The third book in the series, “31 Prayers for Marriage,” has now been published! It is available from our eStore and for the Kindle. It will be released in print on Amazon soon, and that information will be on our purchase page as soon as it is available. The price is $8.99 in print and $2.99 for the Kindle.
“31 Prayers for Marriage” differs from previous titles in this series in one way in particular: it is intended for couples to pray through together. Whereas “Courage” and “Healing” could be prayed by an individual, a couple, a family, even a church, “Marriage” is intended specifically for a married couple consisting of a man and a woman. The prayers are worded to be prayed by “us.” “We” are praying to the Lord in these prayers. A note of caution: the singular does show up, and it’s a little odd to see at first, since it doesn’t always make sense in context. I explain all of this in the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book. The short version is, in prayers where I talk about “him” and “her,”I want you to pray for each other.
Praying together is a vital part of a strong, Christian marriage. It builds intimacy because you both make yourselves vulnerable as you bring to God what is resting on your heart. Through it, you spend time together that you might normally relegate to yourself or your job or your kids. All of those things are great, but you should never let them take precedence over the holy union ordained for you by God. You might see each other every day, sleep in the same bed, feed the same kids, and work to pay the same bills, but still be in a functional divorce. You must spend time together, to build intimacy and to keep your relationship close, personal, and full of love. Praying together is a great way to keep this in mind.
After all, you don’t always have time or money for a weekly date night or a biannual getaway – or even a yearly date night and a getaway every decade. But you can always make time – even just five minutes, which is the longest one of these prayers could possibly take you – to pray together to the Lord our God. Even when you’re exhausted, you can hold out five minutes. You can set the alarm five minutes earlier, before the kids get up and you have to make breakfast and get dressed and pack lunches and rush them off to school then rush yourself off to work where it’s busy-busy-busy all day long.
Communication is essential to a good marriage. Prayer is essential to a good relationship with God.
Prayer together nurtures both relationships in even a few minutes a day. And as time goes on, you’ll find that your day doesn’t oppress you as much as it seemed to in the past, and you can expand those five minutes to ten minutes, or twenty. Start reading the Bible when you pray. The intimacy of your marriage and the proximity of the Lord in your life will be stronger than ever before.
My hope is that this little book can help you achieve that. And if it’s not your thing, that’s fine. Don’t buy it. But don’t a lack of words stop you from spending time with your spouse in prayer.
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