Couple Evening Prayer – Members Content
Praying as an individual is vital to our Christian journey. As a married couple, you can also do couple prayer. This is prayer in personal conversation with God while allowing our spouse to hear. It’s a bit like a three way conversation.
When we pray in this way, we are authentic and honest as there can be no masks before God. Many couples therefore find this quite confronting and feel very vulnerable. They are spiritually naked and it can feel uncomfortable. That is precisely why this kind of prayer is so powerful.
Praying together, as a couple, builds relationship.
Sharing your prayer is a tremendous act of trust. It is an invitation to intimacy and is profoundly effective in bonding you as a couple.
Most couples find it difficult to pray together. You can make it easier to establish a habit of couple prayer by regularly using the Evening Prayer during your engagement. This simple format allows you to reflect on God’s presence in your life, attuning your mind and heart to your mission to love as God loves.
Tool: Evening Prayer
Begin to pray together every day or at least once a week. Pick a specific time, and if not sure how to pray, use the following format.
- Rest: Hold hands and rest quietly for a minute to become aware of God’s presence.
- Share: how you have felt loved by your spouse today?
- Pray: Together say the prayer.
Lord God, We praise you for the gift of the other, and we thank you for the blessings we have had through our relationship.
Forgive us for the times that we have failed to love the way we should.
Help us to do better in bringing your love and acceptance to each other. Amen.
NB: You can also pray this prayer individually.
Stories of the Heart
We found it really difficult to pray together even though we had been involved in youth groups and were used to praying with others regularly. We felt quite vulnerable praying spontaneously especially when there was a bit of tension between us – it was like the elephant in the room; neither of us wanted to be the one to break the ice with prayer. Then life just got busy and there was always a good reason why we should ‘skip’ prayer that night. Soon we’d skipped prayer for whole months and it seemed even more daunting to go back to the open prayer we were used to.
So we tried a change of approach. We made it really simple – something we could do even on our worst nights when we were tired and grumpy. The Evening Prayer doesn’t require us to do any preparation, just to take a few minutes each evening. And it’s making a big difference. We find ourselves being gentler with each other and less quick to react when something upsets us.
