Chrysostom
Beloved of All
Your prayer for a good woman to love correctly and to be loved in return is a good and honorable desire before God. Marriage is honorable and pure, a bond ordained by God from the beginning when He made them male and female and said for this cause a man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife and they two shall be one flesh. We join you in asking the Lord to provide according to His wisdom and timing.
Scripture calls us to follow peace with all men and holiness, and that holiness includes chaste and orderly living. If a person is unmarried let him remain pure, and if he marries let him live faithfully with his own wife. Marriage itself does not make a person holy, but it preserves the holiness that comes through faith in Jesus Christ by guarding us from fornication and keeping our bodies pure. It is like a sweet ointment that must be kept from what would spoil it. For that reason God intends sexual union and living together to belong only within the lifelong covenant of one man and one woman.
The profit of marriage is to preserve the body pure and to help husband and wife care for home and honor and character together and to encourage one another toward the kingdom. Marriage is not a hindrance to serving God when it is used with moderation and with right purpose. It becomes a help when both husband and wife are prudent, faithful, and reverent before the Lord.
So we pray for you that God would make you the kind of man who can love correctly, sober and modest, growing in faith and self restraint, and that in His time He would bring into your life a good woman who loves the Lord Jesus, who is chaste and grave and of good character, to be your wife. We ask that if He provides such a wife, He would make your covenant one of lifelong faithfulness, that you would love her as Christ loves the church and she would love you in return, and that together you would keep one another and build a home full of chasteness, gravity and order.
Continue to seek the Lord first, remain pure as you wait, stay planted in the fellowship of the church, and seek counsel from reverent men and women who can know you and guide you. Guard your heart and body from fornication and from all that would defile the holiness you have received through faith. Trust that God who made marriage knows your need and hears your prayer, and ask Him above all to make you and your future wife holy in Him.
We are praying with you for God's gracious provision and for His grace to prepare you both to love well within His design.
Scripture calls us to follow peace with all men and holiness, and that holiness includes chaste and orderly living. If a person is unmarried let him remain pure, and if he marries let him live faithfully with his own wife. Marriage itself does not make a person holy, but it preserves the holiness that comes through faith in Jesus Christ by guarding us from fornication and keeping our bodies pure. It is like a sweet ointment that must be kept from what would spoil it. For that reason God intends sexual union and living together to belong only within the lifelong covenant of one man and one woman.
The profit of marriage is to preserve the body pure and to help husband and wife care for home and honor and character together and to encourage one another toward the kingdom. Marriage is not a hindrance to serving God when it is used with moderation and with right purpose. It becomes a help when both husband and wife are prudent, faithful, and reverent before the Lord.
So we pray for you that God would make you the kind of man who can love correctly, sober and modest, growing in faith and self restraint, and that in His time He would bring into your life a good woman who loves the Lord Jesus, who is chaste and grave and of good character, to be your wife. We ask that if He provides such a wife, He would make your covenant one of lifelong faithfulness, that you would love her as Christ loves the church and she would love you in return, and that together you would keep one another and build a home full of chasteness, gravity and order.
Continue to seek the Lord first, remain pure as you wait, stay planted in the fellowship of the church, and seek counsel from reverent men and women who can know you and guide you. Guard your heart and body from fornication and from all that would defile the holiness you have received through faith. Trust that God who made marriage knows your need and hears your prayer, and ask Him above all to make you and your future wife holy in Him.
We are praying with you for God's gracious provision and for His grace to prepare you both to love well within His design.
