Why marital prayer is like your kidneys

I’ll admit that the title of this post is quite unusual!
For many years, I’ve been puzzling over the idea of prayer within marriage, that is, what kind of prayer-life to plan to cultivate to be sure that my marriage will be adequately covered.

Prayer is absolutely vital for any Christian marriage. Moreover, for my own marriage in particular, because I aspire to be on the front line of service to God, I’ve expected for a long time to face intense spiritual attacks which could only be dealt with in serious, relentless prayer. So I’ve expected for a long time that my marriage will need intense, sustained prayer.
So I’ve been trying to work out how this might work alongside the other demands of life and marriage.
Should I expect to singlehandedly have to uphold my marriage in prayer? To me, it feels  unfair that this should be the case, especially if my husband is to be the leader, and I am the one who will submit to his leadership. On the other hand, if we were to split up the necessary prayer, my husband and I, half and half, what would happen if one of us has a crisis, and needs to depend on the prayer support of the other spouse?

And then suddenly, finally, an excellent answer occurred to me. In a fully healthy human body, there are two functioning kidneys. However, even if one of those kidneys is impaired or defunct altogether, the body can still carry on working as normal through the work of the remaining kidney. And it occurred to me that that is what prayer in marriage should be like. Ideally yes, both of us will be praying intensively for the marriage. However, we should both aim to individually cultivate a prayer life which will be enough to “carry” the marriage, if need be, if for any reason our spouse becomes unwilling or unable to contribute prayer towards the marriage.

Bible Verses:
Proverbs 24v5-6:
A wise man is strong,
Yes, a man of knowledge increases strength;
⁶ For by wise counsel you will wage your own war,
And in a multitude of counselors there is safety.
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PHOTO CREDITS
Photo of red kidney beans from Pixabay
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