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14 March 2021

Seven reasons families should pray together (Pt 1).

From Thomas Doolittle, “How May the Duty of Family Prayer Be Best Managed for the Spiritual Benefit of Every One in the Family?” Puritan Sermons 1659-1689,  Being the Morning Exercises at Cripplegate, Vol 2, Richard Owen Roberts, Publisher.

 REASON 1: Because we receive every day family-mercies from the hand of God.  He loads us daily with His benefits (Psa. 68:9).  When you wake in the morning and find your dwelling safe, not consumed with fire, not broken through by thieves, is not this a family-mercy? When you wake and find none dead in their beds, that news is not brought you in the morning, there is one child dead in one bed and another in another, and there is not a lodging-room in the house but the last night one or other died in it; but on the contrary you find all well in the morning and refreshed by the rest and sleep of the night - are not these and many more such mercies to the family, that when you rise you should call them all together jointly to bless God for?  If it had been otherwise, [if] master or mistress [were] dead, children or servants dead, would not the rest say, “It would have been a mercy to us all, if God had spared him, her, or them?”  If your house had been consumed by flames, and God had turned you all out of doors before morning, would you not have said, “It would have been a mercy, if God had safely preserved us and our dwellings and caused us to rest and sleep and rise in safety?”  Why, Sirs, will you not acknowledge mercies to be mercies, till God hath taken them away from you?  And if you do, should you not give the praise daily unto God?  Was it not God Himself that watched over you while you did sleep, and could not, did not, watch yourselves?  “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. For so he giveth his beloved sleep” (Psa. 127:1, 2).

And as you have had many family-mercies in the night to bless God for in the morning, so you have many family-mercies in the day to give thanks to God for at night before you go to bed.  Methinks you should not quietly sleep till you have been together on your knees, lest God should say, “This family that hath not acknowledged My mercy to them this day, nor given Me the glory of those benefits of which to them I gave the comfort, shall never see the light of another day, nor have the mercies of one day more to bless Me for.”  What if God should say unto you when you are laid down in your beds, “This night your souls shall be required of you, you that went to bed before you had given Me the praise of the mercies that I had given unto you all the day, and before you had prayed for My protection over you in the night.”  Take heed: though God be patient, do not provoke Him.

 REASON 2: You should pray to God daily in your families, because there are sins committed every day in your families.  Do you indeed sin together, and will you not pray together?  What, if you should be damned all together?  Doth not every member of your family commit many sins every day?  How great is the number then of all, when considered or put together?  What! So many sins every day under your roof, within your walls, committed against the glorious, blessed God, and not want prayer?  One sin should be lamented with a thousand tears; but you have not one tear shed by one, and another by another, in prayer together, for a thousand sins.  Is this to repent daily, when you do not confess them daily?

Would you have God to pardon all the sins of your family?  Say, would you or no?  If you would not, God might justly let you go to your graves and hell too, with the guilt of sin upon your souls.  If you would, is not pardon worth asking for?  Would you have it and not beg it at the hands of God?  Would not all judge that man worthy of death, that being justly condemned, might yet have life for asking for and will not?  How do you, how can you quietly go to your beds and sleep with the guilt of so many sins upon your souls and have not prayed to have them blotted out?  What is your pillow made of, that your heads can rest upon it under the weight and load of so much guilt?  Is indeed your bed so soft or your heart so hard, that you can rest and sleep, when to all the sins of commission in the day, you add this sin of omission in the evening?  Lay to heart your daily family-sins, and you will feel a reason why you should pray to God in your families daily.

 REASON 3: You should pray in your families daily unto God, because you have many daily family-wants, which none can supply but God.  God [needs] not your prayers, but you and yours [need] God’s mercies!  And if you will have them, should you not pray for them?  Can you supply your families’ wants?  If they want health, can you give it them?  If they want bread, can you give it them except God first give it unto you?  Why then did Christ direct us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Mat 6:11).  If they want grace, can you work it in them?  Or do you not care though they die without it?  Is not God the Giver of every good gift? “Every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights” (Jam 1:17).

Mercies are above and good things are from above, and prayer is a means appointed by God to fetch them down.  “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God.” (Jam 1:5).  Do you think you do not want wisdom to discharge your duties to God and man, that you do not want wisdom to manage your family for their temporal, spiritual, and eternal good?  If you think so, you are fools.  And if you think you want it not, by those very thoughts you may discern your [lack] of it.  If you think you have enough, it is plain that you have none.  And should you not ask it of God, if you would have it?  If you and yours want health in your family, should you not ask it of God?  Can you live without dependence upon God?  Or can you say you have no need of God’s help to supply your wants?  Then you speak contradictions: for to be under wants and not to be dependent beings is a contradiction.  To think you do not live in dependence upon God is to think you are not men nor creatures.  And if you do depend on Him and want His help to supply your [needs], your own indigency should bring you upon your knees to pray to Him.