Pray
When I first got married, my aunt gave me two books on prayer. The first book was a collection of prayers and scriptures for a wife to pray for her husband. This book helped guide you through praying for your husband. Then, my first child was born, and she gave me the second book of prayers. This book guided parents through prayers for their children. It included the same guidance and scriptures.
These books started me on a daily journey of intentional prayer for my husband and children. I have been praying for my family now for twenty years. Through the years, God began to reveal to me what to pray. The books helped me to start and gave me the language that I didn’t feel like I had. However, God began leading me more and more to praying His Word. I knew that His word was His Will, and it gave me confidence knowing I was praying for exactly what God would want for my husband and children.
As parents, we often have a long list of things we are called to do for our kids. Let me challenge you to put prayer at the top of your list. It can get pushed down the list because it doesn’t nag at us and demand our immediate attention. We can allow the “tyranny of the urgent” to push the more important things to the bottom of the list causing them to not be consistently done. However, prayer is not just a nice thing to do, but it is going before our Creator God, our Father, our Advocate, our Savior, and our Lord with those closest to us. We humble ourselves before Him knowing that with us, it would be impossible to move the mountains in our lives and in the lives of our children. He is the one who moves the mountains.
Interestingly, when I would pray for my children using God’s Word, I would see changes in my own heart and attitude. I could rest, be more patient, look for the sometimes-small indications that God was working in the hearts and lives of my children. It would help to focus on what really mattered to God for my children.
If you need inspiration, let’s talk about who prayed. Jesus prayed, Paul prayed for the churches (his spiritual children) he planted and heard about, Paul asked for prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:25; 2 Thessalonians 3:1), and even Jesus asked for prayer (Matt 26:38, 40-41). In Acts 2:42, we see one of the chief characteristics of the church in Jerusalem was prayer. They “devoted themselves to prayer”.
As parents, one of the ways we can love our children, is to pray for them. God gives you language through His word and His very Spirit is with you. We have a great privilege to lift our children up to the Lord. Here is a prayer Paul prayed for the church at Colossae and a great prayer to pray for your children:
Colossians 1:9-10: “And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God…”.
Every parent wants their children to daily increase in their knowledge of God, grow in wisdom, fully please God, walk in a manner worthy of Him (live in obedience to His ways), and do the good works God has prepared for them from the beginning of time. Let’s pray!
