Pray for Good Communication in Your Marriage

If communication breaks down, everything else begins to crumble. In this episode, Stormie explores how prayer can help restore communication, rebuild trust, and deepen intimacy in your marriage. She also reveals why open, honest, and kind communication is essential—not just for getting along but for growing together. You’ll learn how to pray for better conversations, emotional connection, and mutual understanding even if you feel that you're the only one making the effort. Whether you’re newly married or decades in, this episode will equip you to speak with love, listen with grace, and invite God to guide every word.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Stormy O'Mardian Podcast, where we explore the power of prayer to change lives, strengthen faith, and deepen relationships. This episode dives into one of the most vital foundations of a strong marriage: communication. Discover how prayer can transform the way you and your spouse connect, share, and grow closer every day.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Hi, I'm Stormy O'Mardian, and I'm speaking to you today from my book, The Power of Prayer to Enrich Your Marriage. This is episode three. Pray for good communication between you. Now the foundation of a good marriage that will last a lifetime has to be built on communication. It's the way intimacy is established. Anytime the communication between two people in a marriage is shut off, intimacy suffers. And a marriage without intimacy is dying. You and your spouse must each be able to have a sense of closeness in your marriage, an assurance that you're on the same team. Without good communication, it will be nearly impossible to achieve that. The most difficult thing about a marriage is that there are two people in it, and we all know that the problem is usually with the other person. If we were just trying to work things out by ourselves, we could certainly do a good job of it. But we have to fit our dreams, desires, hopes, abilities, mindsets, assumptions, needs, and habits in with those of our spouse. And that takes three things communication, communication, and communication, verbally, emotionally, and physically. The closest relationship you will ever have is with your spouse because you share everything. Not being able to communicate with your husband or him not being able to communicate with you paves the way for an intolerable existence. Not knowing what your spouse is thinking or feeling makes building a life together difficult, if not impossible. If neither of you know what the other's internal plans and visions are for the future, how will you know if you are moving into it together? You and your spouse became one in God's eyes the day you were married. That's from Ephesians 5.31. But there is still a process of becoming one in your everyday lives together from then on. The day-to-day living out of this concept of total unity doesn't just happen. It takes time and effort. Both husband and wife have to compromise in order to do it. When one person stops putting forth any effort to talk things out or make the marriage better, it becomes a nightmare for the other. If only one is communicating and the other is not, the marriage is headed for serious problems. One person trying to carry the entire weight of a marriage relationship will work for only so long. That's why communication needs to be prayed about every day, preferably in advance of any communication breakdown. But if communication between you is already suffering, pray for the breakthrough you both need in order to change that. If one of you believes that communication is not good in your relationship, then some changes have to be made. God is a God of change. Although He is unchanging, He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He doesn't want us to be like that. That's because He doesn't need to change. We do. He is perfect. We're not. He wants us to always be changing because He desires that we become more and more like Him. If we are resistant to being changed, then we are resistant to God because God is all about changing us. If one or both people in a marriage are resistant to the changing, transforming, and perfecting work of the Holy Spirit in their life, then there are certain to be bad habits that develop. The longer these bad habits go on, the more entrenched they become. But the good news is that any stronghold of bad habits can be broken in an instant by the power of God, no matter how long they have been there. Even bad habits with regard to communication in your marriage can be completely eliminated. Anyone can learn to communicate better if they are willing to make the effort. We have to pray that our marriage partner is always open to good communication. Have you ever felt as though your life is stuck in one place? That you cannot move beyond where you are? Things can become that way in a marriage too. You can get into a rut. You can feel stuck in a relationship that isn't growing, isn't getting better, and isn't going anywhere. And only one of you, or perhaps neither of you, is willing to change anything in order to make it better. Marriage is not something we enter into to see what we can get out of it. It's something we ask ourselves every day about what we can put into it. Marriage is a covenant relationship, which means it is supposed to be a commitment until death parts us. Unfortunately, too often a marriage dies before the people in it do. Getting married is just the very beginning of your relationship. Being married frees you to feel secure enough to let your true self show, for better or for worse, for the purpose of seeing where you need God's healing, transformation, and restoration? Staying married depends on you both, being able to communicate well with one another and caring for one another unselfishly. The only way to keep growing together and not apart is by good communication. What other way can love and respect be shown? How else can you really be on the same team? What would happen in a football game if the quarterback never communicated with the rest of the team? It would be a disaster. They would never reach their goal. They would never experience victory. It's the same in a marriage. That's why it's entirely selfish and destructive to refuse to communicate with your spouse for whatever reason. You have to pray for good communication in your marriage as soon as you are aware of the need to do so. If you have already experienced divorce, you know the horrible pain of it, and you don't want to ever go through it again. You also know that when you are contemplating a divorce, you make a list in your mind of all the things that will change and you ask yourself, is it worth it? Do the gains balance out the losses? But the suffering that happens in an unhappy marriage is horrendous because there is no escape. Unless you get a divorce and dissolve the relationship completely, you are stuck there and you have to work it out. If your spouse isn't willing to do anything to make it better, it's a nightmare. That's why praying about having good communication is so important right from the start, before you're married, if possible. If not, then as soon as you realize how crucial this is. It's also very good to be reading the Word of God and attending a good church together where there is good Bible teaching. But I've seen too many marriages in the church end in divorce. I've even seen too many people who are great Bible teachers leave their husbands or wives. And I've also seen marriages between people who never go to church or read the Bible last a lifetime. So there has to be more to saving a marriage than any kind of pat answer, like read the word and stay in church, even though I believe these two things are a must. You still have to do more. You have to pray and pray specifically about your communication. Because without that, your marriage cannot be all God wants it to be. In the survey I took of women before I wrote The Power of a Praying Husband, one of the top most important things women wanted was that their husbands would talk to them more. This is a very big issue in a marriage. You may have been married 30 years to a poor communicator, or you may be one yourself. But God can change both of you. We all can learn to communicate better if we ask God to help us do it. Communication is more about serving God's will than it is your own. It's more about doing what's right than deciding who's right. If you want to glorify God in your marriage, pray that the two of you will have good communication. That takes two hearts caring enough about one another to refuse to be selfish. If you and your spouse are already experiencing a lack of good communication and you want to change that, but your spouse doesn't, then be glad that God can change you first while you pray for the Holy Spirit to work on your spouse. God can help you to not be so easily hurt by your spouse's poor communication skills. The Lord can give you such joy and excitement about your life in Him that you don't feel rejected when your marriage partner is silent. If you are the one who has trouble communicating, ask God to give you a heart for your spouse that desires to express your love and thoughts openly. There are two specific ways to pray about having good communication that make a big difference when it comes to greatly enriching your relationship. For example, pray that you and your husband or wife are always kind to each other. How many marriages could be saved if both the husband and wife would just be nice to one another? It's called common decency. The Bible says love edifies from 1 Corinthians 8:1. That means love builds up and makes stronger. Love doesn't speak mean-spirited and sarcastic words that tear down. What we say and the manner in which we say it can either communicate love or total disregard. Loveless words of criticism destroy a marriage relationship. So we have to ask ourselves if the satisfaction derived from saying them is really worth the hurt and destruction they inflict. God doesn't think so. He says that real love does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, and it thinks no evil. That's from 1 Corinthians 13, 5. There is no reason to treat a spouse badly. If anyone wants to improve and enrich their marriage, just being nice is a good place to start. When a person is not treated well by their spouse, it keeps them from feeling safe enough to share their deepest thoughts and emotions. This shuts off an important part of their relationship. If you have already fallen into bad habits of critical and insensitive speech toward your spouse, repent of that now and ask God to change your heart. If your husband frequently directs negative and critical speech toward you, pray for an awakening in him. Pray that the grave consequences of such careless words will be revealed to him. I know it may seem pointless to do anything if you are the only one making the effort and your spouse seems to be doing nothing. But I have found that when you do the right thing, even when your spouse doesn't, God blesses you. And that makes a big difference. Another way to pray is that you and your spouse will always be truthful and honest with each other. A marriage absolutely must be based on trust. If you can't trust each other, then who can you trust? That's why lying to your spouse is one of the things that can do the most damage to your relationship. The Bible clearly says do not lie to one another. Colossians 3:9. Every lie has dangerous and far-reaching consequences. The worst consequence is that lying distances you from God. Psalm 101.7 says, He who tells lies shall not continue in my presence. Lying also distances you from one another and stops the flow of good communication. The best way to have good communication with your spouse is to first be in good communication with God. If it's true that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, Matthew 12, 34, then you have to ask God to fill your heart abundantly with His love every day, so that the words you speak are loving. Would you pray with me about this? Oh Lord, I pray that you would help my husband and me to be able to share our thoughts and feelings and refuse to be people who don't really talk to each other. Teach us to trust one another enough to talk about our deepest hopes, our dreams, our fears and struggles. Teach us to spend time communicating with you every day so that our communication with each other will always be good. Enable us to openly express love for one another each day, refusing to speak words that tear down, but rather only words that build up. Help us to be totally honest and open about everything. Enable us to communicate kindness, appreciation, and to honor each other at all times by listening. Open our hearts and fill them with your love so that it overflows in the words we speak to one another. Help us to understand the consequences for any careless or hurtful words. Teach us both to be more discerning about what wounds the heart of the other. Speak through us so that our words to each other will be your words. Enable us to be instruments of your peace and grace every time we speak to each other. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, my strength and my redeemer, in Jesus' name I pray. You know, have you ever seen couples who are married but seem like strangers? I used to know a couple who must have memorized the old saying, if you can't say something nice, then don't say anything, because they never said anything, at least not to each other. Theirs was a lifeless marriage. When one spouse is emotionally distant or non-communicative, it forces the other to have to endure all struggles alone. When there is no compatibility, there is no one with whom to share life. And when some people realize that they cannot rely on their spouse to come through with friendship and emotional support, it becomes easy to turn to another person who will. If one of you can't be nice, then you can't be friends, and your marriage will be an endurance test. God has so much more for you. Pray to avoid that.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Thanks for joining us. Next week, we'll explore how to keep love alive in your marriage, even during the hardest seasons. From softening hearts to reigniting joy and connection, you'll discover the keys to inviting God's restoration into your relationship.