Have you ever wondered whether you should pray for your husband? Or felt like you don’t even know how to begin praying for him? If you have ever asked yourself these questions, you are not alone! Continue reading to hear my story and how I began praying for my spouse.
My Story
Shortly after our engagement in January 2020, I remember typing “how to pray for your husband” and “how to pray for your spouse” into Google. Somehow I knew that it was important to pray for one’s spouse, even though I’m not really sure I had ever heard it anywhere. I had heard of praying for your future spouse, but not anything about praying for your actual spouse. Anyway, I knew I wanted to start praying for Joshua in a special way as we were soon to be married in August.
Initially, I found a few Protestant resources, but their prayers were disappointing and lacking real content. Eventually, I found an infographic on ChurchPop about praying for your spouse. It provided a list of 8 things to pray for:
- For their relationship with God
- For their emotional and spiritual health
- For them to resist temptation
- For their purity of heart, mind, and body
- For their family and friends
- For them to prosper at their projects
- For their faithfulness and love to you
- For your current and future children
This information gave me the inspiration I needed to write my own prayer for Joshua. This was the foundation of my prayer for my spouse though it has changed over time depending on his needs.
Why Should I Pray For My Husband?
Why should you pray for your husband? It can be tempting to say to oneself “my husband doesn’t pray for me, why should I pray for him?” or “my prayers don’t really do anything, he’ll never change.”
First of all, you should reject these lies. Do you really know that your husband isn’t praying for you and your family? I bet you would be surprised. I have known many men to pray for their families on their way to and from work, to offer their day for their families, or to recite other prayers throughout their day for their wives and children.
Also, prayer is efficacious. Jesus explicitly tells us:
Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name He will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy my be complete.
John 16:23-24
That means God our Father not only hears our prayers, but will grant them in His time, as long as they are in accord with His will. So we should ask and pray for our specific and even daily needs and then trust that the Lord will provide.
As wives, we have a special vocation. Your vocation as wife is to help your husband get to Heaven, to be with our loving God forever. How many of us actually have that in mind as we go about our days? In reality, praying for your husband is the greatest and most helpful thing you could ever do for him. Much more important than just cooking his meals and doing his laundry.
How to Write Your Own Prayer for Your Husband
I would like to help you to be able to pray intentionally for your spouse by writing your own prayer for him. I would recommend first writing down each aspect you want to pray for for your husband in bullet points. Here are some suggestions:
- I would recommend using the list provided by ChurchPop as a start
- If there are other prayers you know that have sentences or phrases you really like, borrow them for this prayer
- Does your spouse have certain needs (material, spiritual, physical, emotional, etc.) that are specific to him? Is he looking for a job? Does he have an illness? Is he dissatisfied with his co-workers or boss? Does he feel far from the Lord?
- Invoke Our Lady and St. Joseph as well as his patron saints and guardian angel
- Personalize for whatever stage he is at in life. Is he working or retired? Do you have any children? Is he taking college or graduate courses?
Once you have your bullet points, you can write up your rough draft. Then you can go back and change it if you need or want to. You can always make changes in your prayer to fit the changes that happen in your husband’s life. I personally have tweaked the prayer I wrote for Joshua many times as his needs and our family have grown.
My Prayer
Combining the list of reasons to pray for your spouse with other prayers I knew and adding in personalization, I was able to write this prayer for my husband:
Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, aid Joshua, my husband, this day. Draw him ever closer to You. Fill him with Your love and pour out Your mercy and forgiveness upon him. Bless him today with emotional and physical health. Give Joshua the grace to resist all the temptation he encounters today and keep him pure, attaining purity of heart, mind, soul, and body. Let him be Your instrument to everyone he meets and bless all of the members of his family and his friends.
As he goes about his day today, give him the grace to fulfill his vocation and live in the present moment so that he may respond to Your call of joyfully living a holy life. Let him embrace every moment of every day, every situation, every person he encounters as an opportunity to become the best-version-of-himself. Help him to prosper in all of his projects.
Aid him this day to faithfully love me and for our love as a couple to reflect Your love and grow deeper as we live our life together. Since you have blessed us with our children, bless them and give Joshua the strength, wisdom, and patience to be a good husband, father, provider, and protector for our family. Help us as parents to be Your instruments of love and good examples to our children.
Our Lady, lead Joshua to God this day with your motherly guidance. Remind him to invite God and you into his day so that You may work in and through him. Help him also to do whatever God asks of him without fear. May his patron saints and guardian angel guide him always. Amen.
When To Set Aside Time to Pray For Your Husband
So now you might be thinking, “great, I have a prayer for my husband now but when do I find time to pray it?” That is a great question. It is often hard to make time for something new let alone something rather abstract like prayer. It certainly doesn’t seem as pertinent as changing a diaper or making dinner. But we do know that it is more important. Do we make time for the things we really want to do? I would say so. So if praying for our husbands is important to us, I bet we will make time to bless them in this special way.
Honestly, I would recommend adding this prayer to other prayers you already pray or to a habit that you already have established. Adding one new habit to an old one makes remembering the new one much, much easier. For me, I pray this prayer for my husband in the morning when I first get up during my individual prayer time. Or you can select a particular time of day, maybe right after your husband leaves for work (or starts work if he works from home), or when you know he is heading home.
Other Times And Ways To Pray For and With Your Husband
However, one doesn’t have to pray for your husband only once a day. There are many opportunities throughout the day. Try offering a quick prayer for him at any time or offer up what you are doing for him. You could simply pray a Hail Mary or if you have more time maybe a Chaplet of Divine Mercy or a Rosary.
You can also pray for each other with each other. Here are some ideas of how you can do that:
- Bless each other at the beginning of the day or before your husband leaves for work
- You can also bless each other (and your kids!) before bed
- If your husband is really struggling with something or is really stressed or has certain health issues come up, you can pray for those too
- When you are praying for your spouse, let the Holy Spirit guide you. He will let you know what to ask for for your spouse.
Although it is important to pray for your husband, you should never be embarrassed to ask for him to pray for you as well. As your husband, he has special graces and authority to pray on your behalf to God for specific blessings (and to drive away all evil). The prayers of a husband and father are very powerful. So don’t be afraid to ask. My guess is that he might be surprised, but he will also quite happily oblige. It is such a blessing (literally) to be able to pray with and for your husband, to take the time to come up with a prayer – it can even be a short one – and a time to pray it, asking God’s blessing on your husband, to give him the gifts and charisms he needs, and to be drawn ever closer to Him.
Final Thoughts
Even if you don’t pray for your husband daily and don’t feel like you would have time to, I would encourage you to find some small way to pray for him during your day. You don’t have to write your own prayer, though praying for specific needs is very helpful. If all you have time for is a Hail Mary while you’re sitting on the toilet or falling asleep nursing your baby, that is enough. God understands where you and your husband are at right now and will still bless you.
Do you have any favorite ways to pray for your husband? I would love to hear them!
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