Many Christian couples find it difficult to pray together. But, if we are ‘heirs together of the gracious gift of life’ (1 Peter 3.7), surely praying together ought to be on the agenda of our marriages.
Let me tell you the Puritan love story of William and Elizabeth and what I found out from it about husband and wife prayers.
Elizabethan romance
Elizabeth was the eldest daughter of a dealer in textiles in the London of Queen Elizabeth I. She had a younger sister, Mary, and a brother of whom we know little, who died as a boy in a swimming accident. But both parents died while Elizabeth was still quite young. If it had not been that an uncle took pity on them, the children would have fallen prey to people from the darker side of early 17th-century London. She and her sister were placed in the family of a church minister and educated there.
The re-emergence of heavy shepherds
What would you think if you received a letter from your church leaders that read like this? ‘Are church members …