Praying for Your Man
Tomorrow Toby and I will be married for exactly six months (ahhhhh, time slow down!), and as I think about our journey, I think about how prayer has been such a huge role in our relationship. As many of you may know, I want to get better at praying for my husband. While I do pray for him often, I want to be more consistent with it. I notice when I pray, we are both at peace and I can be led by the Holy Spirit in regards to Toby's needs.
You don't have to wait until you're married to pray for your husband! You can even pray for them before you are even in a relationship! I have so many friends who are currently doing that. When Toby and I were dating, Nicole from
and Brittany from
had tips that really helped me know what to pray about. I also read
The Power of a Praying Wife
by Stormie O'Martin, which I loved because I could also apply Scripture to my prayers.
While praying for your future husband or current boyfriend or fiancé is great and effective, I have found that nothing is like praying for your spouse. It's so intimate. You two are literally one (Ephesians 5:31) so your prayers have power! Since I see my husband daily, I can sometimes see things that I need to pray for that he may not even realize he needs prayer for. Sometimes he comes to me and asks that I pray for him, and I take that as such an honor!
While I am no expert and still trying to find a solid and consistent way to pray for Toby, here are a few things that I have found are right for me at the moment (and you can do this for your boyfriend too):
Asking him his prayer request. On Sunday evenings after dinner, I ask my husband what his prayer requests are for the week. Sometimes it is something like a crick in his neck that has been bothering him, and sometimes it's heavier like more spiritual discipline. I may see things that I need to pray for, but I want him to not only know that he has a praying a wife, but to also know that I am interested in his life. I am interested in his well-being.
Writing down his weekly prayer requests and his daily needs. I am a visual person and I get really motivated when I see nice looking things. So I put together a cute little "husband prayer planner" to motivate me to pray for Toby. It also helps me to remember his requests for the week and to be able to jot down what needs of his I notice and he may request daily.
Praying for myself. I always want the Lord to show me my heart in our marriage and to work on it, especially after Toby and I have a fight. I ask God to show me to be a better wife, to be more receptive, to be better at guarding our relationship.
Praising God for His work. Sometimes I get in a habit in making my petitions before God that I forget to stop and thank Him for the prayers He's answered and for even having a husband. So I try to remember to show gratitude for small and big blessings in our relationship.
I know praying for your man can be overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be! You don't have to pray for every area of your man's life at once. Break up your prayers into days or weeks. For example, you can pray for a different area a day or you can pray a different area a week. And the prayers don't have to be long! You can mutter while you're washing dishes or while you're at work "protect my man, Lord and let him follow in your perfect will today" or "give him an ear to hear you and be obedient today, Father."
Oh, and I find it funny that I am talking about praying for your man today and Rachel Baxter from
is launching her prayer series tomorrow, "12 Prayers for Biblical Manhood." Ladies, this is right on time as she leads us from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. in prayer for our men. Each hour, she will put a prayer on her
and all you need is 3-5 minutes each hour to come before the Father on your guy's behalf. Okay, this is starting to sound like a sponsored post (I promise this lady doesn't even know I exist, ha!).
So what do you say? Are you willing to join me tomorrow as we pray for the most important people in our lives? Feel free to share some tips on how you pray for your man!