How to pray for your children?
- Consistently
- Constantly
- Fervently
You find when you are a parent that your children reflect many things about you that make you smile and many things that will make you weep. Often I find I am most frustrated with my children at moments when they are acting just like me. Praying for your children in their presence will not only have the affect of prayer but also of teaching them that prayer is important to you and therefore to them.
There have been many times when I had to go to my daughters and repent for my temper and I have more than once heard my daughter repenting in prayer on the baby monitor. (Yea I felt bad for eavesdropping but I was too touched to turn it off). I don’t believe she would have done this if it had not been for the fact that she has seen me do it and had learned from me.
Fathers, understand that raising children up in discipline and instruction of the Lord means more than teaching them facts, but teaching them how to live as a disciple of Jesus, even if you are still figuring out what this means, as most of us are. Both parents are called to raise children but as the head of your house the largest responsibility belongs to you.
We should pray for our children consistently, creating a pattern of prayer will help them to do so in their own life, making it as natural to their daily pattern as breathing, eating and sleeping. That is why we pray over our meals, not only because we should be thankful for the fact that have more food than we can possibly eat but because it is good to build a pattern into your life until prayer becomes a habit.
You can not pray too much for your children, I took a tip from Matt Chandler and constantly pray that my children would be protected from my sins. This isn’t a bad prayer for everyone. I don’t want my children to learn from my anger issues or my pride; I want them to be spared from those issues if at all possible, I am sure they will have enough sin issues of their own without inheriting mine.
Realize that your prayers will have an affect on your children and will create a passion in you to pray for them.
If you would like a place to start, pray these scriptures over your children.
Numbers 6:24-26
Eph 1:17-23
Eph 3:14-20