Prayer for Families

May 2 is the National Day of Prayer.  I had the privilege of meeting with my Community Bible Study group today to pray and my prayer focus was families.  Here is my prayer for our families:

God right now we pray for families in our nation, our state and throughout our community.  We ask that You protect and strengthen marriages, encourage parents and bring healing to relationships.

God as sisters, daughters, mothers, wives, grandmothers, aunts and friends help our love to be sincere.  Help us to hate what is evil and cling to what is good. Let us be devoted to one another in love.  Honoring others above ourselves.  Never let us be lacking in zeal, but keep our spiritual fervor, serving You.  Lord, Help us to be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Help us to share with people who are in need and practice hospitality. (Romans 12:9-13)

God we earnestly ask you to turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; so that no destruction will come to our land.” Malachi 4:6

God help families to keep their focus on You.  May they strive to serve You and You only. (Joshua 24:15)  God, lead us like a shepherd, gather the lambs in your arms and carry them close to your heart.  Gently lead those that have young.  (Isaiah 40:11)

Help us to teach our children and grandchildren in the Way they should go so that when they are old they will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

We ask Lord that you protect the marriage unit, we know what your Word says that marriage is between one man and one woman, help us to honor that institution, by living out the example you have set.

As wives, Help us Lord, to submit to our husbands as we do to You.  Help husbands to love their wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. Ephesians 5:22-28

Just as we received Jesus Christ as Lord, let us continue to live in Him.  Let our marriage relationships be rooted and built up in Jesus, strengthened in the faith, and overflowing with thankfulness.  (Colossians 2:6-7)

May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.  Psalm 33:22