Shutterstock.com
A struggling relationship is a source of immense emotional pain. If you’ve ever endured a broken marriage or a slowly-dwindling long-term dating relationship, you know how difficult it can be to find lasting reconciliation.
If this is you, the power of prayer may be just what you need.
Faith is a powerful thing, and appealing to God for the health of your relationship can have amazing results. Used in conjunction with other efforts, such as relationship counseling, prayer can be downright miraculous.
Rest assured that God hears your prayers, and that He cares about you. His answers may not always come in the form we expect, but they do come when we ask for help.
And sometimes, the very act of praying can bring about huge change in your life. When we pray, we take our abstract desires and put them into words. We say what we want out loud. Sometimes, that’s enough to help us make sense of our problems and go about finding the solutions—God works through natural means as much as He does through the miraculous.
But whichever way prayer works out for you, it’s always worth your time. To help you learn how to use prayer well, let’s take a look at 7 examples of prayers for a struggling relationship.
www.beliefnet.com
Lord., we need you now more than ever. We continue to run into brick walls daily in each task we do. We are struggling right now, at a point that we have never experienced before. The road looks so dark, the map looks so foggy. We need comfort.we need your LOVE. We need YOUR words. We need you, your spirit, your being, your strength, your wisdom to ease the stress. There are so many things snowballing in to an unmanageable size of despair. Somehow I know it has to get better, but I’m struggling to have faith. I just don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Please guide this family. Please love us and walk with us. Please help us. We need you so much. Only you know out hearts and our should. Please.please.please.please hell us.
I thank you Lord. For everything you are, got your being, your Grace, your love and your light.
In Jesus’s name, I pay, amen.
Return to 7 Daily Prayers to Get You Through The Week
www.praywithme.com
by Nicolas (Pennsylvania)
Lord God, I am struggling very much right now. I have constantly made the wrong choice and have always fallen short in my attempts to love my true love, Rachel. I love her above all else other than You. My soul yearns for her more than anything. I am so happy to have found her. I truly believe you have sent her here to be with me forever. I knew ever since I saw her that I wanted to marry her and to start a family with her. We both have had that mutual feeling.
But now, it’s fallen apart. My family is wanting me around a lot recently while she has been used to me being around a lot, and now I’m with her less and her expectations have been crushes by me. I ask that You give me the wisdom to make a decision that will lead to the restoration of our relationship, the strength to stand up against whatever hardships I face, and a strong will to never back down and to never give up. It is also difficult because she is a Sophomore in high school and I’m a Senior in high school and I’m about to go to college. So we will have such little time together. She wants to start the time apart soon. But, today, she has begun to have thoughts that this relationship won’t last and that our hopes and dreams of marriage and starting a family are only a fantasy and I feel like I was once her true love, but not anymore, that I was her happiness, but not anymore. Please, Lord, grant her the hope and confidence she needs in order to follow through with this relationship. Please. I feel empty from just thinking about being separated from her. Grant us both the grace necessary to ensure that our lives will be spent together through the everlasting bonds of Marriage and that we may have a love that is free, total, faithful, and fruitful. Please, Lord, help me in this time of great need, pain, suffering, confusion, isolation, and depression and help restore to us the hope we need to keep this relationship going. I love you. Amen.
Return to 7 Daily Prayers to Get You Through The Week
www.praywithme.com
A Prayer for Struggling Relationships
By Meg Bucher
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13
Relationships remain imperfect because humanity is incapable of selfless love. Due to the fall in the garden of Eden, we are continually cursed with sin, keeping us from accomplishing correct communication with each other. Only one pair of feet have ever trod the earth in perfect obedience to God. Jesus came out of compassion for us. It’s through Him, that we can find victory in life, and our relationships. Not through perfection of our behavior, but through the perfect forgiveness and hope that His love grants us.
The very definition of ‘struggle’ is “to content with an adversary or opposing force.” We often pit the people on the other side of our relationships against ourselves. In addition to the disagreement at hand, we internally mull over all of the ways that we want them to treat us, and expect to be treated. We are set to a defensive default, but created to love.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13
Jesus taught that this was the most important command. The NIV Notes on this verse say that “Jesus’ teaching united his followers around love.” Unity is the opposite of struggling opposition. There’s nothing we can do to force our relationships to work. But we can focus on Love.
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:29-31
There are times God will allow the door to be closed on unhealthy relationships, but most can be reconciled by His love. When we ask God to help us recognize the hardships that we bring into our relationships, our hearts can begin to grow out of that conviction. Prayer and time in God’s word, and following the footsteps of Jesus’ life on heart, can give us direction on the path to constructing new bridges where old ones have been burned.
God is love. We can cry out to Him in pain when our struggles to get along with others, especially the more important relationships in our lives, are hard and hurting. He commands us to love, but we cannot accomplish it without His grace. If we cannot, than understanding that no one else can, either, will help us extend that same grace to others. When we allow each other to be the imperfect people that we are, forgiveness flows easier. When we look to Christ as an example, He will show us how to find a way to mend our struggles with love.
Father,
Praise You for Jesus’ example on this earth. We know that You are purposeful in the plan that You have or our lives, and for the people that you place in it. We are not always going to get along with everyone. Not always going to execute our behavior in Christ-like fashion. Help alleviate the shame of our imperfection, and help us to extend that grace to others.
Christ came to forgive us for every misbehavior He knew that we would choose to suffer by. Imperfect people dealing with imperfect people can get a little messy down on earth. We ask for You to cover us in Your grace, and convict our hearts to change and love more like Jesus every day that we wake to breathe again. Forgive us for letting the sharp edges of our sensitivities take over conversations, and the anxieties of our minds cloud our judgment. Help us to see others through Your eyes, as souls that You love just as much as You love ours.
Bless our hearts to soften towards others, yet protect us from deceptive motives. When there is a relationship that you wish us to walk away from, be it friendly or romantic, help us to hear a clear word from You. Bless our friendships to be godly and God-centered. Bless our marriages to be lifelong and blessed. When we struggle maritally, provide godly counsel and reconciliation, so that if at all possible we may honor our lifelong commitment to You and each other. Show us, by illuminating Your Word and blessing us with Your presence, how to be more like Jesus, how to love as He spoke, and You command.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.
Meg encourages others to seek Him first through her life as a stay-at-home mom, career as a freelance writer, teaching Emoti-moms Weekly Bible Study, and leading the kids worship teams at her local church. She resides in a small, Northern lake town with her husband of ten years, two daughters, and their Golden-doodle. Megwrites about everyday life within the love of Christ on her blog,
www.crosswalk.com
