My Wife Hinders My Prayers

I have been thinking a lot about the marriage relationship, and it was prompted even more by The Truth Project video series we are watching on Wednesday nights. I’m baffled by the call we have to honor, respect, and love our spouses, and especially with how that call was made 2000 years ago when the husband/wife relationship was even more rigidly socially controlled.

As I wrote that I realized how the husband/wife relationship today is probably as much rigidly socially controlled as it is was back then, but for very different reasons (and I am afraid to write the words “feminist movement” for those same reasons, so I will also write the words “abuse of power” in reference to men). I must head that tangent off right now…

Anyway, the man in this video series briefly looked at I Peter 3:7:

7 “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.”

Despite the seemingly woman-hating part about the “weaker partner,” which I am pretty sure is not woman-hating, there is a very serious implication about what happens to a husband’s prayers when he is not considerate of his wife—they are hindered, run aground, unable to reach God. Unlike what my woman-hating blog title suggests, my wife does not hinder (also translated “run aground”) my prayers, I do that when I do not treat her with consideration and respect.

Of course, this begs the question, “Why do good things happen to bad husbands?”