Love for a Lifetime | Writer, Speaker Applies Biblical Wisdom to Marriage

Feb 17

The bride waited in the dressing room of the church on her wedding day. It was the happiest day of her life. Then a thought struck her — wasn’t every bride this happy on her wedding day? If so, why did so many marriages end up in divorce? The bride realized as happy as she was, she was going to need help to get her to the lifelong marriage she desperately desired.

That long-ago bride was author and speaker Sharon Jaynes, past vice-president of Proverbs 31 Ministries, whose desire for something different than the home in which she was raised took her on a journey with the Lord.

“I wanted to do everything in my power to maintain a good marriage,” she said. “The problem was with the ‘in my power.’ Sharon threw herself at God’s feet. She knew she should pray about problems, but she didn’t know how to approach prayer. She had trouble becoming distracted, not paying attention, not knowing what to pray — struggles she suspected were not unique to her. Sharon joined Bible studies, then began teaching and writing tidbits that she stored away in notebooks that eventually filled filing cabinets.

Journey with Proverbs:

Fast forward 41 years from that bride in the room. Sharon has become an international conference speaker and best-selling author of 25 books, with close to a million sold, as well as contributing author to Chicken Soup for the Sports Fan's Soul, Stories for the Teens Heart, Stories for the Man's Heart, and the Women's Devotional Bible. She served with Proverbs 31 Ministries for 10 years and co-hosted their daily radio show, after which she co-founded Girlfriends in God, Inc., a ministry that touches nearly 500,000 women daily through internet devotions.

Sharon’s joy is to use her gifts in God’s service, “watching God change women's lives: setting the captive free, mending broken hearts, or opening the eyes of a new believer for the very first time,” she posted. Her “passion is to encourage and empower women to walk in courage and confidence as they grasp their true identity as a child of God and a co-heir with Christ.”

Sharon met her husband at Bible College, married, and worked as a dental hygienist while raising their son. After Steven was born, she felt like “God turned on a part of my brain.” She kept collecting the devotionals and stories she wrote about what God was teaching her, feeling like God was preparing to take her in a different direction. She had been praying for illumination for a year when she ran across one of the first resources published by Lysa TerKeurst’s fledgling Proverbs 31 Ministries. Sharon met with Lysa and knew she was meant to join the team. Sharon served in leadership at Proverbs 31 for ten years, until she felt called to focus more on her own writing and founded Girlfriends in God, inc.

One of her popular resources is a book and corresponding Facebook group titled Praying for your Husband from Head to Toe that Sharon created to help women pray daily for their husbands. The Facebook page is called The Praying Wives Club and posts prayers daily.

Sharon invites women to use scripture to create a pattern to cover their husbands in prayer. “People want to pray, and they don’t know how to pray. We are not praying what we want our husbands to be,” she said, “but to relinquish control to let them be the man God wants them to be.” The Facebook page, The Praying Wives Club, has more than 114,000 followers. “This is so God. He has done this,” she said.

She reminds wives “they have the power to open the floodgates of heaven by praying for their husbands and encourages them to make prayer their first course of action, not a last resort.”

Sharon said her marriage material stems from needs in her life. “I saw what a bad marriage looked like because of the way I was raised.” She was attracted to the marriage of the family that led her to Christ and thought, “I want that kind of marriage.” She realized it would not happen without being intentional.

Like Sharon, many people wish to build a marriage different than the example of their family of origin. One of Sharon’s recent titles, When You Don’t Like Your Story, helps people move forward if they feel they are struggling or stuck in a bad place. “Decide not to repeat the difficulties from your own upbringing,” she advises.

“There is a choice for everyone,” she said. “A choice to repeat what happened to you or to choose to forgive and move forward and have a better one. It could be that the parts of your story that you would like to rip out are the very ones God wants to use to stand out and help others. Your worst chapters could become your greatest victories and your most powerful resource. Your mess could be the message that ushers in the miracle in someone else’s life. No matter what you have gone through, your past experiences do not define your present identity. Healing on the other side of heartbreak is not simply returning to how we were before the rending but becoming better than we would have been without it—someone stronger, someone wiser” Sharon provides tools to help people get unstuck in the part of their story they don’t like.

“People want to quit very soon after marriage these days. Don’t stop in a bad chapter, Let God keep writing the story. Forgiveness is the key. Putting an offense behind you is not sweeping an issue under the rug but putting the issue to rest and burying it in the grave of grace.”

“There are great possibilities when we refuse to stop in the middle of a story and determine to keep moving forward with the flow of God’s pen,” she wrote in the book.

Sharon continues to work with Proverbs 31 Ministries through writing daily devotions and teaching at their She Speaks Conference. Along with authoring devotions, Sharon wrote on the Song of Solomon for P31’s First 5 App which lit the fire for her 2019 book and corresponding Bible Study, Lovestruck: Discovering God’s Design for Romance, Marriage and Intimacy from the Song of Solomon..

Sharon Jaynes

“Marriage is very important to God,” Sharon said. “Marriage between Adam and Eve is in the very first book of the Bible, the marriage in Canaan was the first miracle of Jesus, the marriage supper of the lamb is in the last book of the Bible. Even though Solomon may have a checkered past, God made sure the Song of Solomon was included in the Bible for a reason.

“It is so interesting when you understand the symbolism (in Song of Solomon),” she said. “’Fruit’ did not mean going to the produce store, the garden had nothing to do with growing vegetation, and pomegranates were believed to be an aphrodisiac. The poetic and symbolic way Solomon wrote the song reinforces the beauty God intended in sexual intimacy between a husband and a wife.”

She noted that God created men and women’s bodies for sexual intimacy and pleasure — not just for procreation. “Our culture is so mixed up about sexual intimacy. Sex is used to sell everything from cars to corn chips – no boundaries, anything goes. The problem with our culture is not that it focuses on sex too much but that it values sex too little.

The Song of Solomon also shows what happens when apathy creeps in a marriage. One of Sharon’s takeaways: “The devil gets just as excited about a marriage without sex as he does about sex without marriage.” If we understood or believed that sexual intimacy was a gift to be shared between a husband and wife, then we would see it not just as a duty, but as a gift God’s given us to become one and create bonds together as husband and wife. But it takes being intentional to keep apathy from creeping in.”

Song of Solomon starts off with romance, with the woman dreaming about her man kissing her.

He praises her, complimenting her body from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet.

“At first, like so many of us women, she doesn’t think of herself as pretty. He said she was a beautiful flower among the thorn bushes.” She goes to him and tells him everything that she loves and adores about him, a practice Sharon recommends women emulate.

“Remember what you loved about your husband in the first place.” Song of Solomon warns couples to “overcome the little foxes” that tear down marriages, one of which Sharon named as apathy.

“You have to be intentional to have a godly marriage with passion for a lifetime,” she said. “The woman in Song of Solomon was very intentional, she encouraged him to come away with her, she doesn’t allow the marriage to get lukewarm.”

There are so many things that can come in and steal the intimacy from a marriage — marriage gets put on the back burner when couples focus on the kids or the job. After a little tiff in the Song when the little fox of apathy sneaks in, the Shulammite’s friends, who are like “back-up singers,” encourage her to remember what she loved about him when they first met.

“If love has grown cold, remember and return,” Sharon said. “You marry your husband because you love him, you love him because you married him.”

“Left on its own, a fire or a marriage won't flourish, but turn to ash. It takes intentionality and ingenuity to make lifelong intimacy a reality,” she wrote.

"We women today face many struggles and challenges trying desperately to balance our varied roles and responsibilities. If you're like me, you're looking for peace in the chaos of life, perspective among the cultural clattering that daily bombards us, and purpose that brings true fulfillment. I've discovered there's only one place to find peace - it's God’s peace; there is only one place to find a proper perspective - it's God's truth; and only one place to find true fulfillment - in discovering God's purpose for my life,” she posts on her page.

Along with her books and devotions, Sharon’s website includes many free, downloadable pages of encouragement and enrichment. They include 25 Ways to Safeguard Your Marriage, 25 Ways to Romance Your Husband, 25 Things Your Husband Longs to Hear and 25 Ways to Show Respect to Your Husband. A 14-Day Romance Challenge attracted 90,000 followers and turned into a book by the same name. Becoming the Woman of His Dreams is another popular title. Sharon’s Facebook group helps wives pray over a particular aspect of their husbands daily.