Free Beyond Ordinary: When a Good Marriage Just Isn't Good Enough by Justin Davis, Trisha Davis

reason it is difficult to pray with your spouse.
    Praying with your spouse is huge in fighting for his or her heart. This may feel weird at first and may not feel natural. There isn’t anything more intimate— including sex —than praying with your spouse and hearing your spouse pray for you. Our prayers to God are some of the most intimate conversations we have. We share our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our insecurities, our failures, and our successes with our heavenly Father.
    When I pray with Trisha, I am allowed to hear her articulate the things in her life that are most precious to her. I am able to understand her more. I am invited into a part of her heart that is sacred. There is a bond and a connection that is formed through praying together that can’t be simulated or created in any other way. The Holy Spirit joins us and draws us closer together as we seek God with our spouses. This aspect alone has been a huge part of our journey, and we have heard so many stories from other couples who have chosen to share this part of their heart with their spouses and have experienced intimacy in ways they never thought possible.
    Marriage is no ordinary battle. To overcome an ordinary marriage, you have to fight for your spouse, not with your spouse.
    QUESTIONS
Can you recall the very first argument in your marriage? If so, what was it about?
Can you remember a “Did God really say . . .” moment that altered the way you looked at your life and your marriage? Why was this moment so influential?
As a couple, do you live with an awareness that there is a spiritual battle for your marriage? How do you respond to that battle?
Do you feel comfortable praying with your spouse? Why or why not? Would you consider praying with your spouse for the next 30 days?

3.
    NO ORDINARY HONESTY
    What prevents us from being fully known?
    The greatest adversary to being fully known is dishonesty. And fear is the driving force in most of our dishonesty. Our fears are often greater than our desire for intimacy and leave our marriages ordinary.
    Those who compromise honesty generally do so because of three fears: fear of being exposed, fear of emotional pain, and fear of not being loved. When any of these fears is larger than our desire for intimacy, ordinary becomes the norm in our marriages.
    Many of us have something in our lives that we hope no one finds out. Many of us live with secrets that even our spouses don’t know. Maybe it’s the number of people we slept with before marriage. Maybe it’s an eating disorder we had or currently struggle with. Maybe it’s lustful thoughts about a coworker. Maybe it’s a pornography addiction. Maybe it’s abuse we suffered as children.
    Our secrets don’t always have to be something we’ve done;often they are something that was done to us. But our fear is that someone will expose our secrets. That fear—fear of being exposed—feeds the fear of emotional pain.
    We don’t want to be exposed, because we’ve calculated the emotional pain our secrets or our lies or our addictions or our confessions will cause, and we have concluded that the emotional pain we will endure or the emotional pain we will cause will be greater than any good that could come from being exposed. So we continue to hide. We continue to pretend that things are better than they really are, thinking we are sparing ourselves and those we love from emotional pain. That fear is fueled by another fear.
    We are convinced that if we were exposed and our secret was found out, the emotional pain it would cause would make us unlovable. So we think, If my wife ever knew that about me, she would stop loving me . Or, If my husband found out about that, he would be done with me . Or, If I am honest about that, I will be all alone . Our dishonesty, we believe, will help our marriages, not hurt them.
    We’ve talked a lot in the first two chapters about oneness. Oneness can seem like an abstract concept—how do we quantify oneness ?