prayer and marriage

Including material from Barry and Eileen Jones' book: "When2Pray"

So what does prayer have to offer our marriage?

To answer this we need to first understand why God created marriage. It's clearly important to God because he makes marriage part of the creation that is described at the begining of the Bible. We're told God's purpose for marriage is:

to reflect God's image in a unique way, through a committed and loving relationship; Gen 2:24. (In Ephesians chapter 5 Paul expands on this and tell us that the relationship between husband and wife is to reflect the relationship between Christ and his Church)
to complete one another; Gen 1:27
to multiply God-likeness on the earth; Gen 1:28

So humans are meant to be in relationships; with each other and with God. This is God's intent. When Adam and Eve ate the 'forbidden fruit' they rebelled against God and 'sin' entered the world. This sin has a profound effect on relationships:

it separates us from God and each other
we put ourselves first, rather than be obedient to God
we are critical of our differences, rather than accepting of each other
we blame others, rather than accept our own weaknesses
we compete, rather than complementing each other
we feel guilty and ashamed, rather than giving and receiving forgiveness and acceptance
we seek to dominate one another, rather than serve each other

This would be terrible news for marriage if it were the end of the story.

But through believing and receiving Jesus we are able to be reconciled with God, our sins are forgiven and we are given the Holy Spirit to help us to live out our lives as God intended. Through Jesus we are able to begin to address the above issues. We're told it's impossible to live life as God intended in this world without God's help so it would make sense to get his help... and that is why prayer is vitally important for marriages to flourish.

We're not saying that you can't have a good marriage without prayer. We are saying that with prayer a marriage will get a lot better. When2Pray is here to help you to pray together so that you and those that you pray for can enjoy better marriages.

Taking it further

To dig deeper into why prayer is important for marriage look at love and respect.

To understand what we need to do to deal with sin and walk closely with God there is a useful leaflet called 'Satisfied'. To see an online text copy click here. If you'd like to see it presented online click here. To order your own copy of the leaflet from the Agapé bookshop click here (use "Satisfied" as the search word) .