The One Keystone Habit for Your Marriage - Prayer

Some habits create forward momentum in your life. Those same habits, if you don’t diligently keep them, create negative momentum. But I believe there’s one keystone habit that, if you can do it consistently, will help you always diligently seek God. Even better, it’s simple!

If you’ll do just this one thing every day, I can guarantee it will change your life: seek God together in prayer.

If you’re a Christian married woman reading this, I imagine it probably made you giddy to read that just now. “Hurray! Yes! Now he has to pray with me!” But if you’re a husband reading this, and you haven’t already been praying with your wife, you might be groaning inside. “I don’t mind praying, I just don’t like to pray with other people. Not even with her. I never know what to say. Then it just gets… awkward.”

First, I want to talk again to those of you who are not married but want to be one day. If you haven’t prayed together with someone else before, I have to warn you: praying together is extremely intimate. When you join hands with another person, especially someone you might be attracted to, and you petition God together, asking Him to do things on your behalf, I can’t describe just how familiar, close, and bonding an experience that can be. If you have someone you’re committed to, someone you’re serious about, someone you would honestly consider marrying, while I think it’s important that you pray together, I think it’s equally important that you first set some safeguards and boundaries.

What I’m going to share with you here isn’t in the Bible; it’s just sound advice. Don’t pray alone together in intimate settings where “things” could happen. (You know what “things” I mean.) Instead, pray in settings where you can be accountable, like with other friends present. Or pray together over the phone. Or pray together in a park, somewhere out in the open. Or pray together at a restaurant, where there’s a big table separating you. Don’t pray together alone on a sofa. And whatever you do, for God’s sake, keep vertical. Never pray together on a bed. Don’t try to pray horizontally! If you do that, you’re just asking for trouble and impurity, and you know it. Trust me on this. Keep your prayer together as pure and spotless as you want your marriage to be.

Now, if you are married, of course it’s fine for you to pray together in bed. (In fact, I recommend it.) It’s good for your marriage. When you share a connection with God together, that will just naturally make you want to share other things together too.

Why is praying together so important? Well, 2 Chronicles 7:14 says,

If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Especially if you’ve already been facing challenges in your marriage, this is so important. If you will humble yourselves and pray and seek God’s face, then I honestly believe that He will hear from heaven and He will heal your marriage.

Watch the Video

Excerpted with permission from From This Day Forward: Five Commitments to Fail-Proof Your Marriage by Craig & Amy Groeschel, copyright Zondervan, 2014.

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Your Turn

In your marriage, prayer changes things! Married ladies, are you praying with your husband? Come share with us the ways of praying together that have brought you closer! What has worked and what hasn’t? Single ladies, are you avoiding any and all horizontal praying with your sweetie and growing in prayer together? Come join the conversation on our blog! We want to hear from you!