Praying for Your Wife

Ask most married men when they last prayed for their wife and you will get a long pause.

Not prayed about her. We do plenty of that, usually with a complaint attached. Lord, can You do something about her. Lord, help her see it my way. That is not praying for her. That is filing a grievance with heaven and hoping management takes your side.

I mean praying for her. Standing in the gap for the woman you married, lifting her burdens to God by name, asking Him to guard her, strengthen her, meet her where she is tired and afraid, and draw her closer to Himself than you ever could. That kind of praying. When did you last do that, on purpose, with her name in your mouth and nothing in it for you?

For a lot of us the honest answer is a while, or never, and I want to change that, because it is one of the most important things a man does and almost nobody talks about it.

Here is the truth under it. You are the closest human being to her soul, and you carry a responsibility for her walk that you did not sign up for and cannot hand off. Look at how the Scriptures aim the husband.

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word."

Ephesians 5:25 through 26, NASB 1995

Read what Christ is doing for His bride. He is not just providing for her and protecting her. He is sanctifying her. He is at work on her holiness, washing her, making her clean, drawing her up toward God. And the husband is told to love his wife just as Christ loves the church. That means part of your job, a part most men never even pick up, is to care about her walk with God and to labor for it. Not to be her Holy Spirit. You cannot change her heart, and trying to is a different sin for a different day. But you can carry her to the One who can, over and over, on your knees, and most men never do.

Think about what she is carrying that you do not see. The fear she does not tell you. The thing about the kids that keeps her up. The way she measures herself against women she will never match. The old wound she has never fully said out loud. The tiredness that is not just physical. You are not going to fix most of that with a conversation or a fix-it speech, and every man reading this has already tried and watched it fail. But you can take every bit of it to God, by name, and ask Him to do what you cannot.

And here is what it does to you, which is half the point. You cannot pray for a woman like that and stay cold toward her. You cannot lift her burdens to God and keep score against her at the same time. The praying softens the man doing it. You go in to intercede for her and you come out loving her more, seeing her more clearly, angry at her less. God is not only working on your marriage when you pray for her. He is working on you.

So start. Not a program, not an announcement. Tonight, when the house is quiet, put her name in your mouth in front of God and hold her up. You do not have to be good at it. You just have to actually do it, and keep doing it, and watch what a year of it does to a marriage.

Here is one to pray tonight if you do not have your own words yet. Then find your own.

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A prayer for your wife.

Behind the wheel, or wherever you get a minute alone.

Lord, it's me. I want to pray for her, and I almost never do.

You know what she is carrying that I do not see. The fears she does not say out loud. The tiredness that is not just her body. The thing she has been afraid of that I have been too busy to notice.

Carry her where I cannot. Guard her heart. Meet her when she is worn down. Draw her closer to You than I could ever pull her, and make me the kind of man who helps and not one more weight.

I cannot change her heart. I am not trying to anymore. I am handing her to You, because You can, and You love her more than I know how to.

The battle begins on my knees, even for her. Amen.