The Power of Family Prayer

The Power of FamilyPrayer – by John H. Groberg, April 1982

We included with the September 22, 2013 letter to our children. The whole talk is 4+ printed pages. We’ve taken out 2+ pages telling of an experience on Elder Groberg’s mission to Tonga. Click on the title above to see the whole talk. We added the italics below.

From John Grobert - 
"... we consider a vitally important key to our happiness and success in life. I speak this morning on the importance and power of family prayer.

Our Father in Heaven wants us to have strong, loving families. One of the great helps he has given us to achieve this is family prayer.

All of us, single or married, are eternally part of some family—someway, somewhere, somehow—and much of our joy in life comes as we correctly recognize and properly develop those family relationships. We come to this earth charged with a mission: to learn to love and serve one another. To best help us accomplish this, God has placed us in families, for he knows that is where we can best learn to overcome selfishness and pride and to sacrifice for others and to make happiness and helpfulness and humility and love the very essence of our character.

We learn that friends and neighbors come and go but family is forever, and as we learn this, we find that we are eternally our brother’s keeper and we begin to realize how much help we need. How we should thank God for the opportunity of family prayer!

Listen to the admonition of the Savior in Third Nephi: “Pray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed.” (3 Nephi 18:21.)

Can you detect that if we do not pray in our families always they may not be blessed—or at least not so fully? If we truly love our families we will constantly pray for them and with them. I know of no single activity that has more potential for unifying our families and bringing more love and divine direction into our homes than consistent, fervent family prayer.

Think of the power for good as you gather your family together and thank God for all of his blessings. Think of the eternal significance of daily thanking him for each member of your family and asking him to guide and bless and protect each one. Think of the strength that will come to your family as, daily, one member or another pours out his or her soul in love to God for other family members.

Of course, our prayers must be more than words, for as President Marion G. Romney has so clearly stated, “The efficacy of our prayers depends on how we care for one another.” (Ensign, Nov. 1980, p. 93.) Family prayer is fully effective, then, only as we rise from our knees and, with increased love and understanding, take better care of each other.

We all want more love and unity in our families. We all need more help with some who may be wayward or in special need. We all desire more assurance of divine guidance and direction.

I promise you that as you consistently and fervently pray as a family, and as each member takes his or her turn and sincerely prays for others, impressions will come as to what you individually should do to help others. Thus, you can, in family prayer, receive personal and family revelation as to how to love and serve one another.

Now, Satan will do everything he can to keep us from family prayer, or at least to see that our prayers are only intermittent and mechanical and without sincerity. In Daniel’s day, Satan influenced evil men to pass laws against praying. In our day, Satan’s efforts seem a little more subtle (although he is trying a little of that law business, too).

But remember, the greatest schools on earth are individual homes. Yet how many homes voluntarily give up family prayer by allowing other less important things to take priority.

If Satan can get us thinking that our children are too young or too old, or if he can get us angry with one another or preoccupied with TV programs or over-crowded schedules or caught up in some other aspect of the press of modern life so that we do not have family prayer, he has effectively won on that point—even though many of the other things we do may be good in and of themselves.

Satan doesn’t care how he stops us—just so he stops us. Ask yourself: How many times did you have family prayer this last week? Who is winning in your home? What’s the score? Don’t let the evil one win. You can overcome him with God’s help.

I appeal with all the fervor of my soul to every family in the Church, every family in the nation, every family in the world, to organize your priorities so that God is first in your lives and to show this by having regular family prayer. There may be extenuating circumstances occasionally; but as a rule, we should have family prayer every morning and every evening.

Oh, if we would do this, if we would show our families and our God on a regular basis how much we love them, how much we appreciate them, how much we need their help, and how much we rely on His protection, one of the greatest changes for good to ever take place in the Church, in the nation, and in the world would occur. Don’t let anything stand in the way of consistent, fervent family prayer! Think of what you teach by having family prayer. Then think of what you teach by not having family prayer.

I testify to you that there is real power in family prayer. I testify that families can be brought together and can help and strengthen one another through family prayer.

………… [missionary experience here. See talk here]

... I testify that there is great power in loving, consistent, fervent family prayer. Don’t deny your families this blessing. Don’t allow the strength that comes from family prayer to slip away from you and your loved ones through neglect.

No matter what other inheritance you leave your family, give them the inheritance of knowing through experience that, forever, you will be praying for them and they for you.

Call your families together. Make your family prayers a top priority item. It may be awkward at first, if you aren’t doing it now; and since Satan doesn’t want you to do it at all, he will throw all sorts of excuses and roadblocks at you; but just proceed and be persistent, and I promise you great blessings.

Remember, all that we are commanded to do in this life is patterned after that of a better life. Do you think it a strange thought that maybe part of the power of family prayer is in the fact that we are part of a heavenly family, that they are interested in us, and that by tying in with them some way we get hold of something much bigger than ourselves?

Think of the power of the thousands of prayers of parents and grandparents and back and back even to Jacob and Isaac and Abraham and beyond, all requesting essentially the same thing: “Bless my children. Bless my children. Bless my children.” Can you hear it as it rolls and echoes throughout all eternity?

Let us all be part of that great power for good.

I testify that time and space are no barriers to these righteous influences, and no matter where we are or what our situation is—even in the depths of discouragement, far from our loved ones—we too can feel and be strengthened by [family prayer] ………

May we all gather our families around us and consistently and fervently pray for one another and thus, in righteousness, feel the needs of others and then fill the needs of others, thereby fulfilling much of our mission in life, I do humbly pray in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.