How to Say a Practical Prayer for Love and Happiness in a Relationship

Inside: Use these 5 Bible verses to re-anchor yourself and take a fresh approach to your prayer for love and happiness. Plus, get 3 reasons why your current prayers aren’t working.

I barely kept my drink in my mouth as I choked on unexpected laughter. For a second, I was sure I’d spew it across the table. But by some miracle, I managed to gulp it down. Then I finally released peals of laughter.

It felt wonderful to laugh with abandon—with my whole body—again. It seemed like forever since I’d last used any of my laugh muscles and I knew my stomach muscles would ache the next day from it.

I’d missed the burst of joy from a genuine belly laugh, and I wished I could do it more.

As my laughter faded into chuckles, I noticed glances and smiles from people at other tables, and I wondered what they saw in my merriment. Maybe a happy-go-lucky soul.

Except, I was the opposite.

Most of the time, I was anxious and unhappy because of my relationship. And not one of my prayers for love and happiness seemed able to fix it.

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Your Current Prayer for Love and Happiness in Your Relationship

And now you’re where I was—drowning in unhappiness in your relationship, which means you’re not laughing much at home these days.

In fact, your unhappiness is like a dark cloud handing over you most of the time. So you’re not laughing much anywhere at all.

Maybe, like mine was, your prayer journal is awash with your tears and your prayers for love and happiness. And maybe, like mine were, your prayers are a continuous loop of begging God to:

Change your partner’s heart towards you.
Make your partner love you the way you want to be loved.
Show your partner how to respect and treat you the way he should.
Make your man stop hurting you emotionally.
Help you to be a good partner to him.
Show you how to be a better woman so you can be the partner your man wants you to be.
Help you bear the strain and burden of your unhappiness in your relationship.
Give you the strength to keep going.

And so much more.

If you’re like I was, your prayer journal is also hiding:

At least one letter to your man about your hurt feelings.
Your distress over feeling like nothing you do is good enough for your boyfriend or husband.
Your secret shame over not liking your husband anymore.

It’s rife with words you’ve tried and failed to say. Plus, unhappiness you don’t know how to express without bringing more of it into your home.

Even worse, your unanswered prayers have you wondering why God doesn’t talk to you in return.

But First, Beware of 3 Pitfalls

Your prayers are normal and typical. But there are 3 problems with them which explain why you’re not hearing God’s voice in response.

1. You’re asking God to magic up changes in your partner.

God brings worlds into existence with a word, so it’s clear He can do anything.

But it’s unlikely He’ll wave His holy hand and change your partner in the ways you wish he’d change. This is because God gives every single person a choice in how they want to think and act.

This means your partner is free to make his own decisions without God forcing change on Him, even though it’s your deepest wish.

2. You’re asking God to magic up changes in your circumstances.

Again, God can do things we can’t even conceive of. But you’re unlikely to wake up one morning to a miraculous, overnight change in your circumstances.

God can and will provide a way for you to change your circumstances. But you’re responsible for keeping your eyes peeled for the opportunity when it comes.

Plus, God won’t force you to take the opportunity. You have to choose to grab it when you see it.

3. You’re asking God to magic up changes in you.

I’ll say it one more time—nothing is impossible for our God of this universe and beyond.

But He’s not likely to abracadabra you into a whole new woman.

Yes, you can absolutely change. But just like God won’t force unwanted growth and change on your man, He won’t force it on you either.

You see, change is a decision you make. And it starts when you change your mind.

Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Romans 12:2 (MSG)

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Prayer for Love and Happiness in a Relationship

Now you’re aware of the 3 traps waiting to swallow your prayer for happiness and love whole:

Praying for a magical change in your partner.
Asking God for a miraculous, immediate change in your circumstances.
Praying for a magical change in you.

These prayers rob you of your power and choice. They make you feel like you have no say in or power over how your life or love and happiness unfold.

Instead of disempowering yourself this way, you can use God’s word to change your perspective. When you do, you’ll change your prayer for love and happiness in your relationship.

5 Bible Verses to Guide Your Prayer for Happiness and Love

Before we dive into your new prayer for love and happiness, let’s use these 5 Bible verses as a new foundation.

May the God of your hope so fill you with all joy and peace in believing [through the experience of your faith] that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound and be overflowing (bubbling over) with hope. Romans 15:13 (AMPC)

[Love] is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]. It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail. 1 Corinthians 13:5-6 (AMPC)

And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for. 1 John 5:14-15 (NLT)

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires. Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you. Psalm 37:4-5 (NLT)

You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said. Luke 1:45 (NLT)

Your Prayer For Love And Happiness

Father, it’s hard to praise You because I’m hurting so badly right now. I really want to but I don’t know how anymore. In all honesty, I sometimes wonder if You even hear my prayers anymore. But I’m desperate and I can’t give up on You, just as I hope You haven’t given up on me.

You see my situation, Lord. If I’ve gone wrong somewhere, please show me. Not only if I’ve inflicted hurt, but if I’ve stepped out of line with Your will. If I have, please help me feel strong and courageous enough to step back in line with it.

Lord, I know the purpose of my life isn’t to be happy—it’s to pursue Your will. It’s where I’ll find true joy, so please reveal Your will to me. Please help me open my eyes to see it, so I can step into abundant joy and peace in my relationship and in my life.

Oh God, I want to be loved the way I love. But I know that the perfect, unconditional love I need comes only from You. I want to only want your love, Lord, but I don’t yet know how. I want your love to be my meat and potatoes, and my man’s love to be gravy. So please teach me how to let go of my desperation and yearning for him to love me.

Finally, help me renew my mind to fully know I can choose love and happiness at any time. Help me to understand and accept the truth that my feelings of happiness and love depend on me and no one else. Because I know who I am in Christ—worthy, whole, and complete.

I pray all this in the precious name of my Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Prayer Love and Happiness: Your Next Step

Unhappiness was like a thief, stealing the joy out of me in my relationship. And I kept letting it rob me for far too long. In fact, I almost lost my laughter for good because of it.

The truth is, I could have kept praying until Jesus’ return for love and happiness in my relationship. But my prayers would probably never have worked since it’s usually fruitless to pray for God to:

Magically change your man;
Magically change your circumstances;
Or magically change you.

The thing is, once I stopped outsourcing my feelings to others and took full responsibility for them, my prayers for love and happiness changed.

If you want your prayer for love and happiness in a relationship to work, you need to take back your power.

You see, happiness is a choice you can make every day. So are love, peace, and joy. Even better, you can choose them anytime you want, independent of anyone else’s behavior.

When you change your perspective, you’ll change your whole life. Then you can’t help but change your prayer for love and happiness to a new, more uplifting, and empowering one.

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