Learning how to pray with your spouse can sound intimidating and even scary at first. Prayer is a very intimate conversation with God and sharing that between others can often leave us feeling awkward, exposed and vulnerable. However, prayer with your spouse can also be one of the most intimate and rewarding times spent with each other. It can strengthen your marriage and be used to encourage one another. I am a firm believer in prayer and praying together. I have written a ton of posts about prayer on Simply Clarke including, 25 Verses To Pray Over Your Husband, 11 Verses To Pray Over Your Family, 8 Verses To Pray Over Your Marriage, How To Start A Prayer Journal, 30 Days Of Marriage Prayers, and even a post about how to pray for you child and verses to pray for over your child.
These are just a handful of posts I have written, but I realized that I hadn’t really addressed “how” to pray with your spouse.
Bring It Up
The first step to praying together is to bring it up. I love praying with Kevin, however, life happens. We aren’t perfect. There are times when we will go awhile without praying together and one of us has to start by bringing it up. Let your spouse know that you desire to pray together and set a time to pray together. We tend to prayer before dinner, with Brooke before her bedtime and before we go to bed. This timing may look different for you. Know that there is no “right” answer to “when” to pray. Personally, I pray randomly throughout the day, but when it comes to praying together, we do have set times that we do that to keep ourselves acceptable. It may work better for you both to pray when you wake up, or at breakfast, find what works for you.
Discuss Barriers
If this is brand new for you, be open about how you feel. Let your spouse know any barriers or fears you may have praying together. Discuss these barriers and get them out in the open. One of you may be worried that they might sound spacey or unorganized and one of you might be fearful of being that vulnerable. You won’t know until you talk about this, so talk it out.
Practice
After you have brought it up, set a time to pray together and discussed barriers, it is time to actually put this into practice and pray. This might be weird at first, but trust me, it will get easier and more natural the more you do it.
Pray Often
This leads me to my next point, pray often. Make prayer together a priority in your marriage. Spend intentional intimate time in prayer with God together. I cannot express enough how amazing this is in our marriage and how much I would encourage you to do the same.
I know that learning how to pray with your spouse can be intimating, and hard at first, but it will be so worth it. My prayer is that you would make the first step and just talk to your spouse about prayer.