A Prayer for My Husband
Some days you pray for him out of gladness. Some days you pray for him because it is the only thing left that you can do for him. Both are prayer.
This one is written to be prayed as it stands, or taken apart and made your own.
A prayer for your husband can be simple and specific: ask for his protection, his work, his integrity, and his walk with God. Ephesians 3:16 is a good pattern — that he would be strengthened with power through God’s Spirit in his inner being.
I ask that out of the riches of His glory He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Then you, being rooted and grounded in love, will have power, together with all the saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth of the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.
Pray without ceasing.
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, persistent in prayer.
A song of ascents. Of Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain; unless the LORD protects the city, its watchmen stand guard in vain.
As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with hearts of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with one another and forgive any complaint you may have against someone else. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which is the bond of perfect unity.
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail.
The LORD will guard you from all evil; He will preserve your soul. The LORD will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore.
‘May the LORD bless you and keep you; may the LORD cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the LORD lift up His countenance toward you and give you peace.’
The prayer
Lord, thank You for this man. You know him better than I do — the part he shows the world, and the part that only I see when the door closes.
Strengthen him in his inner being. Where he is carrying something he has not told me about, meet him in it. Where he is tired of being the one who copes, give him rest that actually restores him.
Guard his integrity when no one is watching. Make him gentle with our home and courageous outside it. Let his work be honest and let it be enough.
Where we are strained, soften whichever of us You can reach first. Teach me to be quick to be kind and slow to keep score.
And draw him to Yourself, nearer than I can pull him. Amen.
When it is hard to pray for him
Some seasons this prayer catches in your throat. That is not a failure of faith; it is honesty, and God can work with it.
On those days, try praying one sentence rather than the whole page — and try praying it about the man he is on his best day rather than his worst. Romans 12:12 gives the smallest workable instruction: be “faithful in prayer.” Faithful, not fluent.
If your marriage is under real strain, please talk to someone you trust as well as to God. There is a fuller page at a marriage in trouble. If you are being harmed, tell someone today — nothing here asks you to stay somewhere unsafe.
Where these words come from
Ephesians 3:16-19 is Paul praying almost exactly this for people he loved: inner strength, rooted love, and a grasp of how wide God’s love actually is. Proverbs 3:5-6 is the trust underneath it, and 1 Thessalonians 5:17 is the permission to keep going — pray without ceasing, which mostly means keep coming back.
Praying this for someone specific?
Light a candle for her — and come back to tend it tomorrow.