When I prayed for Donna or she has prayed for me, and those prayers not only reached heaven, but they also penetrated deep. Into the heart of the other person and ministered the grace of God. As a married couple, make it your aim to grow in prayer together.

As you grow older, grow bolder in prayer and make your prayers more and more far reaching, asking bigger and bigger things of God as HB London's great grandparents did many years ago. This is Peter's goal and all the counsel he gives here is so that your prayers will be unleashed and unhindered. Don't view the closing words of verse 7. As merely the last line of Peter's counsel to husbands.

This last line is actually the sounding of the gun that starts the race and unleashes the couple to pray. Their hearts away and dream big dreams and ask big things of God in prayer. The last line of verse seven is merely the prelude to the story of all the good that God wants to do in your marriage and through your marriage in response to your prayers together. So I encourage you as spouses to dream a little bit.

Imagine what all that might be. Maybe, just maybe, 4 generations from now. Someone's gonna be telling a story of an amazing 4 generation work of God and maybe your prayers will figure prominently in that story. But whether or not anyone on Earth notices, Heaven will notice, and God will be glorified, and you in eternity will be happy to know that in this and in other ways, Your married marriage played.

A role in the big story. of what God is doing in the world. Let's bow our heads together. I would suggest to all of you that a, a great diagnostic tool for your marriage is to just ask, are we praying together as a couple?

Is our relationship in a place where we can even do that freely? If we are praying together as a couple, are our prayers becoming more transparent and more humble, more repentant, More unselfish, more bold, more caught up in the big story of what God is doing in the world. My intent, especially if you're falling short in this area, is not to beat you up. As husbands or as wives, but to encourage you.

With the promise of what can be in store for you. If through repentance, you say we're gonna live God's way. So that our prayers will not be hindered. Lord, I, I suspect that Some of us may need to go out of this room and sit down with our spouse and say we need to pray together.

There are probably some men in this room who Along with doing that, they need to be thinking, even if I said that to my wife, we're not in a place where she's even gonna want to do that. So I have work to do and living with her. According to the knowledge of God's word, the gospel, and according to a knowledge of her, and I, I've got work to do in honoring her as a fellow heir of the grace of life in order to create an atmosphere in our marriage where she would feel safe even doing that with me.

I pray, Lord, that you would grow all of us in this area and when we encounter discouragements along the way, even sometimes maybe during the middle of praying together, And a fight may break out.

Who knows that we just keep at it, keep growing, keep learning because we know that the dividends are huge and eternal. You're a good God and we thank you for the counsel you give to us in your word today. We thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to give of our offerings to you and we ask that you would receive these funds and do much with every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus and the spread of this good news of salvation through Him. In the name of Jesus we pray, and all God's people said,