• Referenced scripture:
  • 1 Thessalonians 5-13
  • Matthew 6
  • Psalm 46:10

• Recommended resource:
  • 40 Prayers for My Wife, Ryan Frederick
  • 40 Prayers for My Husband, Selena Frederick
  • thenewsisgood.com

Ryan: Selena, I’m actually shocked a little bit by, speaking with some couples, good friends, and even couples we meet through ministry, through online stuff, how frequently we run into couples that aren’t comfortable praying with one another.

Selena: Mm.

Ryan: And it made me think, you know, maybe this is worth revisiting on the podcast, on the YouTube channel.

Selena: Absolutely.

Ryan: Prayer happens to be a very important part of the Christian life. [Selena chuckles] It’s especially important for our marriage, right? It is a means to an end, and that is communion with God, but it has a transformational effect on the heart, hearts of those who would submit themselves to prayer.

Selena: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you feel uncomfortable praying with your spouse, that feels a bit odd to me because like you have sex. So that’s a pretty intimate thing. So communion with God.

Ryan: [laughing] Okay, we’re gonna go there.

Selena: I don’t know. Maybe I’m just equating the wrong things here.

Ryan: Maybe. We’re gonna talk about it for sure. [Selena chuckles] So we’ll see you on the other side. [chuckles]

[00:01:04]

Selena: All I’m saying is that [Ryan chuckles] if sex is an intimate and spiritual and physical and all the things that we always talk about, I have a hard time understanding why prayer might be an obstacle for a couple who’s a believer. But maybe their sex life is suffering, too. I mean, these are all the questions, right?

Ryan: It’s hard to say. I don’t think you’re out of line in saying that. I feel like there is. Because prayer is an intimate thing.

Selena: It’s intimate. Yeah.

Ryan: Certainly not in the same exact way but it has intimacy involved in that you’re communing with God,-

Selena: Oh, sure.

Ryan: …you’re speaking to God, you are bringing your request, your supplications, your worries, everything. You’re bringing it to God. And then when you’re doing that together, it can… Men especially, I think, feel very vulnerable in it. I don’t know, we’re gonna talk about prayer.

Selena: Yeah, we’re gonna talk about what prayer is, what it’s not, briefly the biblical history of prayer, because it’s important to understand that just because we can call on the Lord whenever we want and talk to Him and communion with Him. It doesn’t mean that’s how it’s always been. There was a cost to that, that wonderful gift and blessing that God’s given to us.

We’re going to discuss the purposes of prayer, why we pray, because I think sometimes we can have different beliefs just fundamentally and maybe that can be an obstacle to some couples of, “Well, I pray to just ask God for things,” or “I only pray in crisis,” or… So what are those reasons of why we pray? And are we examining and putting those through the biblical lens? And are we testing them… getting them from scripture, not testing them? And then how to pray. Just impractical how-tos. Okay?

Ryan: How-tos. I like to explore what has Christ prescribed for prayer, which I think we’re going to do that. But then also, pragmatically in a marriage, how can that work? So what are some specific ways that husbands and wives can pray together?

So, if you’re new to the podcast, you’re listening, you’re watching this, first off, thank you for watching. Thanks for giving us your time, your attention. Welcome. I’m Ryan. This is my lovely wife Selena. We are the Fredericks. We’ve been married for 19 years. We actually celebrated our anniversary, our 19th anniversary this week. We had a technical difficulty… Actually, last week when this comes out. So at the time of this recording, we are about to go out and actually celebrate our anniversary by going out on a date. We didn’t get to do that on the actual day. So 19 years we’ve been married.

So we’re here to talk to couples like you, to spouses who would lend us their ears and encourage you in the Gospel, pointing you to Christ. Today’s podcast episode has actually… I think you got some of this out of the prayer books, right?

Selena: I did, yes.

Ryan: 40-Day Prayer Journey.

Selena: I meant to bring those over to the table.

Ryan: I move them away from the table and now I don’t want to get up because we’re rolling. But we have these books. They are called 40 Prayers-

Selena: Can I open the bouquet?

Ryan: You may. 40 Prayers for My Wife. And then Selena wrote a book called 40 Prayers for My Husband.

Selena: They are gonna look backwards to you all, but-

Ryan: They might. We’ll see. You can check those out. Go to 40prayers.com. And what it is, is just basically, they’re very targeted prayers, almost like scripts with a lot of Scripture. And they’re following this format we’re gonna talk about today. Some of the stuff that we’re talking about today comes directly out of that intro. But anyway, that’s available to you on our website. 40 prayers.com will take you straight to the product page for that. We pray that that blesses you.

So, Selena, this first question, what is prayer?

Selena: What is prayer?

Ryan: What is prayer?

Selena: I think it is important to understand what it is as a believer and then be on the same page about it as spouses. [00:05:00] Because coming into a marriage, you two come from different… you have different family of origins, different beliefs, different values, different priorities. Maybe it all seemed like you’re on the same page when you first got married, but as we grow in our faith and we start examining things a bit more closely, we might disagree on some things. And so it’s really important to get on the same page of understanding what prayer is.

Kind of a simple definition for us and working for us today is prayer is a gift of freely communing with a God of the universe intimately. It was a costly gift. I wrote that and I’m like, “costly gift”? Yes, that can work. Because if we look at the history of prayer, which we’ll jump down here, and then we’ll talk about what prayer is not because there’s a lot of things that it’s not that we as believers can kind of say that it is, if you look at, in the Old Testament, at what prayer used to be right, you would have the priests, they were of a certain line, certain lineage. I think they’re Levites, Levitical priests. They would have to get all clean and get all ready to go into the temple, into the tabernacle, spend the time. And they would have to make sacrifices on behalf of the people, for the people, asking for forgiveness for different things.

And it was not something that anybody could just walk in and do. Like you could not go into the Holy of Holies, into the actual presence of God because you would be struck dead basically, is what happened. I think it did happen to people.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. So the priests were the representatives of the people to God.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: So they would represent the nation of Israel to God, and then the prophets in contrast would be God’s representatives to the people.

Selena: Right. So we have all of that up until Jesus came. And when Jesus came, He changed everything. He is now our High Priest. When He came and He was crucified, the curtain in the temple was torn. The obstacles or… I hate to say obstacles. But the way that we could go about communing with God as non-priests or people that were not designated or cleansed, or… I don’t wanna say qualified, but we didn’t have to be the Levite line and we didn’t have to have all these certain things in place. Christ made the way. He tore the curtain. He tore any barrier that was keeping us from God and He gave us freedom to enter into that throne room.

Hebrews 4 teaches us that Jesus is our high priests, who not only empathizes with us and knows our pain, understands our struggles. But when we enter into that room, He’s not smiting us, He’s not condemning us, but He receives us with mercy and grace. Again, not because of anything that we have done, but all because of the life, death, resurrection of Jesus.

To understand what prayer is, I think it’s important for us to understand the cost of prayer, and why it is a gift, and how it’s important to the Christian life. And especially a marriage that is reflecting, emulating who God is, the unity of God, the character of God.

Ryan: Yeah. The way I hear you saying is that the—and I fully agree—the old church of heaven [Selena chuckles] is very flat when it comes to God and His people. Meaning that we don’t have to go through a hierarchy as… I mean, just to be clear, as reformed evangelical Christians, Protestant, we don’t have to go through a hierarchy of priests and higher priests on up until we finally get to God Himself. Instead, we have our High Priest and He has been made flesh. He’s in and among us or He was as Christ.

Selena: He was the sacrifice-

Ryan: He was the sacrifice-

Selena: …that forgave us.

Ryan: So it’s an immense privilege to be able to pray to living God directly, to have the Holy Spirit in us stirring up in us things that might be pleasing to God in our prayer. So that’s I think the first premise here is that we can just take it so for granted. That I can just at the drop of a hat, pray. And we get so flippant about our prayers.

Now, I’m not saying that we need to have all this hubbub and decorum around approaching God. That’s what this passage is saying. We approach the throne room of grace with confidence. In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul said, “Pray continually.” We can’t possibly pray continually if it involves all this pomp and circumstance to make it happen. That’s why I’m feeling encouraged at the moment is, wow, what a immense privilege it is to be able to pray and not be stricken dead by talking to God directly.

Selena: Right. Right. Which is something I think that we should… Again, so gauging [00:10:00] what prayer is, looking at what it’s not I think clarifies again and elevates it to remind us what prayer is. So looking at what it’s not, it’s not anything mystical. It’s not like name it and claim it sort of prosperity, one-sided talk to God rather than with God.

Prayer is not all about us. I mean, I would argue it’s hardly about us. It’s really about knowing God, knowing Him, praising Him, confessing our sin to Him so that He can redeem, sanctify, save, and bless us how He sees fit. And we trust Him in that.

Prayer is not something we only do in crisis. It is a consistent part of the believer’s life. It should be a consistent part. It’s one way that we know God primarily. One of the biggest ways, obviously through scripture. But then, I would say hand in hand is prayer in communion with God.

Ryan: So we’ve looked at what is prayer, we’ve looked at a biblical history of prayer. Now, you offered up a definition of prayer as a gift to freely communicate with the God of the universe intimately. I wouldn’t present this definition of prayer… when we pray to God is we are responding to what He said to us. And how do we know what He said to us? We have scripture. We have the word in Scripture and we have the word incarnate in Christ.

So when we speak to God, we are responding to Him. He’s initiated the conversation. We’re volleying back. And so that’s why in our prayer books, in the 40 Prayers for My Wife, 40 Prayers for wife’s husband, I don’t wanna say “my husband.” These 40 prayers, it really is just, “God, you said this. So in response to what you said, we’re gonna say this. And now, Lord, I’m gonna stand on this thing that you said, and I’m gonna respond to you in this way and contend for my wife in this way.”

And to me, that has been a life-changing kind of pivot. And I think Tim Keller wrote a book aptly named Prayer. That’s the whole premise of the book is we’re just responding to God in what He’s already said.

So, given what we’ve covered, now, why do we pray? What is the purpose of our prayer? Now, I think primarily, the purpose is… of course, aside from the general purpose of communing with God, you have here that repentance and confession or requests and… Repentance and confession, number one.

Selena: Kind of a list of things, right?

Ryan: The next one would be requests and petitions—you’re asking things of God. Praise and acknowledgment of who God is and the work that He’s doing and what He’s done is very well. We have here the time and the place.

Selena: This is time and place where we can freely and intentionally participate with our King.

Ryan: Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. And that is part of that responding. And we’ll get into exactly how to pray. I can tell where these came from. These came from the “How to Pray” part, which is where we get from Matthew 7, the Lord’s Prayer… Matthew 6. What is the purpose within marriage for why we pray?

Selena: Right. As a married couple, I think praying together deepens and also protects our unity. Because if prayer is what we believe it is and we are consistently engaging it as we know we should as believers, then it’s going to carry a heavy weight with it. Not “a heavy” as in dutiful, although it may feel dutiful at times. There’s this goodness and this depth and this intimacy of something that I share with my husband, and only my husband these prayers that are of whatever, struggle, or whatever we are facing as a family as a couple. It is us going to God as one. Again, it’s a protection of unity, it’s a deepening of your marital unity.

And some of these might sound a little bit repetitive. The acknowledgment of who God is in the midst of your struggles in marriage. I think prayer is one of those ways of… when you have to put words to what you’re struggling with to bring to God, not that He doesn’t know the depths and the complexities of what you’re going through.

But again, we see that if you’re dealing with sin in Genesis 3, God said, “Adam and Eve, where are you?” Not that He lost them, but He wanted them to come to Him and He wanted them to articulate what they had done. He asked them, “What have you done?” to Eve. Not because He didn’t know. Again, this is acknowledgment of who God is, bringing our struggles to Him, articulating them to Him. Because I think, again, when we do that we are able to respond better to what His Word says to us about whatever sin or struggle or conflict that we’re dealing with.

Ryan: I like to think of it like this, is that we are… Okay, I’ll use the example of our daughters. They know that I’m in the office most work days and I’m writing or doing whatever it is I do. [both chuckles] No one knows.

Selena: No one knows. Stop.

Ryan: But they know that if they ever have a need or a concern or anything, they know where to find me, and they’ll come. We live in the same home. They know I’m their father. [00:15:00] And they’ll come in and they’ll bring their petitions to me. And to me, this is what the attitude of prayer is.

I just want to say this while we’re talking through how we pray within marriage, because we can so often feel like, Okay, if I don’t fold my hands just right and close my eyes and get into the prayer closet, or, you know, dim the lights or whatever, set the stage, then I can’t pray. No. It’s this idea that our Father God isn’t absent. He’s omnipresent. He’s omniscient, and all the omnis. He’s omni omni. And we can just go to Him as if we are in His house, right?

Selena: Mm-hmm.

Ryan: This creation… you know, obviously, there’s nuance to that. But the point is, is that there’s an access that as children have been purchased by Christ on the cross, that we are no longer called slaves to sin. We’re no longer even just servants of God but we are adopted in children of God. Co-heirs with Christ is the phrase we’re given.

And what kind of access does a child have to their parent? It’s unfettered. It’s unlimited. The time doesn’t matter. Request doesn’t really even matter. All that matters is that you have relationship.

Selena: Our girls don’t have to bring daddy his favorite food or bring something that’s valuable to them to be able to talk to him. They can just freely go to him. Which again, I think, reestablishes who we are, our identity in Christ and who God is. He’s the King, Savior, God of the universe.

Again, realign our hearts, minds and souls with our identity and with who God is and who He should be to us. It is a place where we can practice repentance and receive forgiveness. Doing that with your spouse, I think, is always really powerful because you can… You just feel supported, I think, if you’re confessing your sin before God, before your spouse. It’s humbling and it realigns you, it brings back your unity, especially if the sin has broken trust between you and your spouse.

Ryan: It brings you right back to plumb, right? Because you can get kind of sideways as a couple. And when you go to Christ, when you go to God and you say, “Forgive us our sins. We’ve sinned against you, forgive us,” and repent of that, we turn from, it brings you back to plumbing square. Now you actually have that place that you can begin to live out of a place of health.

Selena: Yeah. Yeah. And if it’s a regular and consistent thing, I mean, think about the amount of growth and sanctification that can happen and what it models for your children and your family and what kind of culture it builds within your home.

Ryan: Yeah. The next piece you had on here is it helps us as a couple to grow our faith through petitioning the Lord while trusting Him. So my favorite part… and we don’t mean to plug these books the entire time, but it’s a tool that’s here for you. And you can do this on your own paper. You have to buy the books.

But what we did in the front of this book is there’s actually an inventory. So you take an inventory, I’m not sure if you can see that you’re watching on YouTube, you take an inventory and you rate aspects of your marriage on a scale of 1 to 10. So how is our overall unity on a scale of 1 to 10, at the beginning of this journey? Day one. How’s our communication like? “Well, I’d give it a seven or whatever.” What’s our intimacy like, our conflict-handling skills? Things like that.

You go through and do about eight of these things, you rate them, and then you pray over it. And you commit all that stuff to prayer and you say, “God over the next 40 days, what are you going to do? Let’s just see what you do. We’re going to trust you, we’re going to trust you by telling you we trust you, we’re going to trust you by praying to you in the ways that you’ve given us to pray to you. I mean, by responding to Scripture. And we’re gonna do it together in unity.”

And I was blown away at how when you actually mark the beginning and you go back at the end of this challenge, and in a different color of ink you’ll say… and then you go and do the inventory again. So maybe your communication went from a seven to a nine or whatever. And you see where there’s been improvement. And you can look and say, “God, you are so good. You’re so faithful. You’ve answered our prayers.”

Selena: And I do want to say that, yes, these books were written to be done together. However, if you find yourself in a marriage where one of you is not sort of engaging in prayer or a believer, you can do them on your own as well.

Ryan: Absolutely.

Selena: And I think it will be powerful in your marriage.

Ryan: And again, we’re not meaning to plug it but we’re just… That’s one of the things I’ve loved about when I pray intentionally and I’m able to actually say to God, “I’m entrusting this into your hands because I know you’re God, I know you care for us, and you love us, I want to see you move because I want to give you glory, not because I want what I want,” I’ve been amazed at how God is so faithful to just give you reason, after reason, after reason, after reason to continue to trust Him. Yet we are like Israel and we forget. [laughs]

Selena: Right.

Ryan: So that’s why we have to go back to pray to Him and we repent, we turn, we believe, we trust. So let’s get into specifically how do we pray, if we can. [00:20:00]

Selena: Sure. And I just want to say this last point. Psalm 46:10, the importance of being still before the Lord and knowing that He is God. I think prayer is one of those great practices of this scripture particularly is sitting and being still and trusting.

Ryan: And that speaks to the piece that we forgot to say is that prayer is a dialogue in the sense that we do need to listen. The Holy Spirit will stir your heart. What you’re listening for is ways that Scripture is being illumined in your heart in a way that you can apply it.

When I need to start being a little careful, if you’re hearing things that are extra-biblical, and you’re saying that’s… Because God would never contradict Himself. And so when you get people that say, “Yeah, I was praying and God told me,” just be-

Selena: Pump the brakes on that.

Ryan: Pump the brakes on that because that’s… We have scripture and the canon is closed, sorry to say. That’s not how the Lord speaks.

Selena: Not sorry to say. [both laughs]

Ryan: Not sorry to say, but it is. Okay, we’ll get off that.

Selena: So yeah, how?

Ryan: How?

Selena: How?

Ryan: How?

Selena: How do we pray? There are obviously, I think, many different ways. As a child you’re taught to close your eyes and fold your hands, mostly for no distractions, to have them think about who they’re talking to, and how they’re talking to Him.

One way that we kind of discovered later in our own marriage was praying through Scripture. Donald Whitney has a book. I think it’s called Praying Through Scripture or Praying Scripture. It’s a short book. Pretty helpful on just writing down, journaling prayers. Have a prayer journal for you and your husband.

We just started a family prayer journal. You don’t know about this yet maybe. [laughs] The girls and I did because it’s kind of a part of our education-

Ryan: It’s part of the Frederick Academy for skilled youths or gifted youths.

Selena: So yes. So you can keep track of what the Lord is doing, or maybe how your heart has changed in the situation. You can pray individually, obviously, you can pray as a couple, you can pray as a family. I think all of these should be kind of daily, just an individual.

And again, prayer, it doesn’t have to be just a throw it up to God and “Okay, Lord, I’m good or whatever.” But you know, taking the time and praying as a mom, it’s hard to find any quiet time. So it’s usually your hands are busy with some sort of task and then you’re praying or talking to the Lord about the things that are in your heart or that He’s kind of brought to light. Beware of distractions.

Ryan: In terms of family life, building those rhythms is key, because it’s really easy to not have prayer rhythms, because it’s just super easy to do. So what we’ve done, take it or leave it, it’s worked really well for us, we have kind of earmarked days throughout… parts of the day where we pray.

We pray before we eat breakfast. We always eat breakfast together. So we always pray before that. And it’s never just like, “Thanks for the food. Amen.” [chuckles] There’s a little bit more to it. Sometimes the kids will pray, most often it’s me or Selena.

And then we do family worship. We’re getting better at it. So we’ll go through kind of the things that our family is contending for. So friends that are maybe going through something, we want to contend for them. Or you know, whatever is happening in our community or in the world at large. We have a chalkboard. Someone else stops on there. We’ll pray then. And then at dinner as well. And you pray during the day with girls as well.

Selena: We do, yes. As a couple though, I think we need to talk about this specifically, what’s a good way for us to pray? I mean, we can fold our hands and kind of sit on separate couches and close our eyes and pray. But what would be more unifying?

Ryan: Laying on top of each other? [Selena laughs] Hands palms, touching faces together. I think contact is good. What in the past we’ve encouraged couples to do is sit facing each other, maybe on a couch or a section or whatever you have, face each other, hold hands and just bow your heads and close your eyes and pray. There’s no legalism in that. Do what works for you.

But the point is, is you’re in it together. Like if it’s awkward, it will be less awkward the more you do it. And you don’t have to have these big, long, elaborate prayers. In fact, Jesus said the opposite. He said, “Don’t just blab on,” which I love that because I don’t… We’ve been in some church circles where the prayer like it’s not a good prayer unless it’s like X number of words, X number of minutes. And I’m like, “Listen, you said the same thing 20 times.” God’s not hard of hearing. He didn’t say, “And if you say it more…”

Selena: So how does Jesus instruct us how to pray?

Ryan: We kind of buried the lede here. So let’s go through the Lord’s Prayer. I’ll read this. It’s starts in Matthew 6:5. “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, [00:25:00] go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” So, pause. There’s two “do not do as these people do.” So there’s the Pharisees who think that by being seen… they want to be seen for their piousness. There’s a different motivation there. They’re not actually praying to talk to God, they’re wanting to be seen as pious people.

Then there’s the “don’t pray like the Gentiles do, who thinks that they can just heap up empty phrases, so that God will hear them.” That’s not the basis of our prayer. The basis of our prayer is different. The basis of our prayer is that we have a Father who knows what we need before we ask Him. So it’s not like we’re bringing these revelations of our need to God. Like he already knows. The point is different.

Verse 8, “Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” And some versions and some of the Gospels would add “for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Amen.”

So there’s an outline there for us. Again, this is covered in the books more at length. But the outline is basically this. You start with adoration. Our Father in heaven. You’re in heaven, I’m not.

Selena: Adoration and acknowledgment, yeah.

Ryan: Acknowledgement. Glory to God. So many times when I’m-

Selena: Holy is your name.

Ryan: …feeling like… yeah, when I’m wanting to pray, more and more, maybe I’m getting older, maybe I’m getting more, I don’t know-

Selena: Do you want to pray more as you get older? Or are you saying that-

Ryan: I’m saying more and more as I get older I’m wanting to pray the way Jesus said, and I’m wanting to stick to that.

Selena: Well, and I would also speak to the notion that when you don’t feel like praying, that’s probably the absolute moment that you should be praying.

Ryan: So on that note, I would say I’ll start with “God in Heaven, my Father in heaven, you’re in heaven, I’m not. You’re sitting on the throne, I am not.”

Selena: A whole complete prayer just right there.

Ryan: Holy is Your Name and you are a… Holy, holy, holy is our Lord God Almighty, your kingdom come, meaning that, God, your will be done down here. Just as it is up there, we want to see it done down here. On earth as it is in heaven. So that’s the supplication piece.

So you have adoration, we have a supplication or an asking or requesting—your will be done. Give us this day, our daily bread piece as well. The confession part is “forgive us our debts as we’ve forgiven those who are indebted to us or our debtors.” And then “lead us not into temptation” moving forward, right?

Selena: Mm-hmm.

Ryan: So this is a great outline for prayer. If you’re wanting to pray with your spouse, just read this verbatim, and amen. [chuckles]

Selena: It’s good. It’s good.

Ryan: Jesus said it’s good enough.

Selena: Print it out on a piece of paper, stick it in your Bible, or just open your Bible. I mean, have a piece of paper take with you or something, I don’t know, just put on your phone.

Ryan: Or write it on the tablet of your heart. [laughs]

Selena: Or write it on the tablet of your heart. I just think it’s super important for us to… And if you don’t understand the format, it’s okay. Just keep praying. God is so faithful, I think, to help all of our insecurities, our unknowing ways of understanding the Bible. He’s just so good to just continue to lead us gently. He leads us gently and with patience and mercy and grace.

I think that’s a great couples challenge, you know, is just to pray for one another and pray with one another. And if you don’t know how, begin with the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a great place to start.

Ryan: Amen. And we have a lot of resources on our marriage website, fiercemarriage.com. Look at the search bar, hit prayer. We have a lot of past content just like this. So you’re gonna see a lot of similarities there. But that will give you a good place to start.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: If you’re watching this, you’re listening to this and you’re wondering, “Man, this sounds great to be able to talk to God face to face,” we’re here to tell you that He’s invited you into that. And maybe this is Him inviting you, once again, into communion with Him.

And with the way that looks is you turn your life over to Christ knowing that He is God condescended down into flesh, lived a perfect life, died the death we should have died, didn’t stay dead, rose again on the third day, and ascended into heaven and now sits at the throne of the Father and reigns and will return. That’s the gospel.

And He’s saying to you, “Put your faith in me. Put your faith in Christ so that you might be called a son of God.” And that’s a free gift of grace. It’s not anything you can earn. It’s just something you do by placing your faith in Him by the power of the Holy Spirit. If you want to find out more what it means to be a Christian, we have a website. Just go to thenewsisgood.com and it’ll give you a first step down that path.

Let’s pray. Father, thank You for this privilege it is to speak to You. Surely, we can take it for granted, Lord, [00:30:00] and that’s to our peril. Lord, help us to understand what it means and the gift it is to converse with you, the Living God. Lord, I ask that you would be with the couples watching this, the couples hearing this, the husbands listening alone, the wives listening alone wondering how they can build a prayer life as a couple. I pray that you’d guide them, embolden them, strengthen them.

I pray for the couples that are struggling. That you would come alongside them. Give them hope, give them peace, give them joy in the trial, that they might glorify you even in it. And Jesus’ name. Amen.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: All right, once again, check out 40prayers.com if you want to learn more about those books. We have a sale going right now as well. So you can take advantage of that.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention our amazing patrons. You guys have kept us going in ways you don’t know. If you’re at the end of this video, it means you probably liked the content. Or at the end of the podcast. We’d love to partner with you. God has been faithful. Please consider. Pray over it. If He leads you, we’d love to have you. Go to fiercemarriage.com/partner. There’s goodies to be had but don’t do it for that.

Selena: Don’t do it for the goodies.

Ryan: Don’t do it for the goodies. Anyway, this episode of Fierce Marriage is—

Selena: In the can.

Ryan: See you again in seven days.

Selena: Till then—

Ryan: Stay fierce.

Selena: Stay fierce.

Ryan: Oh! How dare you?