“For where two or three gather in my name, I am with them.” Matthew 18:20
How can I pray for you?
These words came from my husband’s mouth one evening after a long workday. My husband’s work schedule had changed, causing him to work late nights, often getting home just in time to eat dinner and collapse on the couch from exhaustion. Our time together had become increasingly limited, including our prayer life. Our prayer life was nonexistent. Despite this new job change, we still wanted to spend time together. But time wouldn’t permit it.
My husband was making the time. His question prompted me to turn off the television, face him, and have a heartfelt conversation—the type that brings a couple closer together. As he started to share his frustrations with the new job change and how little time we were spending together, he revealed that he had some prayer requests that he’d kept close to his heart—requests I didn’t know he had.
Little did he know I had prayer requests of my own. Because of the job change, our finances had changed too. As someone who constantly worries about financial provision, I often talked to God about my financial fears. But this was the first time I told my husband about these fears. When we were done sharing, we bought our heads, joined hands, and prayed.
When we were done praying, we felt closer than ever because we knew we’d invited God into our lives again. Because of busyness and time constraints, we still prospered in our independent prayer life, but we knew how important it was to pray for each other. At that moment, I knew how important it was to pray for my husband.
When praying for your spouse, include anything that you think might be relevant to them. If it’s your husband, pray for financial provision and meaningful work to break the idol that work can become in a man’s life. Allow the Holy Spirit to convict your husband if he makes work part of his identity. Allow God to break those chains in his life.
If it’s your wife, pray for meaning and purpose for her. Some women find great purpose in caring for their children. At the same time, others must balance work and the rearing of children. This often causes a sense of guilt that she’s not spending enough time with her children or contributing enough to help make ends meet. Wives usually bear the brunt of household chores as well.
Pray for a work-life balance that will help them get all the work needed by the weekend and allow her to rest mentally, emotionally, and physically. Rest is crucial for a woman as she often must balance many different balls in the air regarding life.
Both spouses can pray for a good and long life. They can also pray for a vibrant and healthy marriage, which includes good communication, a sense of compromise, and faithfulness toward each other in their hearts and minds. When a couple is separated, it’s easy for each spouse to resent the other. When left unchecked, those resentful feelings can lead to thoughts and actions that may sever the relationship before it has time to repair itself. Pray for healthy conflict resolution.
Don’t pray to change the other person. Ask the Lord to change you and help identify areas in your life that you need to work on. Every person needs to work on their areas of improvement to become more well-rounded. It is easy in a relationship to blame the other for all the issues. However, when couples look at themselves, they may commonly be found once they begin to work on their personality traits, refine their character, and become more Christlike. Those problems seem to resolve on their own.
A couple that prays together often finds their relationships more prosperous and rewarding. When life gets busy, it’s easy to cut God out of a couple’s life. However, by intentionality and mutual desire to become closer to each other and God, prayer can unite a couple and present a new facet of intimacy that they’ll find exciting to discover but also want to become a permanent fixture in their marriage.
Father, help us become a couple that prays together. Let us make a habit of inviting you into every area of our lives. Let us approach our marriage with intentionality and present all our requests to you. Amen.
Michelle S. Lazurek is a multi-genre award winning author, speaker, pastor’s wife and mother. She is a regular contributor for ibelieve.com and crosswalk.com and is a movie reviewer for Movieguide Magazine. She also is a literary agent for Wordwise Media Services. When not working, she enjoys sipping a Starbucks latte, collecting 80s memorabilia, and spending time with her family and her crazy dog, Cookie. For more info, please visit her website www.michellelazurek.com.
Featured Image by Tony Lomas from unsplash.com
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