A prayer for your whole family, its unity, protection, provision, and faith across generations, in the pattern of Joshua's household confession.
Lord, bless my family: unite us, provide for us, protect us, and keep us yours across the generations. As for me and my house, we will serve you. Amen.
Pray this at family meals and gatherings, during family crises and decisions, over members who are traveling or far away, at the start of school years and new seasons, or as a standing weekly intercession, naming a different member each day.
The family is Scripture's first institution and its favorite picture of God's own household. Joshua's confession sets the pattern: 'As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD' (Joshua 24:15). The psalm of family blessing promises children as heritage and reward (Psalm 127:3) and pictures a household flourishing around a table (Psalm 128). God's promises habitually travel down generations: to Abraham, 'I will be God to you and to your offspring after you' (Genesis 17:7); at Pentecost, 'the promise is for you and for your children' (Acts 2:39). The New Testament's household baptisms (Lydia's, the jailer's) treat the family as a unit God delights to gather. Praying for family is therefore never a private hobby; it is intercession along the exact lines God himself promised to work. This prayer covers the household as a whole: its unity, its provision, its protection, and its faith, member by member and generation by generation.
“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers 1 served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
“A Song of degrees. Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee. Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.”
The flourishing household, blessed around its table.
“For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.”
The promise is for you and for your children.
“Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”
Children are a heritage from the LORD.
“The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”
The Aaronic blessing, spoken over households for three thousand years.
Build it on Joshua 24:15 (the household's confession) and Numbers 6:24-26 (the blessing God himself authored for households). Cover the biblical four: unity, provision, protection, and faith across generations, and pray it by name, member by member, rather than as a general sentiment.
God's promises are generational by design (Genesis 17:7; Acts 2:39), households are baptized together (Acts 16:31-33), and the aged Anna and the persistent parents of the Gospels model intercession as a family's normal work. Job prayed regularly for his children 'continually' (Job 1:5), which is still the pattern.
Persistently, specifically, and without despair: the prodigal's father watched the road daily (Luke 15), and Jesus promised that a searching shepherd does not stop at ninety-nine (Luke 15:4-7). Pray for their protection, for people in their path, and for your own readiness to welcome rather than lecture when they turn.