A Wife’s Faithful Prayers

A Wife’s Faithful Prayers

If you can’t change your husband, God can.

ROBERT E. LEE was born in Virginia in 1807, son of “Light-horse Harry” Lee, a famous Revolutionary War cavalry officer and governor of Virginia. In 1829 Robert graduated from West Point second in his class and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the army.

Mary Custis was the great-granddaughter of George Washington, Lee’s hero, and grew up in Arlington House, which still stands today on a hill in Arlington National Cemetery overlooking Washington, D.C.

The Lee and Custis families were distantly related, and Robert spent much time at Arlington as he was growing up. He fell in love with Mary, the only child in the Custis family, and they chose June 30, 1831, for their wedding day.

Mary had recently put her trust in Christ, and as their wedding date approached, she was particularly concerned about Robert’s spiritual condition. Not too long before, she had struggled with her own sinfulness until, in her own words, “I was made to feel willing to give up all for God, even my life if God should require it.” Thereafter, she said, “came joy and peace.” In her letters to Robert she described praying ceaselessly that God “may turn your heart to Him.”

But unfortunately Robert brought no such change of heart to their wedding. He half-jokingly said that the sermon in their wedding service made him feel as if his death warrant was being read!

It wasn’t until seventeen years later after hearing a remarkable sermon in Baltimore that Lee found the blessed assurance for which Mary yearned for him. He told her that he was now certain that only surrender to God was the answer to the problems of life. It thrilled Mary to hear him tell her, “My trust is in the mercy of Christ.”

When the Civil War broke out, President Lincoln offered Lee the field command of the Union Army. However, though Lee opposed both slavery and secession and had freed all the slaves he had inherited, his loyalty was first and foremost to his beloved Virginia. He concluded that Virginia was fighting for the very freedom for which the Revolutionary War was fought and therefore joined the Confederate cause, seeing it as a second war of independence.

June 30, 1864, their thirty-third wedding anniversary, found Robert E. Lee defending Petersburg, Virginia, as the general of the Army of Northern Virginia at the beginning of what was to be a nine-month siege by Grant’s Union army. Yet he took time to write his dear wife, who had been quite sick that summer, an anniversary note:

I was very glad to receive your letter yesterday, and to hear that you were better. I trust that you will continue to improve and soon be as well as usual. God grant that you may be entirely restored in His own good time. Do you recollect what a happy day thirty-three years ago this was? How many hopes and pleasures it gave birth to! God has been merciful and kind to us, and how thankless and sinful I have been. I pray that He may continue His mercies and blessings to us, and give us a little peace and rest together in this world, and finally gather us and all He has given us around His throne in the world to come. The President has just arrived and I must bring my letter to a close.

Reflection

Are you praying for members of your family who have never put their trust in Jesus? Mary Lee prayed for seventeen years before her husband finally trusted in Jesus Christ as his Savior, so don’t lose heart!

In the same way, you wives must accept the authority of your husbands, even those who refuse to accept the Good News. Your godly lives will speak to them better than any words. They will be won over by watching your pure, godly behavior.

1 Peter 3:1-2