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Praying
With Our Eyes Open
Smiling
like newlyweds, we snuggled into the first meeting of our annual marriage
conference. The outstanding speaker had us laughing to tears as he
entertained us. But at one point we stopped laughing and started to
squirm. The topic was shared prayer time. The teacher had us rate
ourselves in various areas of our marriage: Friendship–9/10, Fun and
Humor–8/10, Commitment–10/10, Shared Prayer–1/10. I squirmed as I
wrote it down. I considered inflating the rating, but whom would I
be fooling?
Sure, we know there’s power in prayer. So why were we neglecting this
powerful resource as a couple? Of course the answer is time. It’s
not that we never tried to establish a time of prayer together. The
challenge was finding a regular time that would encourage consistency.
Bedtime didn’t work because one of us would fall asleep. Morning was
not an option because one of us was still asleep. My husband, Ron,
had to get up early and rush to work by 7:00 A.M. Prayer before dinner
was out because neither of us wanted to wait to eat. After dinner
didn’t work because the news was on, and we liked news.
Ron, a high school teacher, comes home tired. He does not feel like
exercising most days. It would be easy for him to sit in front of
the TV through the news as he eats dinner, does school work, and falls
asleep on the couch. It would be easy for him to neglect me as well
because by the time he gets home, 150 high school students have drained
his emotional energy. But we’ve established a routine of taking a
walk every night after the news is over. Our yellow lab recognizes
the sounds of the news ending and does his nightly dance of joy until
we take him out. We have our thirty-minute loop where we walk and
talk along the way. We have been doing this for over eight years.
It finally hit us. What about praying as we walked? With a different
focus every night, the variety would keep us from getting bored and
repetitious. We agreed that we would walk and pray with our eyes open.
As Ron noted, isn’t that what the Christian life is all about? So
now we exercise, have our couple time, and pray all at the same time.
Each evening we focus on a specific area of prayer to get us started.
These are some of the topics that have worked for us:
· We share how we have recognized God at work in our lives.
· We list blessings for which we are thankful.
· We petition God for his work in our children’s lives.
· We lift up various ministries and leaders within our church
body.
· We ask God’s guidance for national and world leaders.
· We each choose two missionary families and pray for their
needs.
· We pray for each other and the issues we are currently facing.
The walk revives us so we have more physical energy for the evening.
The talk helps us to stay in touch with what is going on throughout
each day, and the prayer helps us to remain focused on Christ in our
personal concerns as well as world issues. I noticed we used to walk,
talk, and occasionally grumble; now we are more likely to walk, talk,
and lift the circumstances of life into God’s hands. Our shared prayer
time has truly enriched our marriage and our relationship with God.
Cyndie Hamley
(This article was written while Ron was still teaching. The
dog has died and Ron has since retired, but we still
pray on our nightly walks.) |
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