How Does Prayer Affect Your Sex Life??

A number of years ago, I watched an interesting Oprah show.  I don’t remember who the guest was, but I clearly recall his statement about prayer.  He said, “Couples who pray together have better sex lives than couples who don’t.”  How could prayer affect a couple’s sexual activity so much?

My first thought is that God blesses married couples who strive to keep Him in the center of their marriage.  God made marriage to be a sacred union between a man and woman.  He delights in our desires to honor that union and seek His face for help. 

God gave us sex not only to procreate, but also as a physical demonstration of two becoming one in marriage.  Emotional and physical intimacy, together, form an unbreakable bond between a man and woman.   I believe sex is enhanced by our willingness to follow God’s plan in our marriages and in our lives, especially when we join together in prayer.

Secondly, prayer generates intimacy, especially for women.  Women need intimacy with their spouse before they are ready to engage in sex.  Men, on the other hand, get their intimacy from having sex.

Intimacy comes in many forms in a marriage.  Every couple needs to figure out the intimacy builders in their relationship.  Conversation is usually the greatest level of intimacy for women.  Nothing makes a woman feel closer to her man than to have him listen to her and share in her concerns and joys.  When a woman’s emotional intimacy level is fulfilled, she will be more than willing to have sex.

Having my husband help around the house is very intimate to me.  That’s big in the romance department for me.  It shows me he cares about me and my desires to have a clean, presentable haven for us.  Forget about flowers and candy and presents, just clean the toilet for me!

The intimacy that comes from prayer is very powerful.  When my husband puts his arm around me and prays for an issue I may be facing that day, I feel the presence of God with us. I imagine God’s arms, in the form of my husbands, wrapping me in His security and promise to take care of me.  At those moments I feel my husband loving me as Christ loved the church in Ephesians.  I know everything will be okay.  I have God and my husband on my side.  I couldn’t feel any closer to my husband, emotionally, than I do when he prays for me.

Ephesians 5:25-27 – “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

Women want to be loved.  Emotional intimacy maintains and builds that love, for a woman, much more than physical intimacy.  Remember the expression – women are like slow cookers and men are like microwaves?  Women have to feel emotional intimacy in order to desire sex at the level a man does, and it needs to be a continuous effort to keep the wife “warmed up”. 

This is where the problems occur with sex in a marriage because men need the physical intimacy before they can enjoy the emotional intimacy.  It’s important for a man, as foreign as it may seem to him, to learn how to fulfill his wife, emotionally, before he expects sex from her.  Without it, sex becomes a power struggle between them.

Prayer is a great way to build up that intimacy.  On top of that, it’s an amazing way to keep God in your marriage and to build your faith with your spouse.  God will bless you and reward you for your obedience, especially when you join together with your spouse to become all that God has planned for you.

The couple that prays together stays together!