This is a sample of the foreword Nancy Guthrie wrote for 5 Things to Pray for Your Spouse by Michael and Melissa Kruger. The book covers 21 prayer themes, with each one including five prayer prompts from a particular passage of Scripture.
I think most of us want to pray for our spouse. We intend to pray for our spouse. But we forget to pray for our spouse.
Or, when we remember, our prayers can often be limited to what we want to see happen in their lives—the issues we see as urgent. And those aren’t always the things that are truly most needed or most urgent.
5 Things to Pray for Your Spouse, a simple but helpful book, is a tool to aid us in praying more consistently, more broadly, and more scripturally for the most important person in our lives—the one we promised to love and cherish above all others.
There is so much that only God can do, so much that only he can develop, and so much that only he can provide. So we pray.
The authors, Michael and Melissa Kruger, have provided scriptural guidance and a helpful grid for asking God to do what we know he delights to do in the lives of all who are his. They’re coaching us to look into God’s word and turn it into prayers prayed back to him—asking him to do things like develop the fruit of the Spirit in the character of our spouse; praying that God would give them a desire to serve with joy, the grace to be content when things are hard, and a perspective that will enable them to face the future with confidence and hope.
There is a great deal each of us can do for our spouse. But there is so much that only God can do, so much that only he can develop, and so much that only he can provide. So we pray. And as we pray instead of worry, pray instead of complain, pray instead of strategize, we find that God is not only doing a work in our spouse; he’s doing a work in us too. He’s generating love and joy, peace and patience.
5 Things to Pray for Your Spouse is helping me to set aside time to ask my Father to have his way in the life of the one I’m spending my life with, and I pray it will do the same for you.
Nancy Guthrie teaches the Bible at conferences around the country and is currently pursuing graduate studies at Reformed Theological Seminary. She is the author of numerous books and is the editor of Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross and Be Still, My Soul. She and her husband are the cohosts of the GriefShare video series, used in more than 8,500 churches around the country, and host Respite Retreats for couples who have experienced the death of a child.
