HAPPY NEW YEAR !!! We pray this will be a wonderfully happy new year for you as a married couple — that it will begin a year of more intimate closeness to each other and to the Lord than you ever dreamed possible. “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:3). We’ve found this to be so true in our own lives and pray that as you delight yourselves in Him, you’ll experience his blessings in abundance also.

At the beginning of this New Year we pray that you’ll see that your married life together can make a huge difference in the lives of countless others that you come in contact with. “One individual life may be of priceless value to God’s purposes, and yours may be that life” (Oswald Chambers). And yours may also be that marriage.

The manner in which you interact with your spouse may impact the lives of more people by its ripple effect than you could ever imagine possible. That’s because all of our lives are linked together in some way or the other. Not one of us is an island left to its own. As someone once said, “Who knows how the few souls we touch will touch others, who in turn will touch still others?”

Let go and let God lead you in your married lives. Get on your knees together. Pray with each other and for each other in covenant with God knowing that as believers in Christ, your lives are on display for others to observe God through. Gandhi was once quoted as saying, “The world would have a great revival if they could only meet the Christ of Christians, instead of the Christians of Christ.”

Ask yourselves, “Does my relationship with my spouse draw others to want to know the Lord more intimately so He may work in their lives and in their marriages in a positive way?” If it doesn’t, now is the time to change that by the choices you make from this day forward. Worship the Lord together and ask Him to not only be the Savior of your lives, but the Lord of your lives.

And then ask the Lord to show you how to love each other moment-by-moment, choice-by-choice from this day forward as Christ loves the Church. Read Philippians 2:1-8 together and commit to live your lives together as it’s written.

And then experience the power of what God can do in and through you as individuals and as a married couple as your marriage is committed in covenant with Him. Remember,

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sin against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. For he says, ‘In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.’ I TELL YOU, NOW IS THE TIME OF GOD’S FAVOR, NOW IS THE DAY OF SALVATION.” (2 Corinthians 5:17- 6:2).

Our love and prayers are with you as together we commit our lives and our marriages to be the best they can be in Christ.

Steve and Cindy Wright

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