Married With Impact

Every Tuesday we’ll post something about marriage and growth. Hope it helps.

“ — and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.” – I Peter 3:7

Two areas of married life couples often neglect are two of its most important aspects, to my thinking: the prayer bond and the sexual bond.

Both are easy to ignore since they don’t demand immediate attention. The kids have to get to school; that can’t be put off. Meals need cooking; bills won’t politely wait; the house doesn’t care how tired you are, it wants cleaning and repairing now. So the list of “have to’s” is made of things requiring immediate attention and energy, leaving husband and wife drained and distracted. Time for devotions or physical intimacy gets shoved into the “when we can” category and the household machine keeps going while the relationship, too often, withers because what’s vital doesn’t seem urgent.

Virtually all of couples Renee and I have worked with have let one or both of these areas slide, making them all the more vulnerable to a number of other problems as well. So investing well in mutual prayer and physical bonding seems critical to the lifeblood of a healthy marriage. But since we posted last week about the sexual bond, for today, let’s focus on the prayer bond.

Regarding joint prayer, Peter used an interesting word for “hindered” in the scripture mentioned above. It’s ekkoptō, meaning “cut off” like the branch of a tree that’s been axed. It’s the same word Jesus used in Matthew 18:8 (“When thy hand or foot offend thee cut them off”) and it puts Peter’s admonition to husbands and wives in an interesting light. In the verses leading up to this observation about prayer, he’s charged both towards love and respect, mutual submission and even a certain reverence for each other. Then the contingency: a couple’s prayers that should be answered may, if these charges aren’t followed, get cut off. This isn’t to say God will not hear the prayers of either spouse, but it points to the power of a couple’s combined prayers, a power thwarted when division pries them apart. Two takeaway points stand out to me as I read this: First, if my treatment of Renee isn’t careful, our spiritual bond will be violated and all kinds of troubles will follow. Second, there’s an impact to that bond which I should covet, protect and invest in.

The first is a bit of a no-brainer, I’m sure, but it bears remembering: When things aren’t right in my home life, nothing’s right; everything suffers. Fighting is inevitable, and allowable, but leaving a quarrel unresolved isn’t. So when I stomp out of the house mad I subject myself to a miserable day of trying to work while I’ve got this bowling ball in my gut which simply won’t digest. It sours everything I do to the point where out of sheer exhaustion less than true humility, I call Renee with profuse apologies and oaths to never leave my underwear on the counter again. The bowling ball dissolves; the bond’s back. Nobody wins when it’s ruptured, much less if it stays that way.

The second – our need to invest in the prayer bond – also seems pretty basic but is in fact ignored by a surprisingly high number of families. When man and wife pray together things happen, things they should value and protect. Spiritually they grow closer, exercising faith and praise as one unit. Petitions are heard and answered. The kids come to see prayer as a natural part of life, like washing dishes and brushing teeth. The house itself takes on a tranquil, holy quality, as does any place where God is regularly sought and acknowledged. We can have that and more, and we should, and we rob ourselves immeasurably when we don’t.

Time is, of course, the catch, and anytime we consider adding something new to our routine we have to reckon with that. But I’ve come to believe it’s not the amount of time spent in prayer that matters so much as the regularity of that prayer time. Consistency, not volume, seems key to this. So if a couple isn’t in the habit of daily mutual prayer I always suggest starting with a commitment of five minutes per day, same time each day, rigidly adhered to. You do have five minutes, and if you’ll begin protecting that brief chunk of time for prayer I’ve no doubt you’ll see immediate changes and long term improvements in your home life.

There’s a wealth of blessing and powerful impact waiting for Christ centered couples, an impact everyone benefits from. I hope today we’ll see, afresh, both its importance and its availability.

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