Family prayer
“But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Joshua 24:15
When I was married and when I signed the register in the church the Pastor forcefully said this to me to do family prayer everyday without fail. There is a lot of questions in minds of today Christians why I should do family prayer. God has guided us through the Bible the importance of coming together as a family for praying him and worshipping him.
For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”
Gen 18:19
God gave a promise to Abraham but God was so sure that Abraham would teach his son how to walk in the sight of The Lord for God’s promise to fulfill for all of his generation. How would Abraham have done that. Spending time with his family and telling about God like in a family prayer.
When Isaac married Rebecca, Rebecca didn’t experience God before. But after the marriage in Genesis 25:22 we see Rebecca enquiring The Lord about her pregnancy. The time Isaac spent teaching about God and the time they spent in God’s presence daily made Rebecca to go God when she was fearing about her pregnancy instead of going to Isaac first.
Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6: 6-8
We see Mosses commanding the people to teach their children the commandments of God when they are in the house when you walk, lie down or get up. We have to teach our children the word of God and to always abide by it in their life from the young age and the best way to do is coming together as a family and praying.
In Leviticus 23 we see God giving the Israelites 7 festivals to follow as a whole group and as a family. The main reason for these festivals is to teach the children and the next generation the word of God. During celebrating the Passover festival, when the child in a family eats the unleavened bread he would ask the father why we are eating this unleavened bread it has no taste to the mouth, the father should explain we are glorifying God because when our ancestors was slaves in Egypt, God within a night made us to come out of our slave country and redeemed us to a new beginning and to celebrate it and to remember it we eat unleavened bread because our ancestors ate this unleavened bread at that day. In the feast of tabernacles when the child celebrates the child would ask the father why we have to live in these tents and not in our house and the father should explain him it is because once we are homeless and were in the desert but God gave us the land and the houses we never built. To celebrate that we stay in these tents. We have to teach our children in our family prayer.
In the new testament Acts: 18 we see two couples Aquila and Priscilla a family who were strong in The Lord and they were supporting Paul in his ministry with prayers all along. In 2 Timothy 2:5 Paul testifies the faith of grandmother and mother of Timothy and because they were strong in the faith and also taught their son Timothy to grow strong in the faith of The Lord through their family prayer.
When I was married I didn’t know much about my wife’s spiritual side. But when we started our family prayer and one day God showed her a vision and when she shared it to me I didn’t know what was it for at first, but after a while God made me realize it was about me and a thing I was fearing. Now I knew the God would reveal things to my wife as well. When we come together as a family and pray all our daily struggles is solved, the misunderstandings in the families is all settled when we come together and our children will learn the word of God and know how The Lord guides us and blesses our families.
Let us come together as families and serve the Lord. Let all our family members be united in our family prayer time.
Amen
Sol.Leo