8. Keep me from conforming to the world around me, and make me more like Jesus.
It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9–11)
Finish the work you have started within me and through me, making me a little more like Jesus every day. Restrain me from doing anything to make his death look cheap or meaningless. Equip me to increasingly think, talk, and act like someone who has been saved at infinite cost and entrusted with the greatest news the world has ever known.
9. If you have called me to marry, help me to date differently.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:3–8)
If you would have me marry, prepare me to love a husband or wife with the love and grace you have shown me through Jesus and his cross. Give me clarity in dating, and guard me from all impurity. Let patience, selflessness, and humility mark every relationship — every date, every conversation, every step forward or backward.
In every step of my pursuit of marriage, make it clear that you are God, and I am yours.
This article originally appeared here at Desiring God.
