Video Teaching: Praying As A Couple Makes A Difference!
Lori Byrne talks about the importance of praying together as a couple. The Scripture references for your personal study time on prayer are:
- Matthew 18:19 – 20
- 1 John 5:14-15
- Acts 4:29 – 31
- 1 Thessalonians 5:17
Video Transcript
LORI: Hi you guys, it’s me. I’m here all by myself. But my Barry B is in Pennsylvania, and he is hunting deer with a childhood friend. And that’s kind of been an answer to prayer for him to just have some getaway time and some fun stuff. And so, I want you all to pray that he gets a deer today. That would be awesome – an 8-point buck.
So, I want to talk to you today about something that is very, very important, and I think is really overlooked in marriage and really underestimated and understated. And that is this whole thing of praying together. You know, when we do our workshops, we always ask, “How many of you pray together?” And it is such a small percentage of the room every time we ask. I mean it’s rare if there’s a little bit more, and we’re going, “Oh, wow,” but that is very rare. Most of the time, Christians are not praying together in their marriage. And they pray individually; they have a good quiet time, and they pursue the Lord. But they’re not praying together. And Barry’s talked about this in the workshop, but I’m going to say it again, that Gallup did a study quite awhile back, and they measured how many Christians pray. Well, first let me say this. In a marriage, a Christian marriage, one out of every three are getting divorced. It’s not a whole lot different than the world. I think originally it was one out of every two in the world, and one out of every three in Christian marriages are getting a divorce. But for those that prayed, their divorce rate was one in one thousand fifty-two. So that is a huge difference, you guys.
And all I can say is I want to tell you how this has been important in our lives, and we realize that it’s not only strengthened us spiritually, but it’s bonded us together emotionally. And we didn’t ever try to figure out how we could pray more, but Barry’s back was bad. And when he was in his – probably mid- to late thirties, he needed to start walking regularly every day, and so I started doing it with him. And we just happened on this and started praying while we were doing it, and it became a way of life. And we have been doing that for probably – I don’t know, how long have we been married? We’ll be married thirty-nine years, and next year will be forty, so we’ve probably been doing that pretty consistently five days out of the week, rain or shine. And we didn’t do it right at the beginning of our marriage; it was when we were in our thirties. But starting from that point on, we’ve been very consistent, and now it has become something that we do in our lives that we really enjoy. And we’ll even just do it as a pastime, not in the regular everyday routine of trying to walk and pray together, but we’ll do it on the weekends as well.
And what we found is, we pray for – we start out with thanksgiving. And we do worship, and we are declaring who He is. And then we move into things that are really important for us to pray for, and we pray for our marriage every day, almost every day. And as we do that, we just are praying for things we’re working through, praying for things – thanking God for what He’s doing, answered prayers within our marriage. We also pray for our children regularly. And you know, there’s so much going on with your kids, and we always are – that’s like our first ministry. Our relationship to one another and our children is our first ministry above anything else. And so, we spend a lot of time praying for those things. And we also pray for Nothing Hidden Ministries; we pray for all the people that have been to the LAM classes, all the people that have been to Single Life Workshop. We pray regularly for you guys because it’s so important to us that – and I know God is hearing our prayers. I know He’s answering our prayers. We pray for our church; we pray for our leaders at church. We pray for our neighborhood. We pray for our government. We pray for our nation. We pray for our president. We pray for just everyday things in life that are going on. And we do – not just when we walk and pray, but we do have times when we are crying out. And I think we’ve talked about that before, when there’s specific things that we just need breakthrough for, and we are really going after it and spending a significant amount of time in the night or in the morning just on our face just crying out. And that’s been a real significant thing, too. But what we found is God really answers, and He is – it’s a way for us to connect with Him every single day. It’s a way for us to have our time; it’s become our time, and it’s all mixed in with Holy Spirit. We walk and pray. Sometimes we’ll be mixing in there a fight that we’re going through, some conflict we’re trying to work through, and that’ll be right in the middle of our time. Or it can be – sometimes we’re talking about dreams that we’ve had in the night, and we’re sharing interpretation. It kind of doesn’t matter whether we’re praying or talking; it’s like it’s all kind of under the guise of prayer because God is so much there with us.
Now in order for you to do this, it doesn’t always work for you to have a time where you can walk and pray. You know we used to walk and pray around our neighborhood. And then when we came, and we moved to Bethel, and we would walk around our neighborhood – we have so many hills, and as we were getting older, it was hard on our knees. And so, the Lord opened a pathway in the wilderness, and just two minutes from our house, we have a little River Trail tributary that adds on to the big one, and we didn’t even know that. So we walk, and we thank the Lord for our River Trail. Then the fire came and burned down our River Trail, and we’re counting on the Lord restoring it and growing things again. But right now, it’s dark in the mornings when we usually walk and pray, and so we are now in our basement doing light weight lifting, putting on worship music, doing lunges, doing fast running in place. We got a little mini-trampoline, and we are exercising and worshiping and praying together all at the same time, and we’re loving it.
And so, I just say that because I want you guys to do this as a little prescription. I want you to take an evening and ask the Lord to begin to show you a plan for how you can pray regularly together. And we found that it helps if you mix it in with routine. You know, like we always want to exercise in some form; and so in that, walking is always really good for our back, so that’s a good way. Maybe you have a regular time where you have coffee on the front porch, or you sit by the fire at night, or you – it could be a lot of different things. But if it is a routine and something that you are making as a priority, it needs to be that. It’s become a priority because of the prayer. We realize how much it’s strengthening us and helping us as we pray together. And so, the exercise and the walking becomes a priority. But I want you to spend a night doing that, asking the Lord and then just putting on some soaking music and listening as He starts speaking to you, and just writing down what some possibilities are for plans where you could do this. Because this really is a game changer; praying regularly together and being with the Lord in His Presence is so, so important. We can’t stress that enough.
And we’ve put some references here that we want you to look up:
- Matthew 18:19 – 20
- 1 John 5:14 – 15
- Acts 4:29 – 31
- 1 Thessalonians 5:17
And as you’re doing that, we just again want you to be asking the Lord to speak to you together about this. And then, set a date. Make a choice. Make a plan. Set a date and start. And then ask the Lord to help you really carry through with this. He wants this even more than you do, and He knows the value of it. And so, we encourage you to look up those Scripture passages, to take that time to look up Scripture yourselves, and then spend that evening asking the Lord to speak to you about this, how you can really implement this.
And I just want to end with two things here. Hold on just one second; oh, there it is. This scripture passage, First Thessalonians 5:17, it’s “pray without ceasing.” Close to one of the shortest verses in the bible. But listen to how the Passion Translation says this. “Make your life a prayer.” And you know, I think since we’ve been doing this, it’s so easy for us to just be driving in the car and start praying. It’s so easy for us when we’re walking out of the grocery store or we’re anywhere together, we just start praying. It’s really become a part of our life. And I feel like there is a lot of power that comes when we pray together, even more so than when we’re praying individually. And it doesn’t mean that God doesn’t hear us when we pray – you know, only pray together and not individually; that’s not true for all you singles. But when you are – the Bible says a lot in these passages, “When two or more…” And it doesn’t say you have to be married, but there’s something very powerful about coming together and praying. So I could even say this to you singles, and you guys could figure out a plan to have a regular prayer time, you know, even on the phone; you can do FaceTime. It’s so easy; you could do that very easily.
But I also want to leave you with this, and then I’m going to pray for you. But one of the books that I have loved that has probably taught me more on prayer has been Frank Peretti’s series, Piercing The Darkness and This Present Darkness, both of those books. I read those books every year because it is such a reminder – the way he’s written it, it just opens you up to the reality of the spirit realm and how important prayer is in overcoming the enemy, how we end up working together with the angels. And I think when we get to heaven, we’re going to see how right on Frank Peretti was, because I’ve thought so many times, “How does he know about this?” Because there’s a lot of things he knows about the demonic that I thought, “He must have had some experience with this, or – ” you know? But overall, every time I read that book, I am so challenged and encouraged to increase my prayer life. So I want to encourage you, if you’re single, get a friend and read through it together. Read a chapter together, and then talk about it. If you’re married, read it out loud at night. Let it be a time – it’s really a good read; it’s an excellent read. It’s very – you can hardly put it down, so it’s not hard. But what it gives you spiritually is so significant; I really encourage you to do that.
So, Jesus, You look at them right now. You see them listening to this. And I ask that this would reach many, and that they would be convicted. I ask, Father, that You would stir their hearts, and You would help them on this evening to plan, make a plan to figure out – get a strategy from You, Holy Spirit, to know how to get prayer into your lives regularly. You know, we’re living in these days that we really can’t afford not to be praying together for us and our families and the things that the Holy Spirit puts on our minds. And so I bless your spirits with a hunger and a desire from this humble post to desire, and not only desired but to choose to make this a priority in your lives. And I bless you, and I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.