Five facts about divorce:
1. The national divorce rate in the U.S. is approximately 1 divorce in every 2 marriages.
2. That 50% divorce rate is no different among Christian couples. It’s been projected that 48% to 52% of Christian couples
being married in the United States today will suffer a divorce.
3. Couples who live in an intimate sexual relationship before they get married have an even bleaker outlook: a 68% to 75%
divorce rate projection, nation-wide.
4. Trends across the country show no signs of improvement. In 2002, for example, the divorce-to-marriage ratio
registered in our own county (Oakland County, Michigan, located just north of Detroit) was 75 divorces for every 100
marriages. In 2006 – just six years later – the ratio was 107 divorces for every 100 marriages -- a 42% increase in just
six years.
5. The impact of divorce on children is both documented and tragic. While we realize, and beg you to remember,
especially if you’ve suffered through a separation or divorce, God can do anything. And God does, in fact, rescue young
peoples’ lives every day in answer to the prayers of a faith-filled parent. But while that continues to be true and
incredibly hopeful, national statistics continue to show that children of divorced parents -- compared to children raised
in an intact nuclear family -- suffer more health, abuse, addiction and emotional problems. They have higher crime
rates, prison rates, school drop-out rates and suicide rates. And they have less affiliation with any religious body or with
either of their natural parents when they grow up.
Two facts about God’s rescue:
1) In 2002, a national family-life ministry study found that married couples
who not only shared the same faith, but who also attended the same church
together on a weekly basis, had a divorce rate of just 1 divorce in every 6
marriages. A big difference and a great reason for hope.
2. Beyond that, research consistently shows that the divorce rate for married
couples who regularly attend church together, and who also pray together
as a couple on a daily basis, drops to dramatically lower levels than divorce
rates for the general population. As mentioned on an earlier page, one
highly-respected international marriage-support organization cites a
nationwide 1980 study indicating that the divorce rate for couples who regularly attend church together and who also
pray together on a daily basis is less than 1 divorce in 1100 marriages. * Source: Retrouvaille International
One fact that you can confirm in person by this time next week:
Despite all of the above, very few Christian married couples are now praying together as a couple on a daily or even regular
basis. Not even for a few minutes a day. This is easy to confirm. We'd suggest you just ask to get a show of hands in your own
congregation about how many of the married couples in attendance at any given service are devoting even a few minutes to
praying together as husband and wife on a daily basis.
Every factor proven by research to contribute in substantial ways
to making a marriage whole, healthy and happy improves dramatically
when a couple prays together for even a few minutes a day. That includes
intimacy levels, mutual love and respect, shared faith, marital satisfaction,
trust, communication levels, everything. In fact, one highly-respected
marriage-support organization cites a 1980 study indicating that the
divorce rate for couples who attend church together regularly and also pray or read the bible together on a daily basis is, remarkably, less than 1 divorce in every 1105 marriages. (Source: Retrouvaille International)
The best news of all is that while praying together with your spouse simply and spontaneously may seem awkward to some couples trying it for the first time, entering into prayer together as "a new creation in Christ" is really your most authentic home. That's why it's so freeing and life-changing when we finally experience it. Thanking God together with your spouse, praising God together, worshipping God together, walking hand-in-hand with the God who loves you first and best and always is what you were made for. It's the deepest intimacy your marriage can offer. It's the unmatched grace that lets you discover your most genuine relationship. It's one shining thing you can do together on earth that you'll continue to do forever in heaven.
By helping you and your spouse begin praying together through a proven series of six gradual, mutually safe and mutually supportive stages, the Couple Prayer Series:
1) Helps you quickly and easily overcome the most common concerns experienced by couples just beginning to pray
together, such as “I’m afraid it might make me too vulnerable,” or “I’d have no idea how to go about it.”
2) Presents and reinforces God's wonderful promises to every couple who prioritzes a life of shared prayer.
3) Helps you develop together a life-long "menu" of whichever kinds of prayer experiences you'll both find to be the most
natural and life-giving for you, personally, both as individuals and as a couple. (The series never tries to impose
specific techniques or words or methods of prayer. It seeks to help you be open to God's help and direction, not to
structure what prayer forms will be best for you.)
4) Equips and encourages you to enjoy an on-going commitment to pray together, not just as a special six-week
experience, but as a way of life that will dramatically enhance your relationship with God, the love and intimacy of
your marriage relationship, and the faith, happiness and well-being of your entire family.
The enthused responses we've received from couples who began praying together with the help of the Couple Prayer Series clearly confirm that these same priceless goals – deeper shared faith, marital satisfaction, intimacy and trust, and greater happiness for everyone in the family -- are, in fact, God’s plan for every marriage. And they are very much within reach, right now, in your own marriage relationship.
Some of the specific areas that you’ll be invited to discuss and pray about together during the six sessions of a Couple Prayer Series (and every day in-between) include: The blessings of daily Couple Prayer. Obstacles and rewards. Suggested do's and don’ts. Thanking and praising God together. Asking for God's help together. Praying with Scripture together. Praying with other resources together. Worshipping God together. Praying for the power to forgive together. The wonderful experience of blessing one other and blessing your children on a daily basis, and more.
Here's a deeper look at each session:
Session 1: The Blessings of Couple Prayer
The first session of the Series offers strong reasons why making a shared commitment to pray together each day will bring you closer to God and to one another. It offers a review of many of the blessings you’ll experience, as well as some of the more predictable speed-bumps you may encounter, especially as you start to share your prayers with one another for the first time. You’ll consider suggested do’s and don’ts, discuss why couple prayer can start out feeling awkward for some couples, and have the chance to share with one another about some basic questions and preferences you’ll find it helpful to discuss right at the outset. This initial “finding where the common ground is” has proven to be a remarkably strong basis for moving quickly and easily toward the stated goal of the Series mentioned above: “…to help you grow gradually, safely and consistently into a life of new intimacy with God and one another through the extraordinary experience of simply sharing a few minutes in prayer together each day.”
A special note: At the close of each of the six sessions, you’ll be encouraged to print out -- from the Print Materials CD included in your Home or Church Facilitator Couple Prayer Series package -- seven separate discussion and prayer experiences (one week’s worth), each of which will be related to the focus of the just-finished session.
You'll find that these “42 Daily Prayer Experiences” are among the most life-changing experiences of the whole series, because these are those special moments you'll be able to devote entirely to the intimate coming-together of you, your spouse, and the God who is whispering to you, even now, this irrevocable promise: “’For I know the plan I have for your life. It is a plan for good and not for evil, a plan to give you a future and to give you hope.’” (Jer 29:17).
Session 2: Thanking God Together
Being loved by God unconditionally, wholly and forever, and returning God's love with
heartfelt thanks, praise and worship, is what you are made for. It is what you exist for.
It is your highest fulfillment. It is the one shining thing that you can do on earth that
you’ll continue to do forever in Heaven.
In the second session of the Series, we ask you to consider that being able to thank God
with your spouse is not only a “forever prayer,” one that you’ll be praying together
forever, but that it’s also a foundational prayer; the best, easiest, most comfortable
and most blessed entry into prayer, especially if you're just starting to pray together.
“Enter the gates of God with thanksgiving,” the word of God tells us. (Ps 100:4) We submit
that this is more than an invitation; it’s a directive. It’s the plan of God, spelled out for
us as clearly as possible. God is calling us – calling you as a couple -- to enter his gates,
to begin to move toward his intimate company, with thanksgiving as the disposition of
your heart and voice of your prayers. When we're giving thanks to God together, we're
beginning to move, step-by-step and hand-in-hand, into an even more intimate, loving,
personal relationship with God and with one another.
The Second Session’s seven “Daily Prayer Experiences” provide you with seven different
ways of sharing your thanks to God as a couple -- ways that many other couples have
already found to be safe, easy and very much blessed.
Session 3: Asking for God’s Help Together
It’s probably accurate to say that asking for God’s help is the prayer that most of us pray most often, so this can be an especially helpful session. In this session, we ask you to consider the fact that, while there is no such thing as a prayer offered in faith and love that doesn’t somehow alter the activity of God on earth, God’s activities are always pointed, most of all, toward establishing even closer, more loving and more intimate personal relationships with us and with the people we’re praying for. And we suggest that keeping this deepest desire of God's heart in mind is a first and most blessed step we can take as we come to God with our prayers of petition and intercession.
We also offer you some tried-and-true “Rules of the Road for Couple Prayer" in this session – an extremely helpful discussion of “the best possible advice” passed along to you by couples who have been praying together on a daily basis for a number of years, and who have come to experience together, not only the exceptiional blessings of it all, but a number of the more common distractions and temptations that their advice will help you recognize and avoid.
The personal testimony shared in this session introduces a husband and wife who were
struggling through two serious health issues, an unexpected job loss and even deep faith
crisis at the time of their Couple Prayer Series, but who can now recognize those months
as being “...one of our hardest times, certainly. But with all that being able to pray
together has meant to us, it was really the best time in our whole lives.”
The Third Session’s seven “Daily Prayer Experiences” will provide you with a solid and
life-long framework for asking for God’s help together.
Session 4: Praying with Scripture Together
"For just as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return without first watering the earth and making it bear fruit… My word does not return to Me empty, without succeeding in the works for which I send it.”
(Isaiah 55:10-12) “By My own self I swear it,” says the Lord, “the word that comes from My mouth is true. It is My promise. It is irrevocable.” (Isaiah 45:23)
There are many blessed resources that can help us pray together as couples, but this is the mother lode: the word of God in scripture. It’s always available, it’s inexhaustible, it’s personal, it’s blessed, and it’s pounding with life. What you’ll find proven time and again in your own lives as you discover more and more ways to make the word of God the basis of your shared prayers is that the bible really is light years beyond being simply an inspired collection of books written to both encourage and admonish us to maintain the best human behaviors. It is, in fact, unlike any other resource you'll ever find. It is, in fact, “alive and active” (Heb 4:12). It is, in fact, God’s living word -- to you, about you, for you, for you both, today, here, now, in real life, in real time. It is so truly alive that it “discerns the very thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Heb 4:12). It is the one adventure you can take together that is like none other. It is your “helmet of salvation and Sword of the Spirit” (Eph 6:17), as strong a help in your life “as a hammer which shatters rock.” (Jer 23:29).
In this session, we invite you to experience some specific and well-proven ways of praying with scripture together that we believe will be on-going blessings for the rest of your life.
The Fourth Session’s seven Daily Prayer Experience let you further expand a helpful “menu” of ways that you’ll both be blessed in, and that you’ll both grow closer through, as you pray together with the word of God.
Session 5: Worshipping God Together
There is a reason why the word of God so often brings us back to the call to worship. And that reason, we suggest, is that God knows we will become what we worship. If we worship what is really, at the end of the ages, absolutely worthless, our lives will have become absolutely worthless. If we worship the One who is Love, who is Forgiveness, who is Eternal Glory itself, we will become loving, forgiving and eternally glorious in the Lord Jesus.
Worship is the greatest intimacy and deepest Couple Prayer. To simply “be intimately together with.” To simply “be in the company of” without any agenda to make something happen. To simply be free to let yourselves be loved, and to be loved wholly, without hesitations or boundaries, by the God who loves you first, best and always. To simply let yourselves respond to being loved so purely with your own thanks, praise, gestures, silence, with your own love in return, with whatever response the worship that God alone, as pure gift, proceeds to create inside of you at that time -- this is the greatest intimacy, and deepest Couple Prayer.
“We are already the children of God," the word of God tells us, "but what we are to become in the future has not yet been revealed. All we know is that when it is revealed we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he really is.” (1 Jn 3:2 )
The Fifth Session’s seven Daily Prayer Experiences offer a simple but powerful series of “personal encounters with Jesus.” We offer these to you as you near the end of the Couple Prayer Series because there is nothing in heaven and on earth that will draw and hold you closer to each other, and closer as a couple to God, than living together in a close, personal, intimate, loving relationship with Jesus.
Session 6: Welcoming the Power to Forgive Together
Nothing is more important to our lives in Christ than forgiveness. Nothing is more important to our personal growth. Nothing is more important to the health and happiness of our marriage relationship. Nothing is more important to letting God show us all that our marriage, and our lives, are really meant to be.
Forgiveness is what makes change possible. It is why Jesus came (Mt 26:28). It is what Jesus established in the Lord’s prayer as the only human initiative we pledge to pursue. It is his proclamation over the cup of the new and everlasting covenant. It is what he prayed on the cross. It is what he is still praying for you and for your marriage today (Heb 7:25).
For all of these reasons and more, we invite you in the last of our six Couple Prayer Series sessions to focus on what an enormous gift God is giving you, not just in the endless forgiveness that he extends to you through the blood of Christ, but in the power that God gives you to forgive -- the power that God gives you to become, even today, for yourself and for one another (at least in this breathtaking respect) “even as he is.” To forgive without an end-point. To forgive life. To forgive others. To forgive your parents. To forgive your spouse. To forgive yourself. To forgive “seventy times seven times” and “from your heart.”
Nothing is more important than forgiveness. And nothing, thanks be to God, is more available to us as the power and presence of Christ in our marriage relationship.
The Sixth Session’s seven Daily Prayer Experiences invite you to go back into the different prayer forms you experienced together over the course of the Series. It’s our on-going prayer that this “menu” of various ways you can pray together will continue to be a foundation that will genuinely and powerfully “help you to grow gradually, safely and consistently into a life of new intimacy with God and one another through the extraordinary experience of simply sharing a few minutes in prayer together each day.”
