When We Need a New Perspective

You, brethren, have been called to liberty;
only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh,
but through love serve one another.
Galatians 5:13

As we grow in the liberty God gives us, we also find freedom to stop thinking about ourselves all the time. When we are in the flesh, we dwell on what we need and want and must have in order to be happy. But freedom from self-focus liberates us to serve one another. God says we must think of others first—and most importantly our significant other—and we must serve him. That doesn’t mean becoming a slave who is taken for granted, mistreated, not allowed freedom, and not given value and equality as a person. Serving one another is an attitude of the heart that comes from seeing our lives from God’s perspective.

If either you or your husband needs a new perspective in order to see things God’s way, then that is something worth praying about. Ask God to give both of you new insight and the ability to see everything—especially your lives together—from His perspective.

Ask God to show you how to serve each other in a way that blesses and strengthens you both. Serving is something you give in a marriage, not something that is demanded from you. If it is demanded from you, that’s slavery. Even God doesn’t demand that we serve Him. He wants us to offer ourselves to Him. The same is true in a marriage. Willingly serving each other is a setup for God’s greatest blessing in your lives. And it is probably the hardest thing to do consistently well. That’s why you must pray for a new perspective to happen in each of your hearts.

My Prayer to God

Lord, I thank You for the liberty we have in You. Thank You for how You have set my husband and me free from our past and ourselves. Continue to liberate us. Help us to be rid of any wrong thinking and blindness. Help us to see things from Your perspective—especially the way we treat each other. Keep us from becoming selfish in the freedom we have in You.

I know You are continually setting us free to better serve You and others, and especially to serve each other. Help us to do that well. Give us a new perspective in our hearts and minds, because our natural tendency is to be self-focused and self-centered to the point that we neglect each other. Teach us how to bless each other in the way we act and speak. The proper attitude of heart and mind can only fully come from You. Fill us both with Your love, peace, humility, and mercy. Enable us to always act and react out of those good qualities. Lift us above our private concerns, and help us not to keep score over what one of us owes the other. Help each of us to make a greater effort—beyond what we have done in the past—to give of ourselves to each other. Give us Your perspective on our marriage relationship, and enable us to understand what we need to do to make it great.

In Jesus’ name I pray.

Adapted from: The Power of a Praying Wife Devotion © 2011 by Stormie Omartian. Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, OR. Used by permission.