Praying for our children

Last night we had a great time at our annual deacon/staff Christmas dinner. It was a lot of fun.

After our time of praying together as individual tables, I sense a deep burden in my spirit to pray for the children of all of our deacons and staff. Knowing them as well as I do, I know that each individual family has struggles and issues and trials with their kids.

Today at our saints alive (seniors meeting) I am sharing on the subject of how to pray for our children.

Here are some of the thoughts that I am going to share with them. I encourage you to implement them in your own prayer life.

I recently saw a bumper sticker that read, "I have teenagers! Pray for me!"

What applies to teenagers can apply to our adult children and grandchildren as well.

We feel such a burden for them. We want the best for them. We don’t want them to experience hurt and pain.

We want them to make wise choices.

We want them to serve God.

I beginning to learn that many times, in fact most of the time, in this season of our lives, all we can do is pray.

I say that making it sound like it’s the last and only thing we can do. But in reality, it’s the first and most important thing that we can do for our children and grandchildren and for some of you your great grandchildren.

God calls us to pray for our kids and to keep on praying.

For reasons known only to God, God pays attention to our persistence in prayer. There is something about multiple requests that brings answers.

A huge Chicago company is one of the world's largest magazine fulfillment firms. That means they handle subscription mailings by computer. Among other things, they send out renewal and expiration notices.

One day the company's computer malfunctioned. Soon after, a rancher in Powder Bluff, Colorado, got 9,734 separate mailings informing him that his subscription to National Geographic had expired.

This got the rancher's attention. He dropped what he was doing and traveled 10 miles to the nearest post office, where he sent in money for a renewal along with a note that said, "I give up! Send me your magazine!"

We are to be persistent in our prayers.

Today we’re going to talk about how we can pray for our children.

Today’s scripture encourages us to pray for many things.

How many of us today are worried about our children? Their spiritual walk with God. Their physical health. The way they are dealing with problems at work and home. Their relationships.

What are we to do?

The Message Bible puts it this way.

Philippians 4:4-7:

"Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life."

How do you go about shaping your concerns about your children or grandchildren or other children you come into contact with into meaningful prayers that will make a difference?

I don’t think most of us think about the many creative ways we can pray that will make an impact on our families.

Have you ever prayed and you found the same tired, boring words repetitiously coming out of your mouth?

Like saying out of habit, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep..."

Or the blessing over your meals,

"God is great, God is good..."

I believe we can add specific things to these "starter" prayers that will make them fit our particular situation and make them more powerful, effective prayers.

Look back at your own life.

Who prayed for you? How did you think they prayed? What were they asking God to do in your life?

Dad praying for me as a teenager.

In Point Man, Steve Farrar tells the story of George McCluskey.

When McCluskey married and started a family, he decided to invest one hour a day in prayer, because he wanted his kids to follow Christ. After a time, he expanded his prayers to include his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Every day between 11 a.m. and noon, he prayed for the next three generations.

As the years went by, his two daughters committed their lives to Christ and married men who went into full-time ministry. The two couples produced four girls and one boy.

Each of the girls married a minister, and the boy became a pastor. The first two children born to this generation were both boys. Upon graduation from high school, the two cousins chose the same college and became roommates.

During their sophomore year, one boy decided to go into the ministry. The other didn't. He undoubtedly felt some pressure to continue the family legacy, but he chose instead to pursue his interest in psychology.

He earned his doctorate and eventually wrote books for parents that became bestsellers. He started a radio program heard on more than a thousand stations each day. The man's name was James Dobson, the head of “Focus on the Family. Through his prayers, George McCluskey affected far more than one family.

Maybe you’ll never know whose prayers shaped your life, but starting today you can conscientiously pray more effectively for those whom you care about and love so much.

There are four general areas in which we can target our prayers.

We find this in scripture.

Luke 2:52 says that

"Jesus increased in wisdom (academic) and in stature (physical), and in favor with God (spiritual) and man (social)."

Many times we pray that children will be HAPPY and do well in school or their jobs or excel in sports or music or any number of things.

First of all we see in this scripture that Jesus had a balanced life—

He grew strong physically and was in good health.

He increased in wisdom and knowledge--the academic part of his life.

And in favor with God--the spiritual and with man--the social side of his life.

Here are some ideas which will help us to pray more effectively in these four areas:

1. Spiritual:

Pray that they will come to know Christ as their Savior early in life. Pray that they will have a strong relationship with Him.

Psalms 63:1 tells us, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

2 Timothy 3:15 says, “And how from infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Pray that they will have a hunger for God. That they will draw closer to God.

Pray that God will place people into their lives who will help them grow in their walk with Him.

Pray that your children and grandchildren will come to know Christ early in life.

Samuel was another person who scripture says,

"Grew in favor with the Lord" (I Samuel 2:26) (Spiritual).

2. Pray that they will be willing to make a TOTAL commitment to the Lord--that He will not only be their SAVIOR but LORD OF THEIR LIFE as well.

If your children make Jesus their number one priority, they will be able to make better choices.


That’s one thing I pray on a consistent daily basis.

Father, help my children make wise choices.

I can always be there to give them the wisdom that they need. But I can pray that God will be there, that the Holy Spirit will lead them and guide them.

Pray that God will guide them into a totally committed life.

There is power in commitment:

It was on Christmas Eve, after a Romanian church had gathered for candlelight service, that the Communist soldiers came to take the pastor.

The people lined up outside the church--10, 15, 20, 30 deep--encircling the church and saying, "If you come after the pastor, you come after us first." The soldiers couldn't get in.

They couldn't move them. The candle lights began to move through the cities. As those candles began to spread, others came out into the street, and courage came. On Christmas Day the people said, "We've had enough of this," and the terrible dictator of Romania, the despot and his wife, were executed on Christmas day, 1989.

Pray that they will have a hatred for sin.

Psalm 97:10 says, "Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and deliver them from the hand of the wicked."

Pray that they will be caught when guilty.

Psalm 119:71 says, "It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees."


The Message Bible says, "My troubles turned out all for the best--they forced me to learn from your textbook" (Psalm 119:71).

It is said that "Bad Behaviors are like Trees. They’re a lot easier to remove when they’re still seedlings."

Pray that bad behavior will be nipped in the bud before it gets so deeply ingrained that it is hard to change.

Allow your children to feel the consequences when they do wrong.

Don’t be the person who bails them out all the time. Allow "troubles to teach good lessons" rather than enabling them to continue in their wrong ways.

Parents say, "I don’t want them to suffer, they won’t take responsibility for their actions, and I have to step in and be the rescuer."

Don’t be the "bail out person" but rather pray that they will learn to totally submit to God and learn how to actively resist Satan in all circumstances.

James 4:7 says, "Submit yourselves to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you."

2. SOCIAL: A second area of concern is in relationships.

Pray that they don’t choose friends who will be detrimental to them and lead them into wrong.

There are several scriptures that show that we don’t have to be led astray.

One is in the prayer we say every week--we say, "and deliver us from evil"—

We live in a world of many temptations and pitfalls but we don’t have to stumble and fall into sin.

Jesus told his disciples, you’re living in a world of temptation but

"my prayer is not that you will be [taken out] of the world but that you will be [protected] from the evil one. John 17:15.

Pray that God will protect them from evil in each area of their life--spiritual, social, academic, and physical.

Pray that they will have a responsible attitude in all their interpersonal relationships.

Throughout life we have many different kinds of friends.

Some will be "good time" friends only staying by our side when we’re having fun.

Then there are "what’s in it for me friends." When benefits run out, they drop you.

A true friend will find something positive to say about your new perm even though it looks like you took a bath with the toaster.

A true friend can see you at your worst and not take pictures.

Pray that they will desire the right kind of friends and be protected from the wrong ones.

Proverbs 1:10, 11 says,

"...if sinners entice you, do not give in to them."

Pray that they won’t go along with the crowd when peer pressure tempts them. Pray that God will lead them to the right mate as well.

Pray that they will be hedged in so they cannot find their way to wrong people and wrong places and that wrong people can’t find their way to them. Job prayed for his family in this way.

3. Academic: School work should be important. Pray that they will strive to excel in the academic part of their lives.

Work--Pray, "teach my children, Lord, to work hard at everything they do ‘as working unto the Lord, not for men" (Colossians 3:23).

Self-discipline--Pray, "Father, I pray that my children may develop self discipline, that they may acquire a ‘disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair" (Proverbs 1:3).

Servant heart--Pray that they will develop a servant heart. Say, "God, please help my children to develop a servant heart that they may SERVE
wholeheartedly rather than BEING SERVED all the time.

4. PHYSICAL: Pray that they will not begin habits that will be detrimental to a strong and healthy body.

I Corinthians 6:19 says,

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?" Pray that your children will not begin to experiment with drugs, alcohol and tobacco in the first place.

I Timothy 2:11 says "abstain from sinful desires that war against your soul."

There was a newspaper article about a pet boa constrictor that squeezed the life out of its teenage owner.

The boy’s parents were distraught and lamented to the reporter, "we trusted that snake."

How often do we allow something harmful into our lives--bad habits, poor judgments, compromising actions, undesirable friends and refuse to let go until we are caught in sin’s deadly "squeeze."

Pray that they will maintain a life of physical fitness--I Timothy 4:8 says, "for physical training is of some value..."

Studies show that children have more of a problem with obesity, diabetes and other health concerns than at any other time in history.

Pray for your child’s good health.

I would like to conclude with this prayer.

A Parent’s Prayer

Dear Lord,

Help us as parents to be what we want our children to be.

To see Christ in us, especially when we are tired and rushed. Help us never to be too busy to stop and listen to them with all our attention.

Lord, guide us so that we will have no habits that we would not want them to have. Give us the courage to withhold a privilege which we think would not be best for them. Lord, let them see that the Christian life is the greatest life on earth.

Lord, what we want more than anything else is to love them and care for them as you love and care for us. Thank you for being my loving Father.

Help us to be their loving parents.

Amen”