You’ve heard the statistics. You’ve even been encouraged by them. Couples who pray together have less than a 1% chance of divorce. So if there’s a 99% chance that your marriage would succeed if you just do this one, little thing… why is it so difficult for even committed Christians to get in the habit and stick to it?

Authors and marriage mentors Lori and David Hatcher found themselves in the same situation. Ten years into their marriage, they had hit a plateau. The responsibilities of parenting young children had left them exhausted – and more like roommates than lovers. “Children can be loud and demanding, and you have to take care of them,” David said. Like most of us, they knew Christian couples were “supposed to” read the Bible and pray together. And like most of us, they tried, and failed to make it a habit. Every year they’d give each other a new devotional at Christmas, but when evening rolled around, and the kids were finally in bed, they’d fall asleep before they could finish even a page.

The Hatchers heard a phrase at a conference that inspired them to look at their priorities. “The best gift you can give your children is a solid marriage.” “We realized when you are committed to your marriage, everything else falls in place,” Lori said. This flipped a switch in Lori’s heart that motivated her to make a change.

She realized they had developed a pattern when the children were small where David tiptoed out of the house for work early while Lori enjoyed a last few moments of sleep before hitting the ground running to begin her responsibilities with the children and home. The two often would barely think about each other during their hectic days apart. In the early years of midnight feedings and teething babies Lori needed to rest whenever she could. But she realized the girls weren’t babies anymore. And she really wanted to start praying and reading the Bible with David.

God gave her an idea of how they could carve out this time together without slowing down David’s off-to-work routine. Lori woke with him, prepared breakfast while he showered, and then read a short devotion together while he ate. Before he left, they would share prayer concerns for the day.

While rising early initially felt like a sacrifice, Lori felt God asking her how badly she wanted this, and she wanted it badly enough to give the new routine a try.

“We’d gotten to the point of saying, ‘How was your day?’ responding, ‘Fine.’ Then off we would go on our separate ways. Asking each other about ways we could pray unlocked some specifics about our days and gave us something to share in the evening,” Lori said. Now David knew Lori was struggling to teach Algebra that day in a homeschool lesson. Lori knew David had a difficult meeting with a customer. They had a point of connection, and because they committed to pray for each other, they found they thought about each other more often during the day. “We realized God was knitting our hearts back together again,” Lori said.

The Hatchers continued this practice and now will soon celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. Their story can be found in the introduction to their devotional, Moments with God for Couples: 100 Devotions for Growing Closer to God and Each Other, published by Our Daily Bread Publishing in 2023.

As they approached the empty nest years, the Hatchers were startled to realize the risk of divorce in that age bracket was increasing.

“It scared us!” Lori admitted. “We didn’t want our marriage or that of our friends to break up. A couple spends so many years focused on the children and their activities – they are more like partners in getting the kids raised. All of a sudden, they wake up one morning and they don’t know each other.” The two began investing in time together reinventing their social life – taking up speaking with Toastmasters International, traveling to see waterfalls and learning pickleball. “Now that our free time is not governed by our children, we had time to learn something new” Lori said. It can be so easy to get into a rut. David particularly enjoys when Lori walks with him and “oohs and ahs” when he skillfully lands a frisbee into the disc golf cage.

The couple became even more active in Bible reading and study as their daughters grew up and left home. They’ve led a group of friends through Bible studies that specifically encouraged marriages. The Hatchers were particularly moved by a suggestion that couples to sit together and answer three questions: What brings you joy? What are you afraid of? What do you hope for? They found these questions got to the heart of issues that were the deepest and hardest to share.

Lori confessed to David that she was afraid for his health, as he weighed more than 300 pounds. She was concerned he would not live to see their grandchildren grow up.

“He listened to me, heard my fears and love for him and desire for our retirement years to be healthy and active,” Lori said. “This was the impetus for him to take ownership over his health and make good choices.” The loss of 60 pounds right before the pandemic might have saved his life. “I feel like we had a God-ordained conversation,” she said. “Before, he was a prime candidate for someone who might have died from Covid.”

David credits doing Bible study and devotionals together for softening his heart. “Lori was able to tell me something, and I was in the right frame of mind to receive it,” he said.

Lori said this is an example of how “excellent resources can transform marriages and relationships and lives. If we hadn’t been taking that Bible study and doing the exercises, I could be a widow. God’s word never returns void. Biblically based material accomplishes what God intends for it to.”

By 2023 Lori already was a successful author of several devotionals. (She’s now written eight, three of which are bestsellers.) But this time her editor at Our Daily Bread Publishing wanted to include a man’s perspective.

Lori was reluctant to write a book showcasing their marriage – I thought, “No way! We are still under construction. We don’t have the perfect marriage.” But Lori has learned “not to make important decisions without consulting my spouse and praying,” and David said they should do it. “We have not arrived, but God has been faithful even in our failures. We can share the mistakes we have made that may keep someone from doing the same things,” he said.

Lori selected their first long ago devotional because its passages were short, pertained to marriage and family, included a Bible verse and a spiritual truth. The Hatchers followed that template when they were asked to write their own devotional for couples.

They knew it was important to share their stories from a place of coming alongside the readers and embraced the idea that “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” a practice that comes easily to fun-loving David. Titles like Diet Coke Wars and Don’t Feed Meatloaf to the Dog keep things light. David fills his pages with sports illustrations featuring his beloved Dallas Cowboys, while one of Lori’s offerings is titled Better Than Sex.

Sometimes selections touch on serious topics. One of David’s pages praises his two sons-in-law for the ways they jump in and participate in the day-to-day tasks of everyday life. “I want to be the dad that tells my children I’m proud of them and appreciate them. I noticed how one son changes diapers and cooks dinner. The other shops and runs errands. It’s a team effort with my daughters, with all doing 100%. I really appreciate the way they look at things from their wife’s point of view as co-laborers together.”

He also addressed the needs for men to have deep male friendship and how we, as Christians, represent the name of our Savior in our words and actions. A more humorous selection recounts the adventures of an enormous rubber cockroach the couple delighted in hiding where it would most startle the other. That sneaky (and thankfully fake) Palmetto bug found its way onto hairbrushes, soap dishes and even lunchboxes. The fun practice continued for years until the offending insect suddenly vanished. They suspect one of the grandchildren had something to do with its disappearance.

Each entry takes less than two minutes to read and includes a discussion question or application to give the couple “something to think about that draws them one step closer to each other and one step closer to God,” Lori said.

An unforeseen blessing of writing the book together is that it captures the Hatchers’ legacy for their daughters and grandchildren. As in most families, their progeny don’t always have the patience to listen to every story of how God proved himself faithful in their lives, David said. Each couple has a copy of the book, and Lori and David hope at some point they will read it (and not just the parts that pertain to them, for which they have granted permission to include.)

While Lori and David’s primary devotional resource remains fittingly Our Daily Bread, the Hatchers are committed to read through the Bible themselves every year. David, and auditory learner, actually listens to the content several times through.

“All the Bible is relevant, interesting, applicable and important,” Lori said. She delights in including uncommon verses and words in the devotionals she writes, like, A Word for Your Day, 66 Devotions to Refresh Your Mind, and Think on These Things, 60 Thoughtful Devotions for Renewed Peace that will release in 2025. She even enjoys the challenge of Leviticus, which inspired the word thanksgiving.

“One of the good things about reading the Bible through every year is that you see so much more in it,” David added. “In Leviticus you see that the person who brought the sin offering to the priest had to put his own hand on the lamb’s head and cut its throat himself. It underscores the fact that sin is serious, and there’s a cost for that.”

Lori quoted A.W. Tozer, “Nothing less than the whole Bible makes a whole Christian,” and adds, “We have seen that bear fruit.”

“We didn’t have examples of godly parents,” David added. “We are first generation Christians and wanted to do what was right. God brought good mentors to help us.”

The Hatchers hope couples in all ages and stages will enjoy Moments with God for Couples, noting it is a favorite wedding shower gift so newlyweds can “start with these principles and not have years of undoing.” But they noted, we “never stop working on our marriages, we never arrive. There’s always, some area where we can grow as we mature in Christ and hopefully mature in the way we conduct ourselves.”

Lori encourages couples to make a five-minute daily investment in devotional-reading together. “It’s something everybody can do, and it pays incredible dividends!”