I would like to write about how I pray for my children and attempt to tell you how to do it yourself...but let me remind you as i have said before, anything I do well all started out as a failure. So this post is not about how well I pray for my children and an attempt to teach you how. It is an honest glimpse into what I have been learning, yet again, from failure in my life."Until you are convinced that you can't change your child's heart, you will not take prayer seriously." Paul E. Miller from "A praying life"
This statement hit me hard a few weeks ago. Perhaps that is why "parenting" hasn't seemed so fun the last few months for me. I have sought God over and over to help me be gracious, patient, kind, wise and discerning when it comes to my kiddos. But I have never asked Him for a sense of helplessness or desperation when it comes to my kids. I have never been a kid myself to my Father asking for help in parenting my children. I have never asked Him to change my kid. I have not prayed for my children in regards to their heart issues.
But God is making me into that helpless and desperate child who needs Jesus to work in the heart of my kids. I would always tell you that "only Jesus can change my kids and i was simply curbing evil until then"...but my actions over the last few years have not looked as such. I have trusted more in my instruction and discipline than in my LORD to change my children. Let me give an example:
WesleyGrant has begun to love StarWars and his toys to an obsessive level...so much that he is constantly fighting with his sisters over them. I continue to tell him that God tells us to love one another and not the things of this world. That Sally is truly more important than Luke Skywalker! =) But through my instruction i have honestly not seen any change...any humility to those instructions or the disciplines. Well, the last few weeks, paul miller has been pointing me to Jesus...the only one who can change my child's heart. It is no parenting book, but the Lord has been teaching me about coming to God like a child..trusting him with the things i can not change, i.e, my child's heart! So, I realized that I was not praying for WesleyGrant in this area. I trusted more in my instruction and abilities than in the work of Jesus! So I still instruct, but I am learning to pray for my children and take them to the Lord regarding the issues I see. I pray I John 2:15-16 over him. And because I am speaking to the Father about my son's heart, I can relax in the face of his sin rather than get discouraged from my work. God is working in Him and I can trust Him with my children. They are His children.
Parenting is not about my self-will, carving a home in my image. It is about God, carving me and my family in his Son's image. So I am praying for my children now...thankful for failures that God is redeeming.....
