Praying for Your Children

Parenting is hard. And no, we don't have kids; so I'm not going to offer advice from a soapbox I have no business standing on. However, I do want to share a piece of parenting advice I learned from the "back-side" of things - from my own childhood.

Of all the things my parents did right, praying for me bubbles to the surface of my memory. I know they prayed for me. I remember it; I felt it. Their Christian friends prayed for me. I was a kid surrounded by some difficult times, yet equally surrounded by prayer.

You might be a mommy with your little one still tucked inside the safety of your tummy. Pray for that precious one right now. You might be a mom who is chasing an energy packed toddler and wondering when you will find the time to put two consecutive, coherent thoughts together to form a prayer...God is listening better than you might imagine - pray, even if you and God get interrupted a lot! Maybe you're the parent of a teenager...you're probably on your knees already! And to all the parents of adult kids who are struggling or wandering before the Lord - my heart hurts with you; and even when you feel like there aren't any prayers left inside of you, keep praying! (read Jesus' words in Luke 18:1-8)

My great-grandma was apparently a woman who prayed a lot. My mom and her grandma shared a bedroom while mom was growing up. Mom watched her spend a lot of time praying for people and asked her why she prayed for all those people so much. Her response was, "If I don't pray for them, how do I know if someone else is?" As parents, if you aren't praying for your kids, how do you know someone else is?

While an encyclopedia's worth of information about praying for your kids could now be inserted into this post, I just thought I'd toss out 10 things to pray over your kids. There's more. I just took a few of the basics that easily came with verses so that you could use these to pray over your children. There's nothing like praying God's own Word over your children! Stuff like praying for your child's future spouse wasn't included, but that in-and-of-itself is a monumentally valuable prayer. So don't forget that one!

So here's the ten:
If you'd like to download this list in a pretty card format, click here. You can easily put this somewhere to remind you to pray for your children.

Pray that your child would know the hope of God’s calling and the glorious goodness He has stored up for His children. (Ephesians 1:17-18)

Pray that God would put a supernatural love in your child’s heart and that that love would grow more and more for others. (Philippians 1:9)

Pray that they would not enter into temptation. (Luke 22:40)

Pray for your child to be filled with all spiritual wisdom to know God’s good and pleasing will; and to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. (Colossians 1:10)

Pray for friendships that would be faith building and effective. (Philemon 6)

Pray that Christ would dwell in your child’s heart and that she or he would know the height, depth, width and magnitude of God’s love. (Ephesians 3:18)

Pray for their protection in all things and everywhere they go. (Psalm 121:8)

Pray for their life to be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes from knowing Jesus. (Philippians 1:11)

Pray for the Lord to feed a desire in them to be devoted to Him; a desire to learn what is pleasing to God; and to walk in His ways. (Ephesians 5:9-11)

Pray that they would learn to lean not on his or her own understanding, but rather to trust the Lord in and for everything, so that their path would be made straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

 

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