Strengthen your marriage through the power of prayer

In the midst of life’s chaos and demands, carving out time for genuine intimacy in marriage can seem daunting. This month, we’re embarking on a journey on how to strengthen your marriage through the power of prayer.

📧 In this month’s newsletter…

🔥 Deep Dive: Marriage + Prayer.
⚡️ Challenge: Practicing times of prayer together.
🛠️ Tools: Use these helpful tools to help guide your time in prayer.
🎓 Learn: Want to go deeper in prayer? Here is a list of insightful and useful resources.

🔥 Deep Dive: Marriage + Prayer

“Some people pray just to pray, and some people pray to know God.” – Andrew Murray

There’s this longing that many of us, as couples, share—to pray together. Yet, somehow, life always seems to get in the way, doesn’t it? Whether it’s competing schedules, distractions, media consumption, or just the busyness of life, it’s easy to let that desire slip by.

We’ve been there. We get it. And we’re here to tell you that taking that step to pray together has been a crucial practice in our marriage that has created a unique rhythm of connection, intimacy, and oneness for us.

Prayer is the medium through which we get to commune with and communicate with the living God. We’ve found that practicing regular times of prayer together has played an enormous role in our spiritual growth as a couple. The biggest shift happened, though, when…

We began to seek Jesus’ face, not simply His hands.

Here is what we mean by that: It’s so easy to bring a laundry list of “wants and desires” to God as we seek what he can do for us. Most of us are only accustomed to bringing our requests to God, but there is so much more that He has for us than just fulfilling our list.

Over time, we’ve really learned the importance of seeking Jesus for who He is, not just what He can do for us. Following Jesus is about building a genuine relationship with Him through heartfelt, two-way communication—not just to snag blessings but to truly understand His heart. As disciples of Jesus, we are apprentices or learners under him, and we want to learn to pray as Jesus did.

Pastor Daniel Henderson, in his book Transforming Prayer, helped us learn how our focus in prayer shouldn’t just be on what God can give us (His hands) but on getting to know Him better (His face). Daniel clarifies this by saying, “God’s face represents His very essence—His presence, His character—while His hands symbolize His provision for our needs.” It’s not wrong to seek God’s provision, but we don’t want that to be the “why” behind our prayers to him.

When coming together as a couple in prayer, what helps us to seek his face is to start with God’s word. His word defines His character and His presence, so there is no greater place to start! By opening our time of prayer in God’s word, we are aligning our hearts by proclaiming His truth of who he says he is over us.

Whether it’s reading a Psalm together (Psalm 51), looking at an Old Testament prayer (2 Chronicles 20:6–12), one of Paul’s prayers (Ephesians 3:14–21), or one of Jesus’ prayers (Matthew 6:9–13), starting our time with God’s word allows us to seek and see His heart. This is how we can bring adoration to God by declaring what His word says about him and going vertical in our worship of him.

🤵‍♂️ A Note to Husbands: Praying together as a couple is a great opportunity for you to take a step towards leading and serving your wife. Take the initiative in leading her in prayer by asking her to pray and having a passage of scripture picked out to start with. Some scriptures to get you going are John 15, 17:20-24, Matt 5, Psalm 119:13-14, Psalm 54, Psalm 23, and Ephesians 1:15–23.

👰🏻 A Note to Wives: We encourage you to create a safe environment where your husband can initiate prayer times with you. Make sure you are approachable and willing, as it can be a challenging step to take, especially if they haven’t done it or have seen it modeled before. Encourage him as he takes a vulnerable step into the unknown, as your belief in him will go a long way in creating a regular rhythm of prayer and connection.

⚡️ Challenge…

For this month’s challenge, we encourage you to take the next 30 days and set aside 10 minutes a day to practice prayer together in seeking His face, not just His hands. Take out your phones or grab your planner and decide a time that could work together by putting it on your calendar this month.

We practice our daily prayer together in the evenings when the kids are down for the night. We share and reflect on our day and then take time to pray together, seeking the face of Jesus while receiving all that He has as we listen to him together.

🛠️ Tools…

We’ve used the framework of worship-based prayer that is based on the Lord’s prayer to structure our times of prayer together Worship-Based prayer.

A Prayer Guide to Psalm 41 or Psalm 54 is helpful to learn how to pray through a Psalm together.

For a more in-depth study on prayer that you could do as a couple or with a small group, we would recommend Practicing The Way: The Prayer Practice.

🎓 Learn: Read, Watch, Listen

Read: This is one of our all-time favorite books on prayer that we have given copies to so many couples – Transforming Prayer by Daniel Henderson.

Watch: This is a helpful conversation among thoughtful ministry leaders on prayer and the intimacy it creates with God – Unceasing Prayer with Christine Caine, Tim Mackie, Pete Greig | Tyler Staton.

Listen: Pastor John Mark Comer breaks down the practice of prayer in this very helpful sermon. After defining prayer and explaining why it is so hard for many of us, he explains what the Lord’s Prayer teaches us about the attitude Jesus had toward prayer and how we can press into prayer not just to meet our needs and wants but primarily to enjoy the Father’s presence — seeking his Face and not his Hands 🙂 — Teach us to pray: Episode 1.

Invest in the next generation of marriages.

Spark Discipleship is made possible by one-time gifts and a growing group of monthly givers called The Spark Collective. Our resources and training are always 100% free, as it’s our vision to see a global movement of Disciple-Making Marriages living out the transforming power of Jesus Christ in everyday life