Prayers for children and family

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Bible verses about family and children

What each passage meant where it was written, and what it does and does not offer you now.

and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

Deuteronomy 6:4–9: read the chapter

Written for a people about to live somewhere they did not yet know, and the instruction is startlingly domestic. Teach them diligently, yes, and households have kept set times for that ever since. But the verse keeps going. Sitting about, walking somewhere, going to bed, getting up. Whatever time you set aside, faith also reaches your children sideways, in the car, at the end of an ordinary day.

And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I poured out my soul before Jehovah.

1 Samuel 1:9–18: read the chapter

Hannah is praying about a child she does not have, silently, with only her lips moving, and the priest in charge assumes she is drunk and tells her off for it. The text records his misjudgement without softening it. If your prayer about your family is wordless, or bitter, or has been misread by someone religious, you are in old company.

For he knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust.

Psalm 103:13–18: read the chapter

This is not calling you worthless. It is saying God factors in your limits before you do, and parents are the last people on earth to allow themselves a limit. You are tired because you are a body, not because you are failing. The line just before compares God to a compassionate father, which some readers have to learn from scratch.

Lo, children are a heritage of Jehovah; [And] the fruit of the womb is [his] reward.

Psalm 127:3–5: read the chapter

It sits in a psalm about how little any of us secures by effort and worry. Children are named as gift rather than as achievement, which is the reverse of how the verse usually gets used. It is not a scoreboard for family size, and it says nothing at all about anyone with one child, no children, or a child who has died.

Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6: read the chapter

This is a proverb, which in the Bible means a reliable observation about how life usually runs, not a contract God has signed. Read as a guarantee it does two cruel things at once. It tells the parents of a struggling adult child that they caused it, and the parents of a thriving one that they earned it. Formation matters. It does not determine.

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee.

Isaiah 49:14–16: read the chapter

Spoken to people convinced God had forgotten them. The answer that follows is not the sentimental one. It concedes that some mothers do forget, and then says God will not. That honesty matters if your own parents did forget you, or if you are frightened by what you have already let slip. The image describes God's memory, not a standard set for yours.

And he took them in his arms, and blessed them, laying his hands upon them.

Mark 10:13–16: read the chapter

Children were being brought and the disciples were sending them away, presumably for sensible reasons about time and importance. Jesus is angry about that, which is worth noticing. Nobody in the scene asks whether the children understand anything. They are picked up and blessed. You can bring your child to God without waiting for them to be ready, or interested, or impressive.

And when they saw him, they were astonished; and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I sought thee sorrowing.

Luke 2:41–52: read the chapter

Mary and Joseph lost a twelve year old for three days and searched a city in a panic. Her first words to him are a reprimand, and nothing in the passage tells her off for it. It does not resolve tidily either. They did not understand what he said back. Even that family had a child they could not always read.

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:1–4: read the chapter

The half about children obeying gets quoted constantly and this half almost never. In a household where a father's authority was close to absolute, being told not to goad your children into rage was a real limit on real power. Colossians puts it as not discouraging them. If you have ever wound a child up until they broke, this line is about you, and it is not despairing of you.

Quoted from the American Standard Version (1901), which is in the public domain. Every reference on this page was checked against the text. Chapter links open the same translation in our reader.

Questions people ask

Does praying for my child actually do anything?

We cannot tell you what God will do, and nobody honestly can. What we can say is what prayer is not. It is not a remote control for another person, and it does not make the outcome your responsibility. It keeps you turned towards your child with something other than fear, and it puts what you cannot carry somewhere other than your own chest at three in the morning. That is real, and it is not a guarantee.

Is it my fault how my child turned out?

You shaped the conditions your child grew up in. You did not author the person they became. Those are different things, and keeping them apart is not a let-off. Children are people, with their own choices, their own biology, their own hurts that had nothing to do with you, and a good deal that no parent has any say in at all. Some specific things were yours, and you probably already know which ones. If you owe a specific apology, make it. Guilt in general is not repentance and it does not help them.

How do I pray for an adult child who wants nothing to do with me?

Briefly, and without an agenda. Praying for someone who has cut contact can quietly become a way of carrying on an argument they have already left. If you notice you are putting your case to God, stop and just say their name. Keep the door open on your side without hammering on theirs. And if there is a reason they went, be willing to look at it with a counsellor or someone who will tell you the truth.

Can I tell God I resent my own children?

Yes. Hannah described her own praying as speaking out of the abundance of her complaint, and the priest watching her assumed she was drunk. Resentment said honestly to God is not blasphemy, it is material. What matters is where you take it. Say it in prayer. Say it to a friend, or to your doctor if it is not lifting. Do not say it to the child. Feeling it does not make you a bad parent.

Should I pray with my children, and how?

Yes, and traditions differ on how much shape that should have. Some households keep a set time, a rule of prayer, grace at the table, a rosary. Others never have kept one. Deuteronomy 6 pictures it happening while you are walking somewhere and at bedtime as well as when you sit down to it. Either way, short, out loud, ordinary. Thank you for today. Please help with the test tomorrow. We are sad about the dog. Let them hear you pray about things that are actually going on, including things you do not know the answer to. Children notice honesty long before they notice fluency.

Prayers for your children and family

When you are frightened for them

The middle of the night

For a child I cannot protect

In the waiting room

When the illness is theirs

When they have stopped speaking

For a door that stays shut

For an adult child who has gone

When they no longer believe

One line for a silent phone

After you have shouted again

After I lost my temper

The parent I promised not to be

When I do not like them

In the ordinary week

Before the school run

At the end of the day

For the unremarkable middle years

Grace at an ordinary table

When the family is coming apart

When the two of us separate

For a child between two houses

When the siblings are not speaking

Bible verses about family and children

Where these verses get misused

Questions people ask

Writing for this subject

Still Praying for the Grown Child You Can't Help

A prayer for the school gate, when your child is scared