How to Pray for the Man Who Broke Your Heart

It’s hard to pray for the one who hurt you—especially when it’s the man who promised to love you forever.

Our angry and broken hearts may want to turn away from him. The human part of us wants to put up an emotional wall so he can’t hurt us again, but God wants more than that for us. He knows that the walls we build to keep one person out will eventually extend to everyone as our bitterness and resentment grow.

HAVE YOU TRIED TO PRAY BUT IT DIDN’T SEEM TO CHANGE A THING?

We’ve all been there. We pray, but it feels like our prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. God doesn’t seem to be hearing them . . . or answering them. We are impatient. We want it to be like rubbing the magic lamp and having the genie instantly appear to grant our wishes. Unfortunately, it rarely works that way.

I’m reminded of a passage in the book of Job:

. . . God is greater than any mortal.
Why do you complain to him that he responds to no one’s words?
For God does speak—now one way, now another—
though no one perceives it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds,
He may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings,
to turn them from wrongdoing and keep them from pride,
to preserve them from the pit, their lives from perishing by the sword.

In spite of what you think or see, God has heard your prayers and is working on your behalf. God has not given up on your husband and He promises He never will.

As you pray for your husband, you’re not giving God information that he doesn’t already have. You’re not offering solutions that God hasn’t already considered. What you are doing is joining with God and coming against the enemy’s plan to destroy your husband and your marriage. It’s a process that has the potential to bring healing to both of you.

This is important even if you’re already separated or divorced. Just removing yourself from the situation does not automatically heal your wounds. Even if you feel God has released you from your marriage, you will never be fully free until those wounds have been addressed.

ARE YOU UNSURE OF WHAT TO PRAY?

The most important thing to remember is that you’re not praying against your husband or any others that have had a part in helping him fail. You are praying that he will be blessed with the good gifts he needs to choose and persevere in recovery.

Here are some ideas you might want to include in your prayers:

Things your husband desperately needs:

Protection

Your husband needs protection from many thing both internal and external. These include:

1. The enemy’s plan to destroy him
2. Immoral thoughts and fantasies that assault his mind
3. Peers and others who would seek to tempt and encourage him in the wrong direction
4. Seducing spirits that operate through some women and images of porn
5. People, places, and habits (like alcohol, drugs, or surfing the internet) that make him more vulnerable to his addictive behaviors

Recovery

The first step in moving toward freedom is for the struggler to turn toward God and others for help. This is very difficult for most addicts.  They don’t want anyone to see their struggle or weaknesses, so they cling tightly to the idea that they can somehow stop by themselves. It almost never happens.

Some of the things you can pray are that . . .

• God would convict him of his sin through whatever means necessary
• He will be able to admit to himself and others that he has a problem and is unable to stop by himself
• He’ll find the courage to confess his struggle and his powerlessness to God and repent of relying on sexual diversions instead of God to “save” him from the painful memories and feelings he is trying so hard to avoid
• God will direct him to the right people who can show him the way to freedom and that he will find the courage to reach out to them. Without this he is unlikely to find any sort of lasting freedom.

Restored trust in God and others

The inability to fully trust others, due to past experiences, is a huge issue in most addictions. Rebuilding trust in God and safe people is a very important part of recovery.

• Ask the Lord to reveal himself to your husband in a very real and tangible way
• Pray that your husband’s eyes will be opened to the truth that God still loves him in spite of his struggles and repeated failures
• Request that God send a godly and compassionate man (or men) to walk beside your husband and support him throughout his recovery journey

Healing:

Although your husband’s choices ultimately made him vulnerable to this addiction, the pain of unhealed wounds are what sent him looking for a way to put them out of his mind. Even if he was, somehow, able to stop some or all of his compulsive sexual behaviors, without those initial wounds being healed, he would need to find something else to take away their sting. Because of this, he needs:

• Knowledgeable people to come into his life to help him carefully uncover those wounds
• Courage to look at and seek healing of these underlying wounds that fuel his compulsive behaviors
• Perseverance (for both of you) when recovery seems slow or slips happen
• New, healthier ways to deal with stress, conflict, boredom, fear, feeling unacceptable, etc. Becoming more equipped to deal with life’s issues in positive ways reduces the need and desire for the addictive behaviors

Gratitude:

• Praise God for the work he has begun in your husband’s life and the new awarenesses and changes (however small) that have come out of it

As you begin to pray for your husband in a deeper way, don’t be surprised if you notice some changes in you and your heart, as well. We can’t touch the throne of God without being changed in ways we never anticipated.

“The prayer of a righteous man [or woman] is powerful and effective.” —James 5:16

TODAY’S CHAT: Are you regularly praying for the needs of your husband? It’s amazing how easy it is to get so caught up in the daily struggle and pain of living with an addict that we forget that we have a loving God who has all the answers and resources that we need. Although this list of prayer ideas is certainly not all inclusive, which ones do you think are most appropriate to where your husband is right now?