Five things especially you should have upon your heart in your family prayer, and should endeavor to bring something of each into every prayer with your families.

1. You ought to make family-acknowledgements on your dependence upon God and His providences, as you are a family...give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name...Give honor to God as the founder of families by His ordinance, because it was not good for man to be alone. Give honor to the founder of your families by His providence, for He it is that builds the house, and sets the solitary in families. Give honor to Him as the owner and ruler of families…

2. You ought to make family-confessions of your sins against God; those sins you have contracted the guilt of in your family-capacity...

How sad is the condition of those families that sin together, and never pray together; that by concurring in frauds, quarrels, and excesses, by strengthening one another's hands in impiety and profaneness, fill the measure of family-guilt, and never agree together to do any thing to empty it.

And even religious families, that are not polluted with gross and scandalous sins, still have need to join every day in the solemn acts and expres- sions of repentance before God for their sins of daily infirmity; their vain words, and unprofitable conversation among themselves; their manifold defects in relative duties; provoking one another’s...

3. You ought to offer up family thanksgivings for the blessings which you, with your families, receive from God. Many are the mercies which you enjoy the sweetness and benefit of in common. If even one of these mercies were taken away, the whole family would notice it. Has not God made a hedge of protection about you and your houses, and all that you have…

4. You ought to present your family-petitions for the mercy and grace which your families stand in need of. Daily bread is received by families together, and we are taught not only to pray for it every day, but to pray together for it, saying, Our Father, give it to us. There are affairs and employments which the family is jointly concerned in the success of, and therefore should jointly ask for God’s wisdom for their management and prosperity. There are family cares to be cast upon God by prayer. There are family comforts to be fought for. There are family crosses which they should together beg for the sanctification and removal of.

5. You ought to make family-intercessions for others also. There are families you stand related to, or which by neighborhood, friendship, or acquaintance...

– Matthew Henry, Building a God Centered Family: A Father's Manual, Ed. Scott T. Brown, (Wake Forest: Merchant Adventures LLC, 2010), 44-51.