Prayers for Your Marriage

How often do you commit time to prayer?

If you’re like me, you probably spend considerable time in prayer and meditation. You pray for the ones who ask for intervention – uplifting those who struggle, those who are ill, or those who may face any one (or ten) of a million different challenges in their lives. That’s a beautiful and powerful thing. Prayer is God’s tool of love and connection.

But what about your marriage?

How often do you and your spouse sit in silence for a few minutes, bow your heads, hold hands and offer up your marriage, the covenant you’ve made together, to The One who brought you together? The One who designed your marriage ages before it even began?

Do you give thanks? Do you take your trials and tribulations as a couple, a family, a person living in concert with your beloved, to God in prayer? Do you take time to pray, just the two of you? Together? Intimate and heart-giving, like God intends?

If you get in the habit of doing so when the waters are calm in your relationship, think of how much easier, how automatic, prayer will be when there are mountains to be climbed. Prayer time might seem easy to push off by saying, "There's no time." or "I'm not sure how he/she will react to a prayer request for our marriage."

As I've discovered, the only way to begin...is to begin.

There's no right or wrong when it comes to prayer.There's no need to make a big production out of it. No need for fancy words or lengthy strings of petitions. But focus. Focus on your spouse. Focus on positivity and gratitude. Give thanks and praise to one another (especially in the midst of struggle!). Uplift one another by spotlighting something good they've done, or something about them that you admire. Simply share your love. God will take it from there.

Relationship prayer is something I want to build a habit of with my husband. After all, we pray together at church, at meal times, each night before going to bed…and especially when we're called to pray due to circumstances in our lives, and the lives of others.

Why not build ‘marital prayer’ into our time with God as well? With the way marriages are under attack these days—in so many alarming ways and at so many disturbing levels, a call to prayer just might be the saving grace of a relationship. So...how about you? In what ways do you think relationship prayers can strengthen the bonds you already share? What ways can this time spent together help you overcome adversity?

Blessings ~

Marianne