Prayers for your marriage
For the marriage that is tired, the argument you keep having, and the days it is simply good. Pray these on your own; you do not need them to agree.
Most marriages do not come apart in one afternoon. They wear thin in ordinary places: the same disagreement about money that neither of you can finish, a fortnight of being polite, the sense that you are running a household together and not much else.
You may have come here in the middle of something. A door has just shut. Or you are lying awake next to someone you cannot reach. Or you are sitting in the car outside the supermarket because it was the only quiet place you could find.
These are prayers for one person to say. Your husband or wife does not need to know you are praying them and does not need to agree with a word. Underneath them are the passages people reach for about marriage, and where they came from.
18 prayers on this page, and 9 Bible passages with notes on what they mean.
The argument you keep having
You both know how this one goes, and you know the lines before they arrive. These are for the ten minutes before it starts again, and for the hour afterwards when nothing is settled.
Before we start it again
God, we are about to have this argument for the hundredth time. I already know my lines and I already know theirs. Slow me down. Let me hear what is actually being said tonight, and not what was said three years ago.
When I can feel it rising
God, I can feel it coming up my throat. Hold my tongue for ten seconds.
After it has gone round again
Nothing was settled. We stopped because we were tired, not because anything was mended. I am not going to call that peace. Stay in this house tonight with both of us, and keep something alive in me for the morning.
When I am sure I am right
I think I am right, God, and I might well be. It is not helping either of us. Show me the one thing in this I have refused to look at, even if I would rather not see it tonight.
When you have stopped talking
Not a row. Just weeks of being courteous, two people running a house and a shared diary. This is for the quiet sort of distance, and for whoever is going to have to speak first.
For a marriage gone polite
God, we are perfectly civil and I am lonely in my own kitchen. I cannot say when it went like this. I miss them and they are sitting three feet away from me. Do something in the middle of us.
When I do not feel anything
I do not feel much for them at the moment, God, and I am frightened of saying that out loud to anyone. I am not asking you to hand the feeling back to me tonight. I am telling you the truth, and I am staying here.
For the first move
God, someone has to speak first. Give me the nerve to make it me.
When the apology is yours
You said it, or you did it, or you have been doing it for years without noticing. This is for before the apology, and for the longer stretch after it, when nothing looks fixed yet.
When I know what I did
I did it, God. I know exactly what I said and I knew what it would do when I said it. I am not going to dress it up in front of you. Give me the words to say it plainly to them, without excuses and without angling to be let off.
When sorry has not been enough
I have apologised and it has not landed. Part of me wants credit for apologising at all. Take that from me, God. Let me be patient for as long as this takes, and let me stop counting the days.
When saying sorry is not the hard part
Saying it was the easy bit, God. The thing I did comes out of something in me that I have not dealt with, and they have watched me apologise for it before. Show me the root of it. Give me the patience for slow work rather than a grand gesture.
When it might not hold
Betrayal, or separation, or a fear you have not said out loud to anyone. We will not tell you what to do. If you are not safe at home, please tell someone today, a person you trust or somebody whose job it is to help, and do not let praying stand in for that.
When trust has been broken
They broke it, God. I cannot see how it goes back together. I am not ready to talk about forgiveness and I will not be hurried into it by anybody. Sit with me in the wreck of it tonight.
When forgiving feels like pretending
You ask me to forgive and I do not know how to do it honestly. I will not say it was fine, because it was not fine. Teach me what forgiving is when the hurt is still sitting there in the room.
When I am thinking about leaving
I am thinking about leaving, God, and I have not said that to a living soul. I do not know whether it is fear talking or wisdom. Give me clear eyes, honest people around me, and time enough to tell the difference.
When home does not feel safe
God, I am afraid in my own home. I am not going to explain it away tonight, even to myself. Give me one person I can tell the truth to today, and keep us safe while I do it.
While I wait to know
I do not know how this ends. Hold me while I wait to find out.
On the days it is good
Some days there is nothing to fix. They made tea without being asked, or you both laughed at the same daft thing. Worth saying something before the day gets busy and you forget.
Thank you for an ordinary day
Thank you, God, for a plain Tuesday with this person. Nothing happened. We ate, we argued about the bins, we watched something and fell asleep. It was good. I do not want to only talk to you when it is hard.
For the years we already have
We have got this far, God. Some of it was hard and we did it anyway. Thank you for every unglamorous morning of it, and for whatever you were doing in us that we could not see at the time.
For the small kindnesses
Thank you for the tea they made without asking. Let me actually say so.
Bible verses about marriage
What each passage meant where it was written, and what it does and does not offer you now.
Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh.
Genesis 2:18–24
This sits at the end of a story about loneliness. The first thing God calls not good is a person on their own. Notice how much of the verse is about leaving: a new household outranks the old one. It is read at weddings as romance, and it is also a plain instruction about where your loyalty now sits, which is often the actual argument in the kitchen.
with all lowliness and humility, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:1–3
Written to a church rather than to a couple, which is what makes it useful. These were people who did not choose each other and had to keep going anyway. Bearing with is not a warm feeling. It is the daily decision to put up with something that irritates you, and being eager about it suggests effort, not patience arriving on its own.
Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath
Ephesians 4:25–32
This gets turned into a rule that no argument may cross midnight, which has kept exhausted couples up until two in the morning making things considerably worse. The concern is not the clock. It is anger that is allowed to settle and harden into something you keep. Sometimes the way to honour it is to say you will finish this tomorrow, and then actually finish it.
let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger; for the anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God.
James 1:19–20
The order matters. Hear first, speak later, and be slowest of all to anger. It is not a ban on being angry. It says that anger will not produce what you want it to produce, which is the plain experience of everyone who has won an argument at eleven at night and lost something else in the process.
Where these verses get misused
Verses about marriage get used as leverage. Ephesians 5 has been quoted at women to make obedience sound holy, when the sentence opening it tells both people to submit to each other. Matthew 19 has been used to tell someone being hurt at home that leaving would be tearing apart what God joined. Nothing on this page requires you to stay somewhere you are not safe, or to forgive on somebody else's timetable. If Scripture is being used to keep you quiet about harm, that is a misuse of it, and you are allowed to tell someone who can help.
Questions people ask
- Does praying for my marriage do anything if my husband isn't praying?
- Prayer is not a two-person voting system, so yes, praying alone is a real thing to do. It changes what you notice, how fast you speak, what you are willing to admit about your own part. Christians have always prayed for people who were not praying with them, and what God does with those prayers is not ours to measure or to promise. It puts your spouse under no obligation. If you are hoping it will quietly turn them into someone else, that hope will wear you down. Start with yourself, and be honest about what you actually want.
- What do I pray when part of me wants out?
- Say that. There is no version of prayer where you are required to hide it, and you will not be telling God anything he has not already heard. Wanting out is information about how much pain you are carrying. It is not automatically a decision and it is not a sin to notice. Say it plainly, then say it to a person you trust, and give yourself more than one bad night before you weigh it.
- Is it wrong to pray that my wife will change?
- Not wrong, but watch what it does to you. A prayer that is really a complaint filed with a higher authority tends to harden into a case for the prosecution. Name the specific thing rather than her character, pray it honestly once, then ask what you are contributing. Nobody can tell you how much of another person's behaviour prayer shifts. You do know what you could do differently tomorrow morning.
- How do I pray when I don't love them any more?
- Pray without pretending. You do not have to feel affection to ask God for your spouse's good, and saying words you do not feel is not dishonest so long as you admit you do not feel them. Feelings in a long marriage go flat, and sometimes they come back, and sometimes they do not. A dead patch is not a verdict on its own. Talk to a counsellor before you decide what it means.
Pick one prayer. Say it once, out loud if you can manage it, in the room you are actually standing in. Then put the phone down and go and do the next small thing, the washing up or the school run. You do not have to feel any different afterwards for it to have counted.