Do Duo Devotions Diligently: A Challenge to Married People

One thing Jaimie and I have slowly been working out since we got married (and even before) is how to seek God together. Both of us generally have fairly solid devotional lives: though not without our ups and downs, we both regularly read and memorize Scripture and pray. It is far more challenging to know how (and when!) to seek God as a couple. Individually, the pattern is simply: read the Bible and pray, and work on Scripture memory and pray more throughout the day. As a couple, however, we must set aside the time and work out a plan for what we will do.

(It is important, you'll note, that we each have strong walks with God ourselves. While we can support each other immensely in our walks with God, we can do so only insofar as we know Him ourselves. As ever, the Christian walk stands in tension: we need to pursue Jesus as individuals, but we do so in community.)

In the first year of our marriage, we began by praying together every morning before I left for work. That went well for a while—until I started leaving earlier and Jaimie started getting up later. The result is that we usually don't see each other until after I get back from work; aside from phone calls or text messages, the first time we actually communicate is late afternoon! Obviously, the original plan wasn't working. It also didn't really include much time spent on Scripture, and even when it was working, the time was much too brief. (I eat quickly.)

On our one-year anniversary, we made a point to review the year: what had we done well, and what had we done poorly? We also discussed the areas we wanted to work on in the year ahead (this year)—and one of the areas was our joint spiritual lives. It is important that we lay a solid foundation here now, so that by the time we have children (God willing!), we are already established in our familial walk with God. Children will simply be integrated into an existing pattern; we will not be struggling to figure it out then. (Actually, we still will, as we'll never have been parents before... but hopefully not as much as if we had no experience in pursuing God as a family!)

As the spiritual leader, the responsibility for coming up with a plan, or at least leading the discussion on a plan, fell to me. Over the next few weeks, I mulled over a few things, was Providentially guided to a few good articles, and prayed over how to do this well. The plan I came up with—the plan that we have been following since then, with varying degrees of success—looks like this:

• Sunday: We take a walk, usually spending the first half just chatting about various aspects of life and being silly, and the second half talking about spiritual things we've been considering—new things we've learned about God, desires we have for the church, etc. We have a two mile loop, which makes for a comfortable half-hour walk: plenty of time for good discussion.
• Monday: We pray. Our focus is on our marriage, each other, our families, and our very best friends, PJ and Katie, with whom we are as close as family in many ways.
• Tuesday: We pray again! This time, our focus is on our spheres of ministry. In Jaimie's case, that includes the woman she is mentoring, her friends and acquaintances from class, and the foreign families she has met by riding the bus to and from OU (really neat people, and a great ministry opportunity). For me, it includes coworkers, my work on Pillar, my service on the worship team at church, and the younger man I mentor.
• Wednesday: We briefly discuss the things we have been learning in our devotional material throughout the week. One of our goals is to have at least one concrete thing we have learned that we can share during this time—whether something new we learned about God, or an application for our lives. That challenges us to be more proactive in our own devotionals.
• Thursday: We pray—can you tell we think prayer is important? Our focus on Thursdays is missions and ministries we support. We have a number of friends on the mission field, we are privileged to support people on staff with various campus ministries and mission teams, and there are many unreached people groups in the world—we try to pray for each of these categories.
• Friday: We take some time to focus on our marriage. Normally, I prepare a question to ask. Sometimes we get to it, and sometimes our date night conversation naturally turns to marriage-oriented conversation, obviating the need for a prepared question.
• Saturday: We study Scripture together. Right now, Jaimie is using a through-the-Bible-in-a-year plan, so we simply go to wherever she is reading and work through those passages together—it would hardly be fair to ask her to do double reading on Saturdays (especially given how much the plan demands). We have also done book studies together in the past—something we're looking forward to doing again in the future.

We're getting close to hitting every one of those days; doing so is one of my goals for this week. Stop back by in a week and see how we did.

Obviously the schedule has some flexibility to it; this is a general plan, not a definitive roadmap. Right now, date nights are usually Friday nights, so that's when we discuss marriage issues. However, that's already a change from date night being on Thursdays as it was until a month ago, and the schedule changed accordingly.

This schedule works for us. Different couples can and should figure out different ways to pull this off. Every night might not be an option, for various reasons (though I would encourage it if at all possible—it does wonders for your togetherness). Different times of day, and different emphases, may be necessary. The main point is that you shouldn't be drifting along, thinking a mutually beneficial couple-oriented devotional life will just happen. It won't. You need to work to make this happen, whatever the details look like.

Men, the responsibility most of all falls on you here. Most women I know would love for their husbands to step up and take the initiative to set aside even one chunk of time every week for spiritual things. The reality is, if your wife has to initiate it all the time, she is going to be frustrated and you are probably going to feel nagged. If you initiate it, your wife will appreciate it and you will have the fulfillment of doing what God calls you to do. It may not always be what sounds most fun, and it has a cost in time and energy, but the rewards are immense. Your marriage will be stronger and your own relationship with God will be deeper.