Daily Prayers with Your Partner

While listening to a Christian radio station recently, I heard a commentator say that less than 5 percent of Christian couples pray together daily. Hearing that gave me a spiritual boost because I can count my wife and I among that 5 percent. Doing some subsequent digging, I found this statistic:

• Of those couples who pray together in their homes on a regular basis, the divorce rate is 0.3%, or one divorce out of every 300 couples who pray together in their homes. (stats quoted from For Better and For Ever by Robert A. Ruhnke)

If this statistic is true, then it's evident that that praying together daily with our spouses will help sustain our marriages.

What have been the benefits of praying with my wife?

First, let me say that we have not always prayed together in our marriage, but since we began about a year into it, things have been better for us.

How so? We use our prayers to God as an opportunity to express gratitude for our many blessings. My experience tells me that when my wife and I are in a state of gratitude, negative and nonproductive thoughts and feelings are overridden, so offering a prayer of thanks puts us in a good space, spiritually.

A wise and experienced member of my church counseled me to use the prayer with my wife as an opportunity to express my gratitude for the positive things she has contributed to our marriage and to my growth. While I often have difficulty complimenting my wife directly, doing so while I pray to God has been much easier. As such, I have expressed thanks to God for my wife's hard work, for her patience, for her counsel to me, for her nurturing of our children, for her love, for specific good deeds she's done, and more.

Soon after I began offering prayers of thanks for my wife's deeds, she reciprocated, offering thanks to God for good things I've done for her and for our family. I can't tell your how blessed I felt hearing my wife's prayers. And, no, my motive for giving thanks for my wife's good deeds was not that she reciprocate. I really am thankful for her and what she does. And as it turns out, she is thankful for me and what I do.

During prayer time together, we can express our remorse and regret for transgressions or faults. For instance, if I have been impatient or gruff or lazy or non-communicative or... (the list can go on), I pray to God for forgiveness and for guidance and for strength to overcome these faults and weaknesses.

We also use our prayer together to ask for needed blessings. These needed blessings include requests for answers to problems we've had, for healing and strength to deal with health issues, for solutions to problems with our children

I've heard it said that as we pray together and grow closer to God, my wife and I grow closer to one another. This has been true for us.

When, Where, and How Do We Pray?

We pray at least twice a day, in the morning before arising and in the evening before we go to sleep. Most often, we pray while lying down in bed and holding each other. At times, we will kneel at our bedside and pray together. Sometimes, our prayers together have taken place on the morning drive to work (we commute together).

The key for us is to make prayer a regular part of our day. Having done so, we continue to reap blessings.