2. Stay Connected with Your Spouse
The second path to a prayerful marriage is to stay connected with your spouse.
Marriage is a holistic relationship. You can’t get more comprehensive or integrated than a one-flesh union. Yet tragically, many couples fail to be intentional over the years to maintain a connection in the various lifelines of their marriage. Consider this quote from Vertical Marriage.
“We have observed that married couples, who seemed to have unending conversations while dating, oftentimes reach a place where they must be intentional in choosing to communicate. Life has transitioned, schedules are busy and we just don’t talk like we used to. This is normal but must not be left unattended. Husbands and wives need to keep the lines open, from everyday surface topics to the deeply felt matters of the heart.”
To help facilitate these vital lines of communication, our premarital manual, Vertical Marriage, offers sample questions to ask each other. One of my favorite of the 13 topics is Friendship and Affection, with conversation starters such as, “Am I your best friend?” “How could our personalities better blend together?” “Do we hug, smile and laugh together enough?” These are meant to be a springboard into deeper dialogue and hopefully incubate ideas for setting goals or planning constructive activities to enhance your friendship.
A great companion topic to the above is Spiritual Identity & Unity. The goal here is to know the condition of one another’s heart—What is God saying to you lately? Where are you most vulnerable to the enemy’s attacks, and how can I specifically pray for you?
It may seem a bit awkward or unnatural at first to “interview” one another with such questions, but we have found that if couples train themselves in this fashion, it will soon become organic—the questions will be modified to your style and become more fundamentally a part of your conversations without even having to use the list.
Being consistent in connecting makes for an easy pivot into prayer. Best friends are the best candidates to be prayer partners.
It is innately in each one of us, single or married, to be interwoven with like-minded souls. Invariably, when we have counseled couples in crisis, a common issue has been the slow erosion over time of meaningful attachment. Hence the imperative need for a godly routine of connecting. Priority one, if you’re married, is your covenant partner.
3. Pray Together in a Way That Is Uniquely You
