Day 9 – Pray with your children
For those of us who have been blessed by being parents I think we have no greater responsibility than to point those gifts back to God. Children are such a blessing from God and we are to do our best to give them back to Him.
The Lord has given me and my wife two children to raise. They are a few years apart and their personalities are total opposite, but they both are our gifts from God that we love so very much. It is our privilege to love them and raise them to love Jesus.
One of the best ways we can point them to Jesus is to share time with them in prayer. I pray for them daily, but I am being most effective in my parenting when I pray with them. It allows me to model what prayer should look like and forms a deeper bond with me, them and Jesus. I shouldn’t rely on our church youth group to teach them how to pray – no, that is my job as a parent. I am thankful for the church and how it supports me as a parent, but they are my children to raise up in the Lord.
The Bible clearly teaches the parent to raise our children to love God with all our heart, soul and strength. Deuteronomy 6 instructs us to share the Bible and the goodness of God with our children.
We should not only pray over our meals with our children, but we should pray in church with our children. We should pray with the sick, hurting and helpless with our children. We should pray with our children before we leave on vacation and when we get bad news. We should pray with our children at good news and when they are facing decisions.
Just today I had an opportunity to pray with my son. He is going through a difficult situation right now. So this morning I gave him some advice and walk out of his room. The Lord spoke to me so clearly – “you spoke but didn’t let Me”. So I turned around and went back upstairs, took him by the hands (he thought that to be really weird of his dad) and prayed a prayer asking Jesus for clarity of mind, strength and for guidance.
Do I do this often enough? No
But I am learning to pray with him more to show our dependence not on any person, but what Jesus says and how He guides.