The Benefits of Family Prayer & 7 Ways to Start

Why Family Prayer is so Important

“Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

Whatever your religious beliefs, prayer is an important practice to teach your children and make a daily part of your family life. In this article, we will discuss the different benefits of prayer and why we believe prayer for family should be a foundational principle in your home.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. To learn more about ’em, click here.

The PRactice of Prayer

While you likely associate prayer with your own faith or upbringing, the truth is that many different cultures and religions pray. For some, prayer is a way to communicate with a deity, while others speak litanies, repetitions, or even practice meditation. However you choose to pray, there are benefits to the practice itself. Making prayer a part of your family life, and thereby teaching your children the practice, can have many benefits as well!

Benefits of Prayer

So, why pray? Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of prayer.

• Strengthen bonds: Any shared practice in a group will help strengthen the bonds of that group. Stronger family relationships are a goal worth striving for!
• Build traditions: The importance of traditions in families cannot be exaggerated! Check out the book Memory Making Mom by Jessica Smartt for a deep dive into just how fun and important traditions are. Family prayer is an awesome way to start building traditions in your family.
• Gratitude: The act of prayer helps us focus on gratitude. Whether you are grateful to a higher power or just grateful in general, gratitude leads to overall happiness and contentment. It’s also so important to teach kids how to show gratitude and focus on all that they have.
• Meditation: Prayer is a form of meditation, which has been shown to have many benefits! Meditation can calm your mind, has been shown to show relief from pain, reprogram your subconscious patterns, achieve deep relaxation, and much more!
• Positivity: Similar to showing gratitude, prayer has been shown to help us focus on positivity. Our brains are pretty incredible—whatever we repeatedly tell ourselves, we believe! Being thankful for what we have, as well as believing our prayers for help will be answered, helps train our brains to believe in positive outcomes.
• Times of trial: Incredibly, prayer for comfort and strength during times of trial has actually been shown to improve positive outcomes. Whether that is from divine intervention or a mere placebo effect, the result is the same. Why not teach our children the practice of prayer during difficulties in our lives if the science says it works?

Making Prayer a family Tradition

It is pretty remarkable to see the power of prayer in families! If starting a tradition of prayer is important to you, here are a couple ways you can begin to try and implement prayer into your daily family life:

• Mealtime: Praying before a meal is a simple way to teach your kids gratitude. It’s also an easy way to remember to pray—you’ve got to eat every day, after all!
• Morning prayer: Start the day off right with individual or family morning prayer.
• Bedtime: Spend some time in gratitude for all the good things that happened that day, and look forward to the day to come.
• Before traveling: Teach your children the power of prayer for positive outcomes before going on a vacation or even a quick ride in the car.
• Starting a new school year: Start a tradition of saying a prayer before your kids start a new school year.
• For sickness: Next time someone in your family is feeling ill, have your family pray for that person. A simple prayer for comfort and strength or healing can go a long way.
• When something is lost: How often do we lose our car keys or the kids’ favorite stuffed animal? Teach your kids that the first thing they can do when something is lost is to pray. You might be surprised how quickly they turn to prayer on their own the next time something is lost.

We truly believe family prayer can help strengthen marriages and families, and that is what we are all about! We hope you found some tips here that you can implement in your family.

If you and your spouse have different beliefs, make sure to read up on How to Make an Interfaith Marriage Work. We also love the suggestions in this post for Teaching Your Kids By Example.