Welcome back to my series involving my war room!! Today I want to share with you both what brought me back to my war room in the first place(which I touched on in the first of these series titled The War Room), and how I do battle for my marriage while I am there.
Quick Warning for Younger Readers: In this article, I do mention sex and have a couple of my specific prayers written out concerning those. They are not in any way explicit, but may be something you should skip if you are not married.
My husband is what brought me back to God, and shortly after what drove me to my knees in an "inner closet" type place that I call my war room. It is a very apt name as that is where I do battle for my marriage against the dark powers and principalities that would love to tear it apart. It is also the place where I keep my "Marriage Battlefield and Strategy" battle map, which I will touch on shortly. What I find ironic however, is my husband's lack of God(as well as very much my own) is what drove me back to God. And then as I had drawn closer to God, my war room became the place where I begged and battled for my husband to be brought back to God as well.
Moving on, however, my main goal in this article is to give you a little of an idea of how I myself do battle for my husband, in a practical sense. This is something that will, of course, look different for every person. But I found as I was finding what worked for me, that it was helpful to see what other Godly women had done, so I could use a little of the their ideas and then make it my own.
For me, one of the concepts I found to be most relevant when planning a battle strategy was the concept of needing a battle map in order to track out where my weak spots were, where the enemy might try to enter, and where and how to place my defenses. This concept made a lot of sense to me, and I jumped right in with my colored markers and pens and got to work.
My first attempt was...well...quite a flop. I only had three areas I thought of as weaknesses, and after a little more work and soul searching, I realized Satan could get into my "camp" in broad daylight and I wouldn't be ready for him. So I went back to the drawing board. I saw a concept on a post I found and clicked on Pinterest(I apparently did not save it, so now I can't find it to share with you all. Urgh), which gave me a better and more clear path for creating my battlefield.
In my first map, I had taken my weak spots or hidden corners Satan liked to sneak into, and I had placed them in the middle of my battle map, and then placed my defenses of scripture around them, hoping to protect them. My new map had an approach that worked out a lot better. In this new approach, I took 9 areas that I felt God called me to be and to do in my marriage, and I put them in the middle of my battle map.
As shown in the picture above, these 9 areas included: Serve, Sex, Submit, Flirt/Phileo(Greek word for affectionate love), Respect, Good Conduct, Listen, Encourage, and Pray. I was then able to put defenses(scripture) around each area. Along with the scriptures, I wrote out specific prayers based on the scriptures I had found for each area. I will share these scriptures and prayers below to help give a little better idea of what this looks like, and then I will finish by explaining how I use this battle map each evening before I go to bed.
Feel free to read through all of these, just scroll through to get some ideas, or save them for later if you want some help finding some specific verses for certain areas.
Serve:
"She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life...She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness." -Proverbs 31:12, 27
Prayer: "Father, let me never eat the bread of idleness, but instead give me a love of caring for a household that will gave Michael peace and rest. Let me be constantly doing good to Michael every single day."
Sex:
"The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does." -1 Corinthians 7:3-4
Prayer: "Lord, show me the extent of Michael's ownership over my body and let me readily and eagerly give it to him. Help me to learn his body and care for it as I would a treasure, readily giving him his conjugal rights."
Submit:
"Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands." -Ephesians 5:22-24
Prayer: "Lord, help me to submit to Michael and see him as lord, knowing you are molding him. Remind me that Michael is my head, not the other way around. Let me model the role of the church as it submits to Christ."
Flirt/Phileo:
I did not have specific scripture for this one, but I would encourage you to go into the Gospels and see how Jesus had affectionate love for those close to Him.
Prayer: Father, we see in the Gospels an affectionate love that you had for Peter, John, and for Lazarus. Create in me continuously a love like that for Michael. An affectionate love. Help me to find ways to flirt with Michael as a way to love him that he really enjoys."
Respect:
"And let the wife see that she respects her husband." -Ephesians 5:33b
"For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their husbands." -1 Peter 3:5
Prayer: "Lord, I have a clear calling from you to respect Michael. Please show me what that means and give me a strong desire to obey you. Let my respect for Michael in all of these areas be my adornment and precious to you."
Good Conduct:
"Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives--when they see your respectful and pure conduct." -1 Peter 3:1-2
Prayer: "Lord, help me to be subject to Michael as you command in your word. Remind me that I cannot fix any disobedience of your word by Michael. But instead you call me to good conduct, that Michael might be swayed by my obedience to you, and not my words to him."
Listen:
"Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet." -1 Timothy 2:11-12
"Know this, my beloved brothers; let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires." -James 1:19-20
Prayer: "Lord, I need to be reminded of my role of listening and learning rather than teaching and meddling. Help me to be quick to listen and slow to speak, that I might not spark anger in Michael that will only harm God's work."
Encourage:
"Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body." -Proverbs 16:24
"When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul." -Psalm 94:19
Prayer: "Lord, help my words towards Michael to be gracious, and help them to be received as the sweetness they are meant to be. Help me to model you by speaking consolations to Michael's soul when his cares grow too many."
Pray:
"Pray without ceasing!" -1 Thessalonians 5:17
"But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." -Matthew 6:6
Prayer: "Help me to pray for Michael and our marriage constantly! I need to be reminded that my prayer is not a for-show thing, and that the secret prayer is rewarded. Bring me back to my war room and remove the sin of pride that makes me consistently desire to flaunt it."
So how do I use my battle map? Well first of all, as I was putting it together, every verse I used for it I highlighted in my bible in pink(stay tuned for a post for how I color-code my Bible study and war room). Then I wrote the verses out on pink sticky notes and put them on the section of my wall I use for marriage scripture and prayer(see picture below, sorry my phone camera has horrible quality).
When I finished my battle map, I put it in a clear plastic sleeve and hung it on a nail in my marriage section. Then I created a piece of paper called "My Marriage Battle Log."
So each night as I go into my war room, I take my battle map off the wall and look over it to see where Satan and his troops tried to enter that day. I highlight that area(Pray, Respect, etc.) and the bits of my prayers that go with it, that I know the enemy got past my front line, in with a dry erase marker, as well as writing the date next to it. Then I take the sticky note(s) off the wall that are my defenses for that area of my map, and pray the scripture and the highlighted area of my prayers, as well as anything else I need to add, over that area of my map. This is how I reinforce my defenses in my areas so they are better able to stand up to the forces of the enemy.
And then lastly, I take out that Marriage Battle Log, and I write the date, the area I struggled, and then the circumstances around it, so I know what to watch out for next time. For instance I might write "6-25-19. Pray: It was an easy day today, and so I grew complacent, and forgot the need to pray over my marriage and to pray for my husband." My purpose behind this is to be able to go back to the Log and see what things might trip me up so I can be proactive in reinforcing my defenses.
I hope that the information in this post is something that will spark some ideas in you for how you can do battle for your marriage in your own home. If you found this exciting, stay tuned for my next post in this series, where I will share my color system and how I have made my war room a colorful and enjoyable place where I want to return again and again!
Other Posts in this series:
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