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Today JJ is joined by Scott Kedersha to discuss what you should be praying for your future spouse.
Introduction
As a single, did you pray for your spouse? Was that a rhythm and habit for you?
What should I be praying for as a single, when it comes to my future spouse?
Scott’s Book!
Scott’s one piece of advice for seriously dating couples thinking about engagement and maybe marriage is…
Community vs. Counsel
Hey hey hey men of the Heart of Dating community! We are back with another men’s minisode just for you! Last week we talked all about why you shouldn’t pray for your future spouse, and today we’re turning that upside down to talk about what you should be praying for your future spouse. We have an amazing special guest today, Scott Kedersha. We’re pumped to dive into this episode so let’s get it started!
Scott read a statistic a couple years ago from a study in 1997 that’s been quoted in many other studies since. The divorce rate for couples who pray consistently was less than 1%. Not just less, but like SIGNIFICANTLY less. The statistic they gave was 1 out of 1,152 couples who pray together get divorced. Meaning that 1,151 are still married. Divorce rates inside and outside the church are somewhere between 30-50% so this statistic is hard to believe. Whatever it is, it’s too high and if there is something couples can do to help them stay together they should do it. Besides that, if God says the importance of prayer in our lives and therefore the importance of it in marriage then I want to make sure I’m doing that regardless of what the statistics say. It’s not just the divorce rate, but also the satisfaction in couples who pray together.
Scott has seen that healthy marriages are marked by both individual prayer lives and prayer lives together. Scott confesses that for a long time he was hypocritical when telling couples that they have to pray together because it’s not something he and his wife were living out. It just wasn’t something they were prioritizing and he would say that he wishes it was something they had started from the beginning of their relationship.
For most of Scott’s single life he was not a Christian. So he went 24 without Jesus and then got married at 28. Even as a single Scott didn’t really prioritize prayer. It was a combination of the study we talked about earlier and a couple, Jim and Judy, that had an amazing prayer life that Scott decided to get serious about prayer with his wife.
Praying that God would help me to become all that He wants me to be.
Praying, God, I trust you, that if I'm single the rest of my life, that if I’m married the rest of my life, that I would trust you.
Praying that I would be fully devoted to God.
Praying that I would be content where I am.
Praying that I trust you God, if I do get married, give me the spouse that I need.
What we’re really looking for in a spouse is someone who will help us bring Him glory for the rest of our lives. So what they look like, what they do, family background, who their friends are, all those things are important but ULTIMATELY, are we going to be able to bring glory to God together?
It’s absolutely okay to ask God to bring that person into your life, and following it up with, I’m going to trust you no matter what happens. Praying in this way, would change the person you’re looking for, for the better.
In 2019 Scott wrote a book, Ready or Knot: 12 Conversations for Couples to Have Before They Get Married. Scott just came out with the Ready or Knot Prayer Guide and it’s 100 prayers for seriously dating or engaged couples. It’s a guide to help couples know what to pray for. If you’re looking at your bible and you’re looking at just passages about marriage, you’re not going to find much. We do know that the bible is FILLED, cover to cover, with what it looks like to be in relationship with others, what it’s like for God to relate to us, for us to relate to God, for us to relate to each other and we can learn from every one of these principles.
Essentially this book is 100 prayers on how to become more like Jesus. We know Jesus is a truth teller, he’s a listener, he’s fun, steadfast, committed, humble, holy, honest, and so much more. What this book does is encourages the readers and shows them how to pray for these attributes of Christ. The prayers are broken up into 12 general areas to follow the book, but they’re really just prayers to become more like Christ.
So often we see a guy who’s really involved in the church and a girl who’s really involved in the church, they meet, and then all of a sudden they submarine, nobody sees them for 6 months. Then, they pop back up and they’re talking about getting engaged and wanting opinions, and we can't really give them an answer because we don’t know. Scott’s advice would be to NOT do that. You don’t always have to go on group dates or anything but you do need to surround yourself with community. You have to have a community around you who can help you evaluate your relationship. They can’t make the decision for you, but they can help you in assessing. You don’t want to make a decision about marriage in isolation.
When Scott says community, it could be a counselor, a mentor, a pastor, single guys, married guys, single gals, married gals, it’s anyone who is willing to wound us and sharpen us (Proverbs 27:6).
Community was not afraid to sharpen, challenge, and wound Scott and Kristen, but that same community also encouraged them. Someone who is with you and for you in the relationship.
Grab your copy of the Ready or Knot Prayer Guide on amazon here, https://a.co/d/aVOkWel.
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JJ Tomlin is a missionary kid born in Belgium, originally from Tennessee, and currently residing in the OC. He currently works in Gaming/E-Commerce, enjoys watching his Tennessee Titans on Sundays with his Goldendoodle Teddy and loves working with Christian men to raise the bar in singleness and dating.
Bio - Scott Kedersha is a follower of Jesus Christ, husband to Kristen, dad to four teenage sons, and the Marriage Pastor at Harris Creek Baptist Church in Waco, TX. Scott is the author of Ready or Knot: 12 Conversations Every Couple Needs to Have before Marriage and The Ready or Knot Prayer Guide: 100 Prayers for Dating and Engaged Couples. He writes at ScottKedersha.com and is one of the co-hosts of the More Than Roommates Podcast.
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