How We Transformed Family Prayer Time

I am a pastor. What comes to your mind when you think about the life of a pastor? What do you picture a pastor’s home life to be like? Whether we like it or not, many times pastors and their families are placed on pedestals, with images of our personal lives being super spiritual and perfect. I admit I wish that were the case. I do have a deep desire to reflect Christ personally both as an individual and in my family. Some days I feel like we do a good job and other days, not as well. In fact, as you look at your family, ours may not look much differently than yours.

Because, although I am a pastor, I am also a person. My wife is a person. My children are people. So, when it comes to our family prayer times, if I’m honest, for years I think we could have done better. But, life… Life gets busy. Life gets stressful. Life gets tiresome.

We have always prayed with our children as they were going to bed, but many times they were hurried prayers. “Let’s pray, so you can go to sleep and so we can go have some time to ourselves.” I don’t like it. But, that was many times the attitude of my heart as we prayed at bedtime.

But, I began to be convicted. I start my days in prayer with God one-on-one. I do not rush this prayer time. I value this prayer time. I seek God in my office as I study His Word and as I prepare messages. I pray weekly with the church staff. I pray with the students in the student ministry. But, with my own children, I was rushing through it, treating prayer like a chore. What was I teaching my children about prayer? What was I teaching my children about the reality of the God we were praying to? If I believe God is real, if I’m telling my children that God is real and that He hears us when we pray, then something needed to change.  And it did.

We made some strategic changes to transform our family prayer time. If you find that your family prayer time also needs to change, I offer these as suggestions to you.

This is how we transformed family prayer time:

1. We put a prayer board in the main room of our house.

It started as a white board sitting in our dining room that Sarah was using to teach the children from home at the start of the pandemic. Once they began virtual learning and the white board was no longer being used for lessons, I saw this white board as a blank canvas to begin changing prayer time.

I made the suggestion at dinner one night. “What if we begin writing prayer requests on this board so that we can see them and be reminded of them each day?” The family bought into the idea.

After using the white board for several weeks, we decided to get something different. I hopped onto Amazon and bought a board that we could hang on the wall that would take up less space, but could also be easily seen in both our dining and living rooms.

2. We made our prayers intentional.

This is where the board really helped. Instead of getting to prayer time and trying to think of what we needed to pray for and often simply saying the same few words each night, we began pulling from the prayer board.

The children know that they don’t have to pray for everything on the board, but they can pick a few things from the list to pray for.

This has also opened the opportunity for me to follow up with people we are praying for or to send them encouraging notes. I’ve also been able to let the children know when and how their prayers are being answered.

As prayers get answered we remove them from the board, which frees up space to add new things to pray about. Would you like us to pray for something specific in your life? Let me know, we would love to add you to our board.

3. We put our prayer time on the schedule.

People will typically do what’s on their schedule. Work. School. Church. These are all things that are on our schedules and we faithfully participate in all of them. Emilie has it on her schedule to read every night before she goes to bed. I constantly have to purchase her more books because she reads so faithfully. Before school started back up, Ethan lived by a schedule in our house. He knew that there were two specific times during the day that he could ask for a snack. Honestly, I think he asked for a snack at those times even if he wasn’t hungry, simply because it was on his schedule.

Schedules give value to the things that are scheduled. They reinforce their importance.

Family prayer time is no longer something we do at bedtime. It is now on our schedule before bedtime. It is expected. It is anticipated. The children ask for family prayer time. They want to spend time in prayer, together. And I believe they are beginning to value prayer more than they did before it was on the schedule.

God is gracious. While I believe our family prayer time could have and should have changed years ago, God is gracious. He graciously gave us a vision to transform our family prayer time. He graciously gave our children receptive hearts to this change. And He graciously continues to transform our lives and our family as we spend time in prayer together.