Every marriage has troubles. Every single one! And yet when your relationship struggles it’s easy to wonder if healing for your marriage is possible. It can be hard to right-size the issues; is this normal? Should I try to ignore this? Will this get better with time? Does this mean our relationship is doomed to fail? How long can I put up with this? What should I do?

So you pray about it, and your prayers likely sound something like, “God, please fix my spouse! Can’t you see how he/she is mistreating me? Why don’t You do something?”

And when it seems things aren’t getting any better, you may feel overwhelmed and alone. Or wonder why your prayers don’t seem to be working. Or imagine that you must have done something so bad that now you’re past God’s ability to help.

If you’re married, there’s little or nothing that has a bigger impact on your sense of wellbeing than the quality of your relationship. If it’s pretty good, you can take on the world. If it’s not going well, you struggle deeply even if things are going pretty well in other areas of your life.

When you’re in the middle of marriage struggles, it helps focus on what you know to be true. I don’t know what the outcome of your relationship struggles will be. But I do know that you are not alone, that God is for you, and that moving toward healing for your marriage is possible.

God is With You

Feeling alone is perhaps the most painful thing humans can experience. And sometimes you have precious few, if any, human beings near you. But Jesus is always near. It’s OK to acknowledge that you don’t sense Him. It’s OK, even healthy, to express that feeling to Him. But you can hold onto His presence as one of those things that is absolutely true. If you ask Him to be with you, He is!

David, who experienced deep trouble from every side, wrote “The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. … The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:15,18).

You might feel brokenhearted over your spouse’s abuse or betrayal. You might feel crushed under the weight of your own hurtful behavior that drove your spouse away. You might feel devastated by the reality of where your marriage is today. Know that the Lord sees you. He hears you. And He is near to you, even if you don’t feel Him right now.

First, before any action steps, will you invite Jesus to be with you? Take a moment to pour out your heart before Him, and then choose to let your heart be still. Ask Him to simply minister His presence to your soul. When you sense that He is with you your soul gathers strength and peace and hope.

God is FOR Your Marriage

Regardless of how you came to be married, once you say “I do”, God is for your marriage. Even if you didn’t know God when you married, or ignored red flags, or had sinful areas of your life that were undealt with, or made lots of bad decisions, God is still on your side. He specializes in bringing good things out of the messiest of circumstances, even when the outcome is sometimes different from what you might have originally asked for.

When Jesus was here on earth He always started with people where they actually were. Nothing was too dark, too messed up, too hopeless for Him to come close. Full honesty. He always seemed to be saying, “I’m the safe place for you to deal with this. Let’s face this together.”

And that’s true in your marriage also.

I know too many marriages that have been restored after the devastation of abuse, betrayal, addiction, and other truly horrible things to believe that God can’t bring you and your marriage restoration. If a marriage fails it’s not because of any failure on God’s part. And I know that’s what He wants for you and your relationship.

God Invites Your Participation

When Jesus dealt with people in truly bad situations, He never left them the way He found them. And when He shows up in your marriage He won’t leave things the same either.

You can’t control the outcome. Your spouse gets a vote too. But you can cast your vote for the healing of your marriage. You can invite Jesus right into the middle of things. You can hold your marriage up with open hands, trusting that God will do all things well. If your spouse allows Jesus to do the same, your marriage will be restored! (And in the sad event your spouse does not allow God to work, God still has good things for you!)

Whether or not you’ve been begging God for help, let me suggest a broader perspective on how to pray about your troubled marriage. Here are three things to pray:

• Jesus, HELP! You need Him!! Ask Him to come.
• Jesus, how do You see things in my marriage? His perspective will be so important, and it just might change everything.
• Jesus, what next step do You have for me to take? Jesus always invites you to partner with Him in dealing with stuff. What might that look like for you?

And let me pray for you even now. Jesus, this person reading this right now needs You. I ask You to let them sense Your closeness. Let Your transforming presence flood their heart and their spouse’s heart. Do the healing work in both of them and in their relationship that only You can do. Amen. 

What Now?

The Marriage Healing Kit from Dr. Carol Ministries is a group of resources that will help guide you (and hopefully your spouse) on a healing journey for your marriage. It’s one of those things you can do in cooperating with God.

This Kit includes 40 daily prayers for your marriage, as well as material in all the other resources about what it looks like to invite Jesus right into the middle of your marriage, and how to partner with Him in making things better.

Your Turn: Marriage struggles are painful. Have you experienced God being for your marriage even when things are hard? Do you sense what healing for your marriage could look like?  Leave a comment below.

Want more? On this week’s podcast I share a few sad statistics about Christian marriages, and then give you a wonderful taste of what’s inside the Marriage Healing Kit.  Listen or Watch.

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• God is FOR your marriage. He is with you in even in the worst of struggles, and even when you don’t feel Him. If you ask Him to be with you, He is! And He wants to bring healing for your marriage. Tweet that.