When I was overcome by fear, praying for my husband taught me how to overcome fear.
When my husband told me that his heart’s desire was to become an entrepreneur, I knew it was a daring dream to have. But it frightened me.
Being an entrepreneur in India can be a lonely life. When we moved to the start-up capital of India I was shocked to see that many people in the start-up ecosphere were happily single, unhappily married, or casually divorced.
Being emotionally unattached to one’s family is the acceptable sacrifice for success and lauded among investors.
I always had a deep unmet longing for a perfect husband and his desire felt like the perfect threat to our marriage.
So I started to detest anything that took up my husband’s time and attention. His work became my biggest competitor. Bitterness ensued. In the midst of this, it was becoming clear he wanted to launch a start up.
I was so fearful, I turned to prayer. In the journey of praying for my husband, God showed me the need for prayer, how to pray, and the effect of prayer.
The Need for Prayer
My husband’s desire of becoming an entrepreneur became my worst nightmare.
How could I pray for something that I felt was not good for our marriage? But my reluctance to pray was the very reason I needed to pray.
My hesitation reminded me of Adam and Eve hiding from God, ashamed. When I lived in Mumbai my pastor taught me that we can turn to God in shameless audacity. He often used the analogy of our earthly father to teach us about shameless audacity.
I can walk into my dad’s house and shamelessly ask him for something small like a cup of tea. But I can also ask him for the big things.
My husband’s desire of becoming an entrepreneur became my worst nightmare.
If my earthly father gifts me his time and resources, how much more does my heavenly father (Matt. 7:11)? I began to see that I was behaving like an orphan and refusing to talk to my heavenly father.
In having a desire for a perfect earthly marriage, I was forgetting about my perfect heavenly union.
In God’s good grace, he pointed me to understand that I was running away from him in fear and shame. It was time for me to start taking my reluctant heart to my relentless saviour.
I took my unmet need to God and cried out to him. I poured out my fears and worries to him in clearly articulate sentences. Then I burst into wordless groans of desperation.
In a world where marriages were crumbling, I was scared ours would too. “Please protect our marriage,” I cried. “Please save us from our sinfulness.”
God answered. He answered through Scripture, our spiritual mentors, and through marriage counselling.
I needed to pray, simply because it taught me to articulate my fears to God. It was a humble admission that I was incapable of saving myself or our marriage. But I also needed to pray to remind myself of everything God had spoken to me through his Word.
How to pray
Merely reading God’s word was not enough. I had to use it as armour for the battle ahead. It began to dawn on me that all of life is a war against the flesh and the world (Eph. 6:12).
If the purpose of life is to give God glory (1 Cor. 10:31), then all of life should be about living for his name’s sake. So whether it was my marriage or my husband’s entrepreneurial dreams, it is about Christ’s name being lifted up.
In having a desire for a perfect earthly marriage, I was forgetting about my perfect heavenly union.
In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus taught his disciples to pray that God’s name be blessed, his kingdom come to reign on earth, his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
He taught them to pray for sustenance, for forgiveness, for protection from temptation, and deliverance from evil (Matt. 6:9-13).
Every single answer to this prayer lies in Jesus.
Our heavenly union to Christ was the clue to my earthly one. Jesus, the advocate and perfector of my faith, changed the way I prayed.
As a wife, I started focussing my prayers on my fallen state and my need for grace to see my sin and repent. I started praying for Christ, to rule in my heart first, teach me to submit to God, and then to trust my husband.
Gradually, I began to understand why my husband wanted to start something and build something of impact. Wasn’t his creator the first grand entrepreneur in the world?
Seeing the vocation of entrepreneurship from a biblical lens gave me hope and calmed my fears.
The Effect of Prayer
As my heart softened, for the first time in our marriage, I started praying for my husband’s unmet desires. The Lord opened my eyes to see his burdens, his longings, and how Christ was the answer to his unmet desires too.
Our true and perfect bridegroom met both our unmet desires.
I started calling out to God, not merely as my Father, but also as our creator, our chief entrepreneur.
Praying for my husband’s entrepreneurial ventures meant I had to now act on faith.
I had to rely on God’s promises and tell my weak heart, “Be strong, for the Lord does not sleep or slumber, he will keep your feet from falling” (Ps. 121:3).
Praying also exposed my heart’s idol for money and comfort. Having a salaried job is what I thought brings financial security. Hidden in my prayers was a fear that our God would not supply our needs.
Stepping out to start something meant risking financial security. Surely, a God who led his grumpy children through a desert for 40 years without their clothes or sandals wearing out could provide for us during this time (Deut. 29:5).
Through prayer, I had to tell my heart as I spoke to God, that Christ is enough.
I knew it would be a season of budget-related cuts and a reduction in expenses, so I started to pray that I would not fear scarcity. This season might give me the chance to experience God’s generous heart.
Through prayer, I had to tell my heart as I spoke to God, that Christ is enough.
I stopped fearing the D-word and the B-word—“divorce” and our “budget.”
A few days ago my husband dismayingly told me about another failed marriage. I started to see that my husband wanted a happy marriage too.
In that moment, when he expressed his fear to me, I could comfort him from the comfort Christ had given to me, and said “He will never leave us nor forsake us” (Deut. 31:6).
As a wife, I am no longer fearful of my husband’s profession. I celebrate it as an opportunity for both my husband and I to live out our faith, and bring God glory.
We will stumble but we will not fall. But I am confident of God’s scarlet thread of redemption, holding us together, sanctifying us till the day we are perfectly united to Christ.
Prayer has taught my feeble heart to pray shameless audacious prayers. God’s will is always to glorify Christ. So in everything, may Christ be glorified.
