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Prayers for Our Families

Caring for our families is a lot like caring for a flower garden. And God has put a beautiful tool in our hands: prayer. Through prayer, we can pull weeds, fight off snakes, and pour refreshing water onto our blossoms. We can use prayer not only to build fences of protection but also to mend them when they’re broken.

Jesus called His disciples to diligent prayer, and He also calls us to diligent prayer. If we are not persistent, we are like the lazy gardener that Solomon described in Proverbs 24:30–31: “I passed by a lazy person’s field, the vineyard belonging to a person without sense. I saw that it was all overgrown with thistles. The ground was covered with weeds, and its stone fence was torn down...”

As we become people of much prayer, we will grow to believe that all things are possible. Our prayers will carry our loved ones to freedom from the weeds of sin like rage, hate, bitterness, abuse, dark media, meddling with the occult, drugs, alcohol, porn, gambling, or other addictions. As we petition God for deliverance on behalf of our loved ones, it’s important to speak blessing upon them as well. 

I think blessing our loved ones is a lot like watering flowers. The time may come for more urgent intercession, where you find yourself lying facedown to cry out to God on behalf of a loved one. But there’s also a time for preventive intercession, which includes blessings. When we are busy blessing our families, those very blessings will help push aside many of the works of the enemy and keep the weeds and the snakes away.

Here’s a sample prayer to help you pull the weeds in your loved one’s garden.

Dear Lord,

I come to you, travailing in prayer, on behalf of __________. Your Word says, “But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). Because you came to destroy the works of the devil, I stand with you to destroy these works in my loved one’s life. I name each weed (name sins and addictions here) and ask that it be ripped by the root from my loved one’s life, in the power and authority of the name of Jesus. I tell these sins and addictions as well as the evil spirit behind them to leave now. In Jesus’s name, I ask that __________ encounter Your love and freedom and be set free.  Bless _________ with you love and peace as _________ turns to you.  Amen.