Guest Post by Taylor Wise

Who wants to pray for their kids? Yep, that’s everyone.

Who gets stuck or ovewhelmed in this area? Yep, that’s just about everybody.

One of the most popular items on this site was THIS praying series we did last year. Especially Ashley’s idea around these little hands.

 I knew I wanted to come back to this issue of PRAYER and when I met this mom – I knew I found our expert.

I’m an “OK” prayer warrior for my kids, but this is Taylor’s passion. In fact, when I did my hands for my girls – I went to her blog to help figure out which verses.

Enjoy my friends! Enjoy her heart on this issue.

Thanks Taylor!

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How An Elbow In The Ribs Got Me

Praying For My Children

by Taylor Wise

  A couple of years ago, after the birth of my second child, I felt the Lord nudging me to start praying for my children.

At first, I didn’t pay too much attention. I mean, I knew as a mother that praying for my kids was something I needed to do, but I didn’t feel any urgency about it. Still, the Lord kept nudging me. But I just had a baby, I thought. I am too tired to do one more thing. And so His gentle nudging turned into nagging. And I walked around for weeks with a nagging feeling inside that there was something I was supposed to be doing, but wasn’t. Still, I resisted. I will have plenty of time to pray later on, I thought. You know, when I also have time to take a shower or eat a meal sitting down.

It wasn’t until the Lord’s nagging finally turned into sharp elbows to my ribs that I actually listened to what He was telling me.

Which was He really wanted me to pray for my kids. And it was obvious He wasn’t going to let up on me until I got started. The only problem was, I had no idea where to begin. I had a couple of books about praying the Scriptures for children, but the books only covered very broad categories of prayers for children; things like salvation, character, and protection. Whenever I had tried to use them in the past, I always felt as though my prayers for my children were vague and lacking in power. It didn’t help that if I became distracted and stopped praying for my kids for a few days, weeks, or months, it was impossible to get restarted. I could never remember the last thing I had prayed for my kids. I could never remember where I had left off. I would always have to start again at the beginning of whichever book I was using. And inevitably, I only prayed a few, big prayers for my children, year in and year out, because I was always stopping and having to start over. Praying big, broad prayers did not work for me – definitely not during the baby years. Not during the phase of life that is marked by small things.

Small kids.

Small diapers.

Small clothes.

Small spoons.

And not during the phase of life that is measured in small increments – small obediences, small defeats, and small victories. I needed small prayers for my children to match my life. I needed to pray small prayers that added up together, over a long period of time, to make a big difference in my children’s lives. But still, where should I start?

Then one day, I happened to find, tucked away in a stack of my books, an unused Bible I had bought years before. The cover was still smooth and unbent. The pages were clean and fresh. I had never even written my name inside. Stumbling upon that Bible was the answer I needed. The page margins were not full of old notes. A previously highlighted passage did not scream READ ME whenever I opened it. And I was not tempted to read only the already underlined verses and nothing else whenever I turned a page. Instead, this Bible was a blank slate – one that the Lord could use to speak to me in a new way – about my children, about my husband, about my family, and about my life. And so, I finally got started. I didn’t have any kind of Bible reading plan in place. I didn’t even have any verses I felt strongly about praying for my children. Instead, I just started to read my Bible. And I prayed that the Lord would show me what to pray for my children. Sometimes as I read, day by day, the Lord would give me a specific verse, for one child or another. Other times as I read, a verse would just hit me as the answer to a problem we were facing or an issue we were struggling with. But most of the time as I read, I would simply find a verse that appealed to me. If I liked an idea or a character quality depicted in it, I would pray that verse for my children for the day. Whenever I found a verse, I underlined it. And if I prayed a verse for a season, or for a specific child, I wrote the date and the child’s name next to it. Of course, how I pray for my kids is not a fool-proof system. If I stop reading my Bible, my intention to pray for my kids falls apart completely.

But now at least, it is easier to restart. I just start reading my Bible again. I can open it any time and any place, and I usually only have to read a little before I find a great verse I can use to pray for my children. And now, several years later, I have this remarkable record of all my prayers for my children. And as the years go by, it is a record that will grow. And one day, I will show it to my children. All the verses I underlined. All the things I prayed specifically for each of them. And all the times their names are written in my Bible. And they will see that as they grew up, I was thinking about them all the time. And they will know they were loved. And they will realize that as they developed and changed, and struggled and learned during their adolescent years, they were constantly and continually covered in prayer.

Taylor Wise is a writer and blogger who is passionate about prayer. She is also a homeschooler, the mother of a special needs child, and the adult child of an addict. You can read more about her story and journey into healing and peace at her blog Wise Family Living.