Hi SKG.
As I promised, I found the prayer for your husband's mind battle of depression.
It comes from the Power Of A Praying Wife ~ by Stormie Omartian.
The summary.
All men has the enemy who wants to undermine what God desires to do in their lives. He fills their minds with all kinds of lies that leads to depression, hopelessness, loneliness, bitterness, fear, anger, rejection, rebellion, temptation and all kind of evil. these thoughts will control their lives if not taken captive. These kind of negativity is not God speaking into your husbands life, its the enemy. according to Ephesians 6:11 we can "stand against the wiles of the devil by "praying always with all kinds of prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being wacthful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints."Eph6:18. This tells us to cover each other in prayer, this includes our husbands.
The two most powerful weapons against the attack of lies upon our husbands minds, are The Word of God and Praise. "the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of the soul and spirit and joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart"~Hebrew 4:12. Praise is become a powerful tool because god's presence dwell in our midst when we worship Him. In His presence there is healing and transformation. Speak praise to God for your husbands sound mind so that he can be able to think more clearly what he will and will not allow in his mind.
Lets pray for our husbands to recieve the mind of Christ and bring every though captive under God's control.
Lord, I pray for Your protection on my husband's mind. Shield him from the lies of the enemy. Help him to clearly discern between Your voice and any other, and show him how to take every thought captive as You have instructed us to do. May he thirst for Your Word and hunger for Your truth so that he can recognize wrong thinking. Give him strength to resist lying thoughts. Remind him that he has the Mind of Christ. Where the enemy's lies have already invaded his thoughts, I push them back by inviting the Holy Spirit to cleanse his mind. I proclaim that God has given (your husband's name) a sound mind. He will not entertain confusion but live in clarity. He will not be tormented by impure, sinful, evil or negative thoughts, but be transformed by the renewing of his mind, that he may prove what is that good and acceptible and perfect will od God(Rom 12:2).
Enable him to "be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might"(Eph6:10). Help him to be anxious fo nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let his request be made known to You; and may Your peace, which suppasses all understanding, guard his heart and mind through Christ Jesus(Phil 4:6,7) And finally, whatever thing is pure, true, noble, just, lovely, of good report, having virtue, or anything praiseworthy, let him think on these things(Phil4:8).
Amen.
I hope this will help you stand in the gap to pray the Word over your husband, so that he can get delivered from his state of hopelessness. You must not get discourage and give up. Its not about you so please look at this for what it is; a plan of the enemy to distroy your husband and get you discourage so that you will not pray for is deliverance.
Be blessed,
Jackie
This is a great prayer. A great focus.
But it may mislead women (or even men here reading it) that the spouse is the only one without Christ.
Most people start the dare and other things when they are in trouble and in need of something. They think they have Christ and it is the spouse that is so lost.
The dare is a journey that will show you the shortcomings of your relationship with Christ. It will expose your own selfishness, your misled heart.
You, the person doing the dare, must get right with Christ first. Without that, we are all on a path of continuing to do it our way. Using Christ when we needs and walking away. As we have so much in the past.
Christ chose us to be the first to understand our situation. So that we may find that relationship with Christ and grow so that we can be testimonies to those around us.
I think that is a great prayer and focus, but not until you understand your own relationship with Christ.
Remember to love others and understand love, you must first love Christ.
I was responding to SKG's post.
She had a concern about her husband being in a state of depression and feeling that he lost all purpose for life and even feeling God has turned his back on him. This is clearly a bondage from the enemy. It is our calling as a wife to pray and intercede for our spouses. God did not make a mistake with the oneness concept. There is no way she can just walk around as if seeing her husband suffering because of this stronghold will not have an effect on her. They are one ant therefore his burden will be her burden. And because she cannot do anything in her power to change the situation,I am advising her to pray about it, becuase in prayer we find our victory. You see the say bible we pray but do not recieve because we pray wrongly and to be able to pray and pray effectively we need to understand what the word of God say about the situation, so that we pray the will of God into the situation.
I agree with the dares but it would be wrong for you to imply that she is noticing her husbands depression because she is lacking in her walk with Christ. I have seen the movie and I have read the book and there is no where, where it say we are in the situation because we are bad Christian. God allow certain things in our lives because there is a lesson to be learned, not as a punishment because we are not perfect christian.
Job was a man who lived right in the sight of God, yet he allowed the devil to attack him in every way possible. Would you imply it was because there was something wrong in the way Job lived in the site of God, no. I believe the bible specifically tells us about the life of Job for us to see that trails and tribulations will come our way, but God will turn our trails into triumphs for His glory.
And who so ever recieved Christ as their Lord and Saviour is a new creation and as such,
Rom 8:1 say "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" So I have a big problem with anything that speak condemnation and encourage me to believe condemnation is conviction. Christ Loved us unto Himself. He did not condemn us unto Himself. He wants us to choose Him because He loves us and proved it by dying for our sins, not turn to Him because we feel so bad and worthless and therefore we need to turn to Him because we are so bad and worthless.
The way you share with others is based on your journey on the dares. Those were YOUR personal lesson from YOUR journey on the dare and we respect that but that is not necesary everyone elses lesson.
If there is one thing Christ has shown more than anything in this world is compassion and that is what we are here to learn; how to have compassion towards others.
Christ reacted to everyone according to the need they had at that specific moment. But the solution to all was roted in love.
In Matt 22:37-40. Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ove It tells us to love others as we love ourselves. When we condemn ourselves, we will condemn others. When we love ourselves, we will love others. We dont love ouerselves, because we feel not worthy of love. BUt God loves us and he wants us to know we are worthy so that we can start walking in that love, then and only then can we love others.
We did not chose Him but He chose us and loved us while we were still sinners.
To love others is to love ourselves and to love ourselves we need to recieve love and to recieve love you need to know love and God is love. We need to accept that love in order to give kind of love. The love of Christ is free and unconditional and there is no where in the bible it say we need to labour to get it. The lesson is that our love towards others should also be free and unconditional just as we recieve it free and unconditional.
I have no doubt that everyone on this site loves Christ and that He is at the centre of their lives, I agree that there focus might be on the wrong things and thats due to a lack of understanding(knowlegde) not a lack of loving Christ.
When we understand others and there struggles we grow conpassion towards them. We will learn loving is not about what we get out of it but what others need from us, thats when we can love the right way, out of compassion.
I will share what my experience was in the situation and hope that someone might learn something that might build them up in there journey, but I do ackowlegde that there journey might be completely different from mine, therefore its not for me to tell them they are going about there journey the wrong way.
God is God and He will make Himself know each and every person regardless of us and thats what makes a journey personal. The way that person will discover God.
The Holy Spirit will do the convicting of sin, not you and I.
Jackie.