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What Works?
Are there things that you have been doing to make your marriage work that you know for certain should work but always seems to fail? Do you find this frustrating? Do you find yourself doing the same thing with more and more intensity and finding that the problems just coming with greater intensity in response?
Here is something simple you can try to get out of this pattern and onto a more positive and effective way of dealing with your situation.
- Imagine what you would be doing, what you would be experiencing, what you would be feeling if things were the way you want them to be. Just brainstorm. Take some time to think about it and write it down.
- Try to remember some times when things were more like your ideal situation, and remember specifically what you were doing, saying, how you behaved just before and during that time.
- Identify some behavior changes to try. Write them down and choose a key one to focus on.
- Try the change and try it for awhile and make notes of how it affected your relationship.
Simply put, this can be summarized as visualizing the ideal and taking actions that succeed in bringing it about. But, often we have to let go of harmful behavior that takes us away from our goals before we can focus on doing things that bring positive results.
Effectual Prayer
Effectual prayer is prayer that brings about the requests prayed for. Many times we pray in generalities without faith as though we were trying to protect God from the possibility of failure, or we’re not sure what His will is.
Effectual prayer is prayer where we surrender all to God, every situation, every desire we have, all that we are and all that we have and we trust God with it all. That doesn’t mean taking hold of any religious sounding message from any manipulative and self-serving cult leader that comes around and complying with his or her teachings, but rather throwing away the fear of man and trusting in God instead to bring about the greatest good in every situation whether it is a joyful situation or a very painful one.
Effectual prayer involves laying down all sin, repenting from it, getting rid of it, being forgiven for it, walking away from it, and if there is anything that involves returning something that doesn’t belong to you or making restitution, that may be needed, too, but that doesn’t mean being unreasonable and becoming enslaved to feelings of condemnation or false guilt and fear of disapproval and giving ownership of yourself over to an insatiable taskmaster.
The important thing is to have a right relationship with Jesus Christ where He is truly Lord of your life--not fears, not lusts, not greed, not pride or anything else. It is important to have this intimate relationship with Christ so you know what to pray for and so you can pray as you should and know that your prayer is effectual and according to God’s will.
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