By Hal Pickus · · 5 min read
A prayer for your marriage to be restored
If you're reading this, your marriage is probably in a hard place — maybe a really hard place. Separation on the table, or a wall between you that you don't know how to climb, or just years of slow drift that finally caught up. You still love them, or you want to, and you're praying because you've run out of everything else. God is not out of options, even when you are.
Start with the One who made it
Your marriage wasn't only your idea. God was the one who joined you together — and what he builds, he can rebuild:
What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
Mark 10:9
That verse usually gets quoted as a warning. Read it as hope, too: God takes the joining of two people seriously. He has a stake in your marriage. You're not asking him to care about something he's indifferent to — you're asking him to restore something he started.
Pray for your spouse — and your own heart
It's natural to pray that God would change your spouse. Pray that. But the bravest prayer also asks him to change you — to soften your own heart, not just theirs:
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
1 Corinthians 13:4–5
Read that slowly, because it's a mirror, not a weapon: patient, kind, not easily provoked, keeps no record of wrongs. Restoration usually starts with one person letting God do that work in them first.
A prayer
Father, you joined us together, and I'm asking you to put us back together. Soften both our hearts — mine included. Where I've been cold or proud or quick to keep score, change me. Protect our marriage from anything that would end it, and give us both the willingness to try again. I can't fix this. You can. Amen.
Ask God to restore what's been lost
Maybe years feel wasted — to anger, to distance, to mistakes. There's a tender promise in the Old Testament about exactly that kind of loss:
And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
Joel 2:25
"I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten." God specializes in giving back what was eaten away. He is not limited by how long it's been bad, or how far gone it feels.
Don't try to carry this alone
A marriage in crisis is too heavy for two people to fix in private, and far too heavy for one to carry by themselves. Get wise help — a pastor, a Christian counselor — and let trusted people pray with you. Scripture is honest about how much stronger three are than one:
And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:12
"A threefold cord is not quickly broken." The third cord is God. Invite him fully into your marriage, get real support around you, and keep praying — restoration is slow, but it's one of the things God loves to do. If your marriage is the weight on your heart tonight, you don't have to pray it alone; lift it here and let others stand with you.