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Sowing Seeds of Prayer for Your Kids

Friday, April 25th, 2014

seeds-of-prayer

I was given a package of seeds in a beautiful blue paper bag with ribbon. The package said, “Sow seeds of prayer for your kids.” I pondered the implications of this metaphor. What are seeds of prayer?

As I was driving down the road, it hit me: prayer is small like a seed. You put it under the ground and water it over the years. When you children grow, you see those prayers slowly producing fruit in their lives.

I remember praying for self-control for one of my children. Over time, he has grown so much in the area of self-control. When I see how much progress he has made, I get choked up and grateful to God for changing my son to become more mature in his faith.

Another son was lazy years ago. I begged God for wisdom to know how to nip this in the bud before I produced a man who would never properly support his wife and children in the future. God gave me wisdom in how to address my son by telling him about a specific man we know who ruined his family because he refused to work, even though he was healthy. He just didn’t feel like working. Eventually his wife and two small children began to starve and were miserable, forced to leave their home and try to find shelter with her parents. This lazy man brought pain and destruction into the lives of the people he loved most because in reality he loved no one but himself. Lazy people are selfish. They live for themselves and not for God. The result is misery to everyone around them.

Years later this son of mine is the most diligent of all my children.

All I did was pray. I prayed with desperation as only a mother can. Because I could see the consequences of the sin in my children’s lives, that if left unresolved, would end up in bitterness and empty lives.

So I sow seeds of prayer for my children every day, interceding for their character weaknesses and being pro-active in working with God. And I expectantly wait for the fruit of those seeds to grow.

I found a 1-minute song about this very idea, and it’s beautiful! Click on the “Listen” button to hear the song:

To keep up with my prayer posts and get a free prayer e-book, like my Prayer Page.

 

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Posted in Prayer | 18 Comments »

How to Get Your Husband to Pray with You

Friday, February 7th, 2014

how-to-get-your-husband-to-pray-with-you

How do you get your husband to pray with you? What if you have gotten into the habit of never praying together? How do you break this cycle?

How to Get Your Husband to Pray with You

  • Love and accept him for who he is. Ask God to change you so that you have a high opinion about your husband.
  • Don’t guilt trip your husband during your prayer. (I explain this more in the audio.)
  • Be vulnerable. An atmosphere of vulnerability deepens your love for each other.
  • Get rid of all bitterness toward your spouse.
  • Don’t use religious language, but pray the way that you talk, especially if this is the way your husband prays. This will make him not feel out of place while praying with you. Honesty trumps religiosity of language. Just be real so that he can relate to you.
  • Don’t characterize your husband as evil because of habits of sin in his life. He is a new creation and wants to please the Lord, but he is trapped in his flesh. You don’t want him to characterize you as evil because of your sin that he sees that he will not tell you about, because you will defend yourself. Look up to your husband and respect him, even if he sins. (I tell you how to do this in the audio.)
  • Understand that your husband is not inferior to you spiritually. Looking down on others is sin. Philippians 2 commands us to see other people as better than ourselves.
  • Admit your own shortcomings.
  • Pray that God will help you to draw together spiritually through prayer.
  • Allow your husband to lead you spiritually by following him spiritually. Even if he is a new believer, God has equipped him to lead you spiritually. If you allow him to lead, he is more likely to pray with you.

Here is the 30-minute audio workshop to help you pray together as husband and wife:

Right-click the link, “Save as,” and choose “Desktop” to download the audio. To listen to more audios on prayer and get a free e-book on prayer, like my Prayer Page.

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Posted in Marriage, Prayer | 14 Comments »

Why Husbands and Wives Should Pray Together

Wednesday, February 5th, 2014

why-husbands-and-wives-should-pray-togetherHave you ever wondered why husbands and wives should pray together? It will deepen your marriage; that’s why!

1. The most important reason to pray together is to be one with your spouse. If husbands and wives do not pray together, they are not one spiritually. God desires the husband to lead the wife spiritually in Ephesians 5:22-27, where the husband is supposed to wash his wife with the Word, to present her holy and blameless to God. How can he do that without communicating to God in her presence?

2. We reflect Christ and the church when we pray with our spouse. The husband is the personification of Christ, and the wife is the personification of the church. The physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy experienced between a husband and wife is supposed to reflect the church’s relationship to Jesus, where we are one, and we allow Him to enter us and rule us, and He lays down His life for us because of His incredibly deep love for us.

3. Jesus wants us to have unity. Jesus wants us to be one with our spouse the same way that God the Father and God the Son are one. In John 17:11b, He says: “Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” (ESV) Do you understand how incredible that oneness is? Both of you must be saved, and you need to love God with ALL your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Then God will purify and transform you to be more like Jesus. That’s how you are more and more one—because you are both more and more like Christ. Plus, selfishness is the root of all sin, and the more God purges you from sin, the more selfless you are, and the more capable you are of loving your spouse.

4. We are commanded within the body of Christ to pray for one another, and this includes your spouse. To not pray with your spouse is to declare that you are not comfortable with your spouse spiritually. But God can change that. If the reason you don’t pray with your spouse is that you don’t like other people to listen to your prayers, get over your fear of other people’s opinions. God commands you to pray out loud (James 5:16). Christ whipped people out of the Temple and said that His church would be a house of prayer. So prayer was the number one thing that Jesus said the church should be doing! If you are a brother and sister in Christ, you are the church. What He commands the church to do is what He commands every believer to do.

5. Praying will draw you closer to your spouse. I’m attracted to my husband’s soul when he is praying, and that transfers to better physical intimacy. Prayer cracks you open to the spiritual life of your spouse. It gives you a glimpse into his soul.

Why are godly men and women not praying together as husband and wife? Many times the reason is that their prayer lives are stagnant, and they don’t enjoy prayer. In this case, they don’t want their spouse to see through them, that they have stopped growing spiritually, and they just want to be comfortable instead of deepening their walk with God. Oh, the horror of stagnation! Force yourself to pray with your spouse if only to get yourself out of this stagnant cesspool of a lack of growth in Christ. Do not rest on your past laurels.

Stay tuned for “How to Get Your Husband to Pray with You,” practical ways to transition into praying together to experience spiritual oneness, plus a free prayer audio to show exactly how to do this, and why you should do this!

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Posted in Marriage, Prayer | 12 Comments »

How Do You Teach Your Child to Pray?

Friday, January 31st, 2014

how-do-you-teach-your-child-to-pray

How do you teach your child to pray?

  • If the child is young, you can have the child repeat simple phrases about real issues. For example, “Please help me not to be selfish and to share with my sister.”
  • Give your children a good example yourself by praying in an honest way in front of them, without using lots of conventions and religious words that sound like God is unapproachable. Your kids become you; they will imitate how you pray.
  • Don’t be afraid to confess sin openly. Admit your own sin before God in your prayers, so that they learn how to confess sin openly without condemnation, expecting forgiveness and change in their lives.

What can you learn from children as they pray?

Jesus says we are to become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:1-6) What does this mean? What attributes do children display in their prayers?

  • How to be trusting
  • How to be open to God
  • How to be humble
  • How to have a wide-eyed wonder
  • How to adore God in a fresh way

How to Lead Your Children to the Lord

In the audio I share how my husband and I led each of our children to the Lord. We wanted to make sure that they understood their depravity before coming to Christ, so that they could understand why they needed a Savior. We didn’t want to just pray a prayer with them and give them a false sense of being saved when they weren’t. On the other hand, we didn’t want to block our children from coming to Christ. After all, Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me.” (Matthew 19:14) That said, this is how we led each of our children to Christ:

I share each of these stories with you because maybe one of your children falls under one of the personalities listed above. For example, what do you do when you have a good kid who can’t see that he is a sinner? On the other hand, how to you reach a child who is ruled by anger? Is it possible to teach spiritual things without speaking a word? Hear the full stories in this powerful audio:

Right-click the link, “Save as,” and choose “Desktop” to download the audio.

To keep up with my prayer posts, follow my Prayer page on Facebook.

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Posted in Parenting, Prayer | 16 Comments »

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