Prayer for Family

Ephesians 5:21-6:9.

²¹ Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
²² Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.
²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ²⁶ in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, ²⁷ so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. ²⁸ In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, ³⁰ because we are members of his body. ³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” ³² This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. ³³ Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.

6 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ² “Honor your father and mother”—this is the first commandment with a promise: ³ “so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”

⁴ And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
⁵ Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; ⁶ not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. ⁷ Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, ⁸ knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free.
⁹ And, masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality.

               In this time of prayer today, Lord, I hold before you and before myself the people in the world who are closest to me.  Name by name, face by face, I call the roll: ______, _____, and _____. 

                If I am ever to know what intimacy means, the knowledge will come to me through them or it probably will not come at all.  If I am ever to know what sharing means, what love and receiving love means, the knowledge will come to me through them or it probably will not come at all.

                Because no one else is likely to be to me what they are or could be, I care about measuring up to the claims of love.  Because they are both a gift of your grace and one of my best opportunities to experience grace, I care about measuring up to the claims of love.

Let me be on guard against the sins that it is so easy to commit against those bound to me most closely.  

• I think of the sin of assuming that because they are a fixed part of my personal landscape, because they are always there, they should look upon as understandable and easily excusable the times when I behave as if they are not there.
• I think of the sin of supposing that because they know how much I love them, how faithful I am in the big things, lapses in the little courtesies, the little considerate acts, are not important.
• I think of the sin of forgetting that they are the people I have the most power to hurt.

Today and every day, help me to be worthy of receiving love the way a few people love me.  May the old, old measure guide me: to love, as I want others to love me.  Amen.