This prayer for your boyfriend isn’t the prayer you’re looking for.
It’s not going to make you feel better about your relationship. It’s not a magic formula that will compel God to make your relationship last.
But it might just be the prayer that you need to pray.
Are You Praying For Your Boyfriend Or Your Future Husband?
Do you pray for your future husband? If so, that’s beautiful. Do you pray for your boyfriend? If so, that’s commendable.
When your heart desires what God desires, these individual prayers are powerful and effective (James 5:16).
But when your prayers for your future husband and your boyfriend start to sound awfully similar, you have a problem.
When my husband and I were dating, I struggled with this tension. We both wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, but until we exchanged vows, I knew I couldn’t act as if he was my husband.
And yet in my mind, it was all too easy to believe that my future husband and boyfriend were the same person.
An Uncommon Prayer For Your Boyfriend
So, I prayed a painful but convicting prayer. If you’re struggling to keep your heart in check, I would recommend praying like this:
Pray that God would prepare your boyfriend to lead and love his future wife — as if he will marry someone else.
Ouch. That’s a hard thing to pray.
It’s not about the words but your heart: Can you emotionally let go of your boyfriend for a moment and be okay imagining his future without you?
No one in their right mind wants their boyfriend to marry someone else. You don’t have to want that. That’s not the point of this prayer.
The point of this prayer is to turn your focus away from what you want and what’s best for you toward what God wants and what’s best for your boyfriend.
If he ends up marrying you, then you were praying for your own marriage and you didn’t even know it. If he marries someone else, then you’ve blessed that marriage long before it began.
Either way, this prayer can remind you that your life is not about you but about God. When you seek what’s truly best for your boyfriend, you’ll be headed toward what’s best for you, too.
Why This Prayer For Your Boyfriend Is Convicting
- It puts your boyfriend’s interests before your own. Philippians 2:4 says, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” When you ask God to shape your boyfriend’s heart — even if his future doesn’t include you — you are loving him more than you ever have.
- It reveals how much you’ve “married him in your mind.” Philippians 4:8 tells us to think only about things that are true. Is it true that your boyfriend is your husband? No. He’s your boyfriend right now. He might become your husband someday, but until then, it’s sinful to act as if you know a future only God knows.
- It helps you see your need for God. I couldn’t pray this prayer with my own strength. In fact, just thinking about this prayer made me realize how much I needed God to change my heart. We can’t will selfless, righteous feelings from within ourselves. We must humbly confess that we do think about untrue, selfish things, and trust that God loves us even still, enough to help us desire the right things (he does).
Praying for your boyfriend as if he will marry someone else is difficult. This prayer is meant to be painful.
The goal is not that you stop loving your boyfriend, but that you would love him MORE sincerely and selflessly.
Only Jesus Christ can help you do that because that’s how he loves you. While you don’t know the future of your relationship with your boyfriend, you can dive headfirst into God’s love because you know you have it forever.
