Michael & Melissa Kruger: 5 Things to Pray for Your Spouse | FamilyLife Today | Word First

hey guys thanks for joining us on Family Life Today here on YouTube make sure you subscribe you don't want to miss any episode so hit the little bell and you'll get notifications and you won't miss anything and if this encourages you like it and share with your friends yeah share it with your friends yeah welcome to Family Life today so some listener wrote into Family Life today okay to share their thoughts on our broadcast and um he had a question because you and I and we were talking about praying together as a married couple how important it is and he said where in the Bible does it say that a husband and wife should pray together and what did you say I said my wife will tell you so I'm throwing it to you [Music] welcome to Family Life Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most I'm Ann Wilson and I'm Dave Wilson and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our family life app this is Family Life today uh my thought was well Paul says to pray without ceasing there's a lot about prayer but does it say anywhere that a husband and wife should pray together you know I don't know I just know we've got two really smart people in the studio today who I think can answer this question better the weekend They're laughing right now but Michael and Melissa Krueger are in the studio from North Carolina so welcome to Orlando and welcome to Family Life today thanks so much we're glad to be here yeah and you two have written a book together about prayer so I figured you know if anybody can answer this question okay does the bible actually say it but the name of the book is five things to pray for your spouse prayers that change and strengthen your marriage so first let's just start here why write a prayer book together that's a good question um and and this book is actually to kind of help you pray for your spouse you can use it to pray with your spouse but I think we all know that we want to pray for our spouse but sometimes we don't even know what to pray or we get stuck in the same prayer Lord bless my husband Lord bless my husband yes let let work go well today for my husband I thought it was Lord change my husband for that one yeah I mean I think part of it is also autobiographical I mean you know I think people get the impression that everyone else prays better than they do and and the truth is we all struggle to pray um and so Melissa and I looked for a tool to help us think about how to pray both for each other and with each other and um there's many good tools out there but we wanted to put something together that was more concrete practical sort of Step by Step giving people a plan uh to think about prayer and sometimes you just need that little nudge to get to where you need to be to pray um and so we've been using the book um and so on on sort of a humorous selfish level you can almost say we wrote it for ourselves um and now we want to share it with others and we hope they're blessed by it I mean is that something that is like a struggle for YouTube because in some sense you look at your bio and you're like you're the president of Reformed Theological Seminary you're an author both of your authors you've written books you're leaders in the Christian Community you're you know the leader of one of the best seminaries in the world did I say that right yeah people would think you know pastors or leaders they don't struggle to pray especially in their marriage like everybody else has this been something easy for you or something you struggled with I think we're human just like everyone else and so taking the time to be still and just go before the Lord and ask the Lord to do what we cannot that is such a discipline for everyone and I think sometimes when you are used to getting things done yourself you think you can even get things done in your marriage like oh oh I don't need to pray about that I I just need to fix him or him fix me or we just need to have maybe a date night to talk about this or we just need to have a family Summit to talk about this or whatever it might be and sometimes we forget the most basic thing to pray for one another Faithfully over the long course of life and it's just a hard discipline and so what I love to do is to help make hard things a little bit easier and so this for me is really helpful and it's already been really providential because to be honest this has been kind of a hard week for us and all of the prayers that I was on for him this week were I'm from Psalm 121 on how the Lord is why watching over him and that he will not let his foot stumble and so I was praying those prayers that we had written months ago so you took a Psalm but you wrote a prayer out of it yes for your spouse yes and it's you've write it word for word in the book that's right so every prayer in this book is a springboard from some scripture passage so it's helping us combine scripture which we know okay these are good things to pray for our spouse and then it gives us some words to make it you know applicable to our situation and just this week they were the perfect words I needed to pray oh I want to hear about this week you said it was a hard week yeah yeah I mean our lives are just so busy and complicated and there's a variety of things that anybody in leadership struggles with but but you know we just love having that prayer tool this week and really any week just to turn to and when we when we need it and we love the scriptural focus of it as Melissa was saying the sort of expositional prayers yeah no it's one something to just write out your prayers but we're trying to use scripture as the guide and so each time you pray in our book we give you a passage of scripture and then we break it into five things about your spouse you can pray for based on that passage of scripture and that's that's the title of the book five things to pray so they're all scriptural based prayers and that's we love that it keeps people in the word um as much as it keeps them in prayer sort of combined listen have you ever gotten to this point because this happened to us oh boy I don't like where this is going already but we try to pray before we go to sleep at night and I love that we started our marriage doing that but then we got in this pattern because we're so busy we're exhausted with kids our lives are stressful and Dave tends to fall asleep before I do and so he'd fall asleep and then I'd be mad because we didn't pray and so then I my I feel these eyeballs looking at me and then my anger returned to resentment and my next thought was well I see how important prayer is you know and he's supposed to lead spiritually come on dude and so I wouldn't even pray because I thought that's his job and then I was so convicted I thought who wins in that situation nobody Satan won because he's the one that would love us to not pray for our spouse and so I remember I just started if Dave fell asleep I would just put my hand on his shoulder and I would just pray for him thanking God for him out loud have you ever done that or talked to women that get resentful if their husbands aren't leading in that way absolutely I mean I resonated with everything you said I think we sometimes wrongly think of our husband um that he's supposed to lead in every way spiritually right rather than viewing our marriage as a really blessed Union of two people bringing their gifts to the table yeah and so I sometimes I think wrongly early in our marriage would put all of the spiritual lump on him forgetting that God has created his body he's given me spiritual gifts he's given him spiritual gifts and I like to do some things that are very daily organized nationally so like I have actually written The Prayer chords for our family for how we pray each morning together as a family what is that but for years I would have just been sitting around Matt he wasn't doing it and you do it because that's your gift that's right it's not me taking charge it's me helping our family yeah and serving in the ways God has gifted me and I think um if you're a woman who's kind of feeling that maybe just saying well maybe this is what God's gifted me to do versus always expecting them to do every part of the spiritual leadership exactly and what I came to realize if God put it on my heart then do it and don't be resentful yeah and Michael is that a good thing for your marriage I mean did you like that Melissa's doing that or was it like oh no it's it's wonderful I mean and she's right in her earlier years I think we had this sort of overly rigid view of roles in such a way that we we knew the husband should should be the leader and head of the home and that was that was fine and true and of course we still believe that but I think we've had a very simplistic version of what that meant that meant that every spiritual activity I had to initiate start finish and sort of run and she just sort of patiently sat waiting for me to do it all um and then and then when it didn't happen obviously she would say well you're just you're dropping the ball here and um and it sounds like our marriage yeah exactly exactly a lot of people can relate to that and so um I think we just began to sort of realize that wait a second marriage is more more Dynamic than that it's it's not so simplistic as that and she was right about what she just said sometimes you could it's fine just to pray for your spouse sometimes it's fine to initiate by putting prayer cards together and say hey let's let's do this every morning and I think that also just releases the pressure valve a little bit so you don't feel like it's all on one person and so I I I've been so blessed to be married to her because she's just gracious and and aware of these things and and good for her not waiting on me because we'd probably still be waiting uh after all these years well one thing I've learned being married to someone actually in the ministry they bear that pressure every room they walk into all the time so everyone you know you go to the family Thanksgiving dinner guess who price yeah yeah every single room they walk in they have expectations so if in the home I can help in any way why wouldn't I want to help yeah because I do really feel for for men in Ministry because they're leading everywhere yeah and so it's nice for home to be a place where we can come together and um just try to serve one another in love versus me having all these unrealistic expectations for him go back to the prayer cards talk about those what are those yeah I actually love these we um it's it's been the way to help our family pray together so we meet every morning at the kitchen table sometimes barely this is every morning yeah you've got teenagers we do right we do well what we realized early on with parenting was kids do not know what's happening in any other home than yours they don't know that other families don't do it so let's do it I think everybody does this yeah that's just what you do you got to get up and pray for school to be honest we've been doing it for so long they've really never complained about it they just sit down the table and each each day we pray for a different member of the family and it's so nice just to say hey John how can we pray for you today and sometimes you get to hear things that you didn't know were going on and so you get to hear that and then we pray for a leader in our life so it could be our pastors at church it could be the school principals it could be our bosses it could be the government you know or things that the Bible tells us to pray for we pray for a missionary family that we support every morning and so those are just ways to even teach them about prayer through doing and so it's just a simple way that we can check off all the people we've been wanting to pray for but you sometimes get overwhelmed it's just a little bit each day and so we pray for these why did you start that how old were your kids well it went in different phases so the the morning prayer time started when the kids got a little older before we went to school but when they were younger we did it at night okay so I used to do sort of devotionals with the kids every night before bed because they all went to bed about the same time right so at 8pm or whatever it would be We Gather them together and right before bed do I was actually not involved yeah that's when I got to go got to have a break and I did that with the kids every night but then of course as the age and had activities and different things that the night thing wasn't working so we shifted it to morning um and that's worked fairly well um they're there every morning we know that where they're not there every night even though they're sleepy-eyed um it's a good time to to sit down and here's the other thing we learned is that sometimes parents get excited about how we're going to implement these prayer times and devotional times in our family life and they get a little overly ambitious and they think well I'm gonna have a 45 minute Bible study with my teenagers every morning and work through some Systematic Theology and they're all going to you know leave leave home with some you know Seminary level education I'm like well I appreciate shooting high for your goals but there's also unrealistic goals that you realize you can't meet and then you just stop doing it entirely so our morning prayer time is not ambitious you know you're talking about 10 minutes of face-to-face prayer time for somebody before you get out the door and it doesn't seem like much but it does make a big difference and I'm guessing you did it when they're really little too so they're probably crawling around it's messy yeah and a lot of parents give up in that moment it's like this is too hard to do but you just pledged through and am I right yeah it just looks different but it's still worth doing yeah and it's it's the it's the memory that creates with the kids even though any individual prayer moment may not be smooth and you know and and all that you wished it would be when they leave home they still get this impression that my family prayed together and it mattered to them and they're going to take that value it's interesting when our one of our sons went on a mission trip in college um they just happened to be on the road and an ambulance went by and one of the students in the van said hey we should pray for that whoever that um ambulance is going to go work on and so they prayed and somebody in the van said wow that was amazing that we just did that and our son came home and said what I realized was like oh that's not normal that we just pray all the time for anybody it's kind of what you were saying Melissa is that that just was so normal they didn't know that people didn't do that and so I like that it just it becomes a rhythm in your life and this is what we do those are that's really good strategy and yeah one of the things I you know is we've been in marriage Ministry for almost four decades now a lot of couples when you talk about you know something that would really help your marriage is to pray together whether it be day we we encourage daily they look at you like they've never done it and they don't understand why that would be beneficial what do you think why does it help a marriage or how does it help emerge well I mean prayer is prayer is one of those very intimate things isn't it I mean um it doesn't mean you can't pray with your neighbor or pray with a stranger or pray with a friend of church but there is something intimate about it that makes you vulnerable and makes you hopefully you know open and real about what's going on in your life and in busy marriages you know couples need time where they hear from each other and share what's on their heart and Times of intimacy and it it needs to be intimacy is not just romantic intimacy intimacy is also just life intimacy and in a busy life you just don't have that it and it's not the same as sitting down over a dinner and having a date night although that's important too you can talk about lots of things but prayer you just go it it zips right down into the heart you have to immediately say well what can I pray for you about or what are you struggling with and it opens up important doors in marriage and I think that's just one of the things that makes prayer so important for for marriages it joins the two people together oh and I'm sitting there thinking this is why I love it so much yes because you're right I get to know Dave I hear his heart I feel closer to him intimate and does that stop men because of that fear some not that women are praying more than men but no they might be I mean I don't think I think it's you know a general rule to say men maybe generally struggle with intimacy more than women so I don't think that's a surprise anyone to hear um and maybe men You could argue are less apt to open up and be more real whereas women may be more apt to do that and so those of course are generalizations but regardless of any particular person's personality a couple needs to be able to join together in that way for sure and prayer is just a way to do it so you know you think about what makes my marriage strong well you could say you know I gotta romance my wife date my wife you know do things for my wife give my wife gifts okay those are all important categories but prayer people forget that can actually really enhance a relationship and I think there is somewhat of a fear I know um our listeners have heard us say this I won't go into the details but there was a moment in our marriage where Ann said to me as a as a pastor and as her husband I wish the man who led our church lived here that was a Sunday night 11 p.m comment and when I and I got really mad aren't you glad that you didn't hear that one yeah yeah and I'm exhausted I just preached all morning and I sort of looked at her like what does that mean and bottom line I'm paraphrasing because it was poor timing on my part you had just done so much but here's what I remember okay that's why I brought it up I remember one of the things you said there were many at 11 30 p.m but one of them was the way you pray and cast Vision on the stage at church with passion and inspiration it's inspiring it feels like you don't I think she said ever but she probably said you rarely bring that kind of prayer and vision into our home because so honestly she was saying man that guy it's like you're two different guys and in some ways it's what you said earlier Melissa it's like in Ministry yeah that's what I do in every meeting every room I walk in that's sort of part of my role I wanted a place to go can I just let it down but at the same time when she said that I thought she deserves the best why wouldn't I bring that kind of energy but part of me is like it's easier for me to stand on a stage and pray publicly when I'm in a bedroom or a kitchen and it's just us or maybe even our family it shouldn't be any harder but sometimes it's like uh this is more intimate you know what you're saying and so sometimes I don't know if it's just a man thing but I think men and women but definitely for me it was like I'm not going to be that it takes more courage to be that intimate because prayer is an intimate thing to do just quietly in my home I wonder if wives should ask their husbands that yeah and even just ask them to pray because I think sometimes I I hope I'm not speaking for you in this instance sometimes I think while you know prayer is effective you live like oh I should actually do something to help her yeah I mean it's actually I said prayer is not the thing yes but you feel responsible that maybe prayer isn't good enough like yeah we'll be discussing a problem I can tell you want to fix it really make it better for me and so one thing I I would just encourage any men with with wives it really does help if you just say can we pray about this like that may make you feel like you're not doing enough but I think to women that just makes us feel loved but I think sometimes it's just a it doesn't feel like enough and yet it really it's amazing what just sitting together and praying can do how does that make a woman feel loved I mean I hear you my wife said the same thing I want to understand how does that compute I think it's just this unselfish I love you and I'm gonna go before the Lord of all the heavens and earth who can do something about this and it's actually acknowledging maybe I can't but God can and so I'm going to with you hand in hand seek him together and just pray that he would work the situation out and I think even just the acknowledgment that we don't have the answers in some ways prayer does that it says yeah I think of the king it's it's I can't remember which which book of the Bible it said I love the president of a seminary's wife doesn't remember what books regularly make fun of me you'd ask me a question I don't know the answer they're like Dad he's a professor don't you know aren't you omniscient I'm like actually that's great your human just like us but he says he looks at this horde coming to fight against them and he says we do not know what to do but our eyes are on you and I think all of us sometimes feel like we're facing circumstances that we really don't know how to deal with but to take your wife by the hand and say hey I don't know what to do but let's put our eyes on God I mean that that's there's a strength in that and a vulnerability that is so admirable it makes me respect Dave all the more because I think oh he believes this prayer is working he believes God hears he believes God's going to move and that makes me want to just be right there with him if Dave has ever said let's pray I'm there like yes I'm there yeah she has never said no I think I think that highlights the difference between public parent private prayer um both have their place and both matter but private prayer is much harder to fake um I mean private prayer requires genuineness Intimacy in a way you you can sort of pull off a public prayer and no one really knows whether you mean it or not but look when you pray with your kids they can spot a fake a mile away yeah um they're like they got isn't that true like teenagers particularly have like a sixth sense radar to pick up like hypocrisy from like 100 miles so if you're not in it they know your your spouse knows so praying together kind of breaks you out of that world a little bit where you can't get away with the upfrontness of it you have to be real and I think that's what brings the intimacy well I'm wondering what it would look like for our country if we as spouses we're praying for each other you know I think that would switch and change because the culture is having such an impact and fear is just bombarding us and anxiety there's a lot of scary things going on in the world right now and so to pray for our spouse I feel like that could change us as not only a family in a household but a whole generation yeah I mean one of the strategies we have with the book is prayer is worth doing in its own right but praying with your spouse is a way to strengthen marriages and I think we could all agree that the strengthening of a marriage is going to be a great way to bless the church so you know how do we make the church strong well lots of ways but one of the ways to make marriages in the church strong one of the ways of making marriage is strong is to help people pray for their spouse what's this one little step that could have a ripple effect uh in in the church in such a way that if you can strengthen these marriages across the board you may have a healthier Church in America and in the world in a way that it really can make a difference and so I think that's the strategy here is praying in in couples because it really does change the marriage here it comes will you model this for us will you pray for Michael of kind of it'll give us an example because some people are like I've never even seen this and didn't grow up with this what's this look like and sound like yeah I would love to [Music] you're listening to David Ann Wilson with Michael and Melissa Krueger on Family Life today we'll hear Melissa's prayer in just a minute but first I've got a quick question how would you rate your marriage on a scale from one to ten now be honest that number May genuinely scare you or make you excited but regardless of where you are I encourage you to check out family life's weekend to remember marriage getaway you know we've been doing this for the last 40 years and we've seen so many marriages impacted for the glory of God and the health of the relationships and we really want to see that for you too so today is the last day to register and get half off the registration price so don't wait visit familylifetoday.com find a date and location that works for you and save 50 your marriage is worth it all right now here's Melissa Krueger modeling how to pray for your spouse let's pray okay father I thank you that I can come before you um I thank you that you welcome us to your throne room of Grace and that you say we can come boldly because you are merciful so I thank you that um I can come and pray for Mike and Lord I do pray I pray um the words of Psalm 121 that he would know that you are a God who does not sleep that you neither slumber nor sleep and that you are watching over him in love each day and Lord I pray that you would keep his feet from falling that you would keep him from stumbling that you would allow him to walk um walk in a manner worthy of the Gospel Lord I pray that you would do that for him and Lord I just also pray that you would protect him and keep him safe from troubles and from hardships that when they come he would lean more into you and trust you in all things Lord I Thank you that we can bring all of our requests before you and Lord I pray for him today and uh just pray for all of us as we are wives and husbands and we seek to love our spouses make us prayerful people it's in your name we pray amen amen amen [Music] you've been listening to Dave and Anne's conversation with Michael and Melissa Krueger on Family Life Today their book is called five things to pray for your spouse and we'll send you a copy when you give any amount today at familylifetoday.com if you know anyone who needs to hear today's conversation be sure to share it from wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there a simple way you can help more families discover God's plan for marriage and families is by leaving a rating and review for Family Life Today and Dave and Ann are joined tomorrow with Larry Fowler and Tim Kimmel about raising kids with a faith that lasts join us then on behalf of David Ann Wilson I'm Shelby Abbott we'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life today [Music] Family Life Today is a production of family life a crew Ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most [Music]