The Tricky thing about Praying for your Spouse

Prayer can be perplexing at times, can’t it? We know we should pray. We often say we will be praying. We believe prayer “works.” We ask others to pray for us. But how often do we actually pray?

We jump into it but also neglect it; we yearn for a powerful prayer life, but also fear we won’t get it right.

Instead of actually praying, we read about prayer or look on Pinterest for great prayer ideas. We write our prayer lists, make prayer cards, and share quotes about prayer, but somehow we neglect to pray!

Praying for our spouse is no different.

We know we should pray for our spouse and for our marriage. We know that God can work in our relationships in ways we never could, but yet something keeps us from praying.

Whatever the reason – and I’m sure they are many and varied – did you know that prayer is a way of loving your spouse? Richard J. Foster reminds us in his book on prayer:

“If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this will lead us to prayer. Intercession is a way of loving others.”

So how do we start?

Where to Start

If you want to develop the discipline of praying for your spouse but don’t know where to begin, pick up a resource, something that will give you a starting point. Sometimes all we need is help getting started.

Wives, commit to spending 5 minutes a day for 5 weeks praying for your husband. I encourage you to use my book, Pray Truth: Praying God’s Word for My Husband’s Heart, as it includes a Scripture prayer for every day of the month.

Husbands, I highly recommend Stormie Omartian’s book The Power of a Praying Husband. {Wives, my copy of The Power of a Praying Wife is completely dog-eared, underlined, and falling apart, it is that good!}

The Tricky Part of Praying for your Spouse

As we begin to pray regularly for our spouse, things will begin to change — things in us, things in our spouse, and things in our relationship.

God has promised over and over again in His Word that when we come to Him, He hears us and He answers. How true this is as we pray for our loved ones, too! But there is a tricky part to praying for our spouse, a few things we need to be mindful of and on guard against.

Remember: prayer isn’t spiritual superstition.

Prayer isn’t the lucky rabbit’s foot I tuck in my back pocket to guarantee things will work out my way. Any of you who are struggling in your relationships, have lost hope, or haven’t seen the answers in the time or manner in which you’d expected know this.

God invites us to come to Him. Jesus told us to believe whatever we ask of Him in prayer and it will be ours (Luke 11:24), and James tells us that we have not because we ask not (James 4:2)! But prayer is not the means to control God or manipulate our circumstances.

Prayer can be a wrestling, a bending, a rending of our hearts before God. After all,

“We are engaging in serious business. Our prayers are important, having effect with God. We want God to know the earnestness of our heart. We beat on the doors of heaven because we want to be heard on high. We agonize. We cry out. We shout. We pray with sobs and tears. Our prayers become the groaning of a struggling faith” (Richard J. Foster).

We might not see the answers for which we are hoping, but we must not give up. “We must repeat the same supplications not twice or three times only, but as often as we have need, a hundred and a thousand times … We must never be weary in waiting for God’s help” (John Calvin, emphasis mine).

Keep praying. Keep seeking God. Keep bending low. Imperceptible as it may be, God is at work

Understand: things might get worse before they get better.

Whenever I begin a prayer challenge, I start with high expectations. Confident in the power and promises of God, eagerly expectant that He will in fact do more than I could ask or even imagine, but the reality is that even if I start strong, most of the time, things do get worse before they get better.

Through prayer, we’re going to war for our spouses, Satan will fight back against our families. Don’t let the difficulties deter you; instead may they catapult you into praying more.

Take heed: guard against arrogance.

As we begin to pray and yield our heart to God, conviction and change comes in our own lives. It can be easy to expect that everyone should be changing in the ways we are. We begin to hold others to a higher standard, a standard in which they have not yet been convicted. Arrogance, criticism and even judgement can creep in or we can begin to resent our spouse because they aren’t growing the way we are.

Guard against this, friend. Instead, may our prayers lead us to a greater compassion, love, and humility toward our spouse.

Start

Will we purpose today to start praying for our spouse? Start today, and once you start, don’t stop.

Praying with you,

erika // erikadawson.com

 

Question for You:

What challenges have you faced in praying for your spouse?

Resources for You:

• My favorite marriage prayer books
• A simple resource sharing 175 creative date ideas
• What I didn’t understand about 1 Corinthians 13
• FREE marriage challenge to reset your relationship!