Praying With Your Spouse Daily: 7 Benefits

Why Pray With Your Spouse?

The evidence is in. FamilyLife® did a survey of Christian couples and discovered that about 92% of them did not pray together regularly and that between 23-30% of them had experienced divorce!

Yet in a 2001 Southern Baptist Convention poll of Christian couples who prayed together consistently, the divorce rate was under 1%!

With such obvious proof of the role couples’ prayers can play in a good marriage, why would any couple not pray together?

Obstacles to Praying Together

The three main tripping points couples find are:

(1) Not knowing how to initiate couple’s prayer;
(2) Feeling inhibited, self-conscious, or insecure about the right way to do it; and
(3) Worrying about scheduling problems in this busy world of ours.

7 Reasons to Overcome Obstacles & Pray With Your Spouse

Here is why it’s crucial for you to let go of your focus on why you can’t do this, because you can, and refocus on creating an enjoyable, sustainable practice of praying together. The benefits are too numerous to ignore.

1. Develop humility and honesty.

When you pray to God in the presence of your spouse, you’re setting your ego aside for a brief time and communing with the Almighty. There’s no doubt that when you take the time to pray in your personal life, you’ve experienced the power of God’s Universal Energy pouring through you, at least at times when you’re most open and not distracted. When you open your heart to God in the presence of another person, especially your spouse, you’re literally sharing one of the most profoundly miraculous experiences of your lifetime with another person. There is no pretense or one-ups-manship in this game. For both of you to benefit, you’ll have to check your egos at the door, become still in the Presence you seek to connect with, and allow this moment to happen.

To be fair and to remove any fear, there is no reason that you have to go into a long, involved meditation that takes a lot of time. There’s nothing to live up to. There’s just you in the Presence of God. Especially in the beginning of your practice, just hold hands and say something simple, such as, “God, please bless us in our day today and watch over our children. Amen.” Take the pressure off of both of you. There is no big, dramatic ritual you have to perform. This is more like a way to soothe yourself and allow the Christ spirit to inspire love for a few minutes, and then you can get on with your day. Over time, though, if you’re truly allowing Love to flow, you will come to enjoy these simple prayers together and look forward to it.

2. Deepen communication with each other and God.

As stated, prayer is simply a way to communicate. When we remove our masks (and we all have them) for a moment, and rest in Him, we have a chance to truly communicate. As you can imagine, communication is a flow. The communication to and from God and your spouse will be more like water flowing gently through a tide pool than a chore like jackhammering up a concrete sidewalk. See this time as not just a way to put forward wishes, but to allow whispers from God and intuitions about your spouse to come in, too.

3. A rising tide raises all ships.

As you practice this very simple, loving ceremony in each other’s presence, you will notice that both of you will deepen your attunement to God. As this happens, your feelings will lighten up. You won’t take your burdens quite so seriously, knowing that God is ever-present and available to you. Sharing this experience will elevate your life, and we all know that when you associate yourself with people who are on the way up, your own sense of joy and abundance will increase, also. Do it for yourself, for each other, and for the glory of God as you enjoy taking this time.

4. Grow an atmosphere of support and unity of purpose.

God speaks to us in a million ways each day, although (truthfully) we often aren’t paying attention. Sometimes you’ll look at the clock and the time is 1:11. Is that God winking at you? Or you’ll look outside just as a bird lands on your fence and makes a funny noise or displays his beautiful wings.

When you hold hands and pray silently or aloud for a brief time, deepening your awareness of God’s presence in your life, you’ll come to realize that your spouse is sharing one of the most intimate aspects of his or her life with you, and you are sharing the same. Astonishingly, these very brief, simple, and open ceremonies can have profoundly positive effects on your souls. Taking those minutes every day (or in whatever form you decide) is literally growing an atmosphere of trust, candor, support, and clarity. Your life purpose may not change in any huge way, but the clarity, simplicity, and inner guidance from Spirit will change it qualitatively over time. Sharing and supporting that can only be beneficial.

5. Increase awareness of solutions.

As you open your life to God in the presence of your trusted mate, you become more receptive. You start realizing that there are opportunities available that you haven’t seen before. As you relax and soothe your innermost feelings with the healing power of couples’ prayer, you’ll become more receptive to the miracles unfolding in your everyday life. While the changes may not be dramatic, the gift of more appreciation and less fear will absolutely change your life for the better.

6. Head off troubles before they multiply.

There are times when our problems gain a great deal of momentum. When that happens, we often look into the past and try to figure out, “How did this problem get started, and whose fault is it?” Instead of letting problems disturb our inner peace and the peace we find in each other, offer to pray before that momentum gets its clutches on you.

If you see your spouse starting to get wrapped up in something that will lead nowhere but to conflict, or you catch yourself doing it, offer a little prayer or ask for one yourself.

If you say, “Do you mind if I say a little prayer for you before you run off to work?” or ask, “Hey, do you have a quick minute to pray for me? I’m feeling a little confused,” most people won’t resist that. Then you or your spouse can simply offer a quick prayer like the one we spoke about in #1 above. If they can’t stop right that minute, just let them know that you’ll pray for them as they drive to work, or ask them to offer you a quick prayer when they have the time. Sometimes you don’t even have to give them an explanation, and sometimes it’s better if you don’t. Just knowing that you’ve got each other’s backs in prayer is often enough to veer out of the way of the mental cannonball headed your way.

7. Hold each other in a loving light.

Let’s face it. We all lose patience from time to time. We’re not going to be perfect people in a perfect world, seeing our spouses in the light of perfection 24/7 and 365 days per year. But God does. When we surrender a few minutes of our time and thoughts each day to our Higher Power, we invite the love light in. It doesn’t matter if we have the human capacity to love the same person who just ruined our plans right that minute. God has that capacity. It doesn’t matter if we’re afraid because we’re acutely aware that our spouse is angry with us. God can rise above.

When we make time to pray together, we release our problems and worries to Capable Hands for at least a small amount of time and take those burdens off our shoulders. This is an incredibly healing experience and not only lengthens the potential longevity of our marriages each time we do it, but also increases the quality of our marriages exponentially over time.

Marriage is a tricky proposition, given that we’re both human. No matter how much we think we’re “right” and our spouses are “wrong,” the healing benefits of mutual prayer can help, even if those prayers are silent, short, spoken, or unspoken. We don’t have to complicate things by introducing embarrassing or uncomfortable topics into our mutual prayers; after all, we always have access to individual prayer 24 hours a day. Instead, look at couples’ prayer as analogous to putting money in a bank account. You put a certain amount in and leave it there forever, but you also put some in knowing that it will be there for you to use.

As you invest spiritual energy into your marriage, it can only grow into a deepening relationship with God. And God’s rising tide raises all ships.

Thank you for letting me share a little bit of myself with you. I hope it was helpful. If you’d like to know more about How to Pray with Your Husband, you can find more tips here.

I’d love to hear about your experiences praying together, any troubles you’re finding in initiating the practice, and what ideas helped you the most as you deepen your spiritual journey together.

In Love & Prayer,