How To Pray Big For Kids ep29

Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture.

I came across a new term this month called tradwife. The words traditional and wife are fused. And it's a nostalgic view of roles in the family and discussions about working outside the home or working inside. And a lot of talk about provisions and who's providing what.

It is this rebranded discussion of the old stay at home mom talk. I was shocked at how much interest and how many posts and people were involved with this. But what I saw, and I looked through some of these things, was that the entire discussion around family and about roles and the visions people had for their families and their individual, identification. Really didn't seem to hit on spiritual provision and especially the idea of praying for our kids and what to pray for our kids. And I think we have to be careful that we don't let our vision or our individuality prevent us from realizing the godly duties that our children need from us. Spiritual provision and prayer are not tied to a trad wife versus a mod wife. These provisions for the soul are eternal. And what we need to ask God to give our kids is unrelated to. How the family achieves temporal provision. This is raising joyful children in an angry world. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. J. C. Ryle said that the child of many prayers is seldom cast away when he was talking about the need to pray for children. And then Ryle takes us to Mark chapter 9. It's a section of text that I think helps us get a starting point in prayer for kids. You may recall this is a man who has a son who has been possessed by demons for a long time. The demons have caused him to go into convulsions and foaming at the mouth and throwing himself onto the ground. And he has brought them to the disciples and they are unable to cast the demon out. And they're having this argument about it and the crowds gathering around the argument. And then Jesus has the child brought to him. He asked a few questions about how the long this has been going on, et cetera. And then the father says to the Lord, pleading with him, heal him if you can. And Jesus responds, what do you mean if I can? You must believe and the man then says, I do believe, but help me with my unbelief. This is, a desperate dad with the reality of a difficult situation. And it really comes and helps us get a starting point for prayer for our kids. He understands who Jesus is, and he's also. Willing to admit that he's dealing with a struggle to believe and and the struggle here is is the influence of the circumstances that are around him and even the circumstances of the disciples, right? It's really what has been by sight and any of us would would be like the father. We would really start to struggle with doubts and it's interesting. the Jesus then, despite the disciples not coming through, despite the fathers, having some reservations, but will at least willing to confess those reservations. He still heals the child. And I like this starting point that, that Ryle takes us to, because it does, it demonstrates the desperation of the father. It demonstrates the power of Christ and, and our reality of dealing with what's around us and what we see and our sight influence more than our faith influence. And I think this is particularly important as we live in a culture that seems to define everything Truth by anecdotal experience. And what I mean by that is people often say, well, you know, I went to, the city of New Orleans and boy, I was treated great. Those people are wonderful. We make a universal truth out of an experience where we might do the flip side of that and say, Oh, I was treated poorly and they're all rude down there, but these, these experiences begin to, in this culture, formulate. Truth. And we can't allow that. We have to, we have to focus on who Jesus is and beyond the circumstances that we're put in. Now, from this starting point, I want to look at two texts. One is out of Ephesians, I believe the first chapter and the other is out of Colossians. And I would suggest that we pray these things and insert our children's names into these texts because these are really the things. So in Ephesians, Paul says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, in other words, opened in order that you may know God's incomparably great power for us who believe that power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead here, we're asking God to open the eyes of the heart, The spiritual condition of our kids is that their hearts are blind and that those hearts need to be opened and that they also need the power of God. That is the resurrection power to strengthen them. So much of modern church today in a lot of institutions has sort of stripped away this mystery. And it's replaced some of our desperate dependence on Christ with. I would say our own personal responsibility. Certainly we have responsibility, but we can't accomplish those responsibilities and duties without first having our eyes opened and being given the power. but also when we go to Colossians, and this is one that I recommend and I think is most important when we're asking God and praying for them outside of normal things like. You know, my son's or my daughter's sick. Can you bring healing, uh, be with them today, protect them from, you know, the evil one. And then there's kind of normal prayers and normal life. But Paul says in this prayer in Colossians for this reason, since the day we heard of it, and meaning since the day we heard of you, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you might be filled with the knowledge of God's will. In all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him that you would bear fruit in every good work and grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all strength that comes from his glorious power. May you be prepared to endure everything with patience while joyfully given thanks to the father who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light, because he has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son. That is a magnificent prayer. to ask God for your children on behalf of your children. We can look at it in kind of three ways. What is the ask? What are we asking for? Why are we asking it? And how will we see it? I don't know if you've ever had to, uh, meet with people in political power. If you've ever done a lobby call, where you go down to the congressional offices in Washington, DC, or maybe your state capital and generally your lobbyist will tell you now, when you meet with the member of Congress or you meet with their chief of staff, they're going to say, what is the ask? And this is what you say, What we are asking for in these text is that the eyes of the heart be opened and that they be filled with knowledge of God's will, with spiritual wisdom and understanding and of power. That's what we're asking for. It's the heart condition. It's the wisdom and it's the power. Why are we asking it? Well, we're asking it so that they can walk in a manner that is worthy of God, that's pleasing to him and that they would bear fruit in all the work that they do and that their knowledge of God would increase. How will it happen? How will they do it? How will this all work? Although being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy. In other words, the power and the glory comes from the same resurrection power that we have spoken about. I love how Jeremiah Burroughs, he's an old Puritan pastor writes about this. He says, when our natural conscience places a duty on us, it doesn't give us the strength to perform it. In fact, it often doesn't give us the joy to perform it. We might reluctantly do it, or we might resist it. We might do it a little bit and then give up, he says. But when the Spirit of God puts a duty on us, God gives us the strength to do it, and He makes the heart glad about the duty. This is what we're really asking for. We're asking that the eyes of the heart be open, the captivity of the soul be freed, that wisdom come into that heart so that the joy of have, of performing our duties and performing our fruit and working things out with God and living for God and the power to do that is what we're asking for. This past week, there was an article in the London Times about prayer at school again, another one of these old arguments. And it's this very strict public school that has this regimentation schedule to keep children extremely disciplined. And one of the kids wanted to pray during recess. And the headmaster got into a debate about it and banned prayer at that particular school. I assume the UK doesn't have a national banning. And the Times writer was describing the challenges these days in which Their culture is trying to embrace so many religions and they're all trying to coexist. And the Church of England has really faded from the culture. And so they're back to this, another one of these old debates that can distract us from the duty at hand. I share this because I think it's important to understand that out there we can't expect much in the issue of prayer. The evangelist, George Whitfield, who was an evangelist in England, as well as in America, in the 18th century, he describes the duty of parents in three offices, prophet that is to teach, priest that is to pray for, and king that is to govern and direct or queen to govern and direct. And he reminds us, he reminds his church that if the Apostle Paul says that those who do not provide for their own house in temporal things have denied the faith. He says, what, to what greater degree are those who do not teach and pray? He really lays on. Not so much the roles, but he's giving us a different set. He calls them offices. And with those offices come duty. That is the duty to teach, the duty to pray, and the duty to direct. And he tries to encourage his people to see their home as a parish, a small church, and that everyone that is in that house has a duty to the family, which is the flock. What I want to help you understand is these the things that we need to ask for for our kids. And we need to grasp it's more about our duty than what is our role. It's more about what we are obligated to do as a Christian family than how we provide or whose, whose roles are in provision and all these sort of modern arguments that no one back in the times when duty was more emphasized, gave much thought to. Our homes are a parish of our kids, and we are the prophets, priests, and kings.

The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight for identity. Our king invites our kids to know who they are, what to believe, and where they belong. Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.