Parenting by prayer
Posted 8/25/2011 | By: R W Glenn
My kids are 15, 13, 11 and 3, and one of the main lessons that the Lord has been teaching me especially with the older three is the need to parent them first by prayer, and then by persuasion. As they have gotten older, I've come to believe that I spent too much time talking to them about them and too little time talking to God about them. And I was helped to see this by two different authors: Paul Miller and the Puritan, John Owen.
If we were to talk less and pray more, things would be better than they are in the world (John Owen, The Holy Spirit: His Gifts and Power [Christian Focus, 2004], 362).
When our kids were two, five, eight, twelve, fourteen, and sixteen, I wrote this in my prayer journal: "March 19,1991. Amazing how when I don't pray in the morning evil just floods into our home. I absolutely must pray! Oh, God, give me the grace to pray."
It took me seventeen years to realize I couldn't parent on my own. It was not a great spiritual insight, just a realistic observation. If I didn't pray deliberately for members of my family by name every morning, they'd kill one another. I was incapable of getting inside their hearts. I was desperate. But even more, I couldn't change my self-confident heart. My prayer journal reflects both my inability to change my kids and my inability to change my self-confidence. That's why I need grace even to pray.
God answered my prayer. As I began to pray regularly for the children, he began to work in their hearts. For example, I began to pray for more humility in my eldest son, John....About six months later he came to me and said, "Dad, I've been thinking a lot about my humility lately and my lack of it." It didn't take me long to realize I did my best parenting by prayer. I began to speak less to the kids and more to God. It was actually quite relaxing (Paul E Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World [NavPress, 2009], 59).
And really, isn't this how the gospel works? We exchange our weakness, our helplessness for the Father's strength and help. "Prayer mirrors the gospel. In the gospel, the Father takes us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of salvation. In prayer, the Father receives us as we are because of Jesus, and gives us his gift of help" (Miller, A Praying Life, 55). Armed with the gospel, let's parent more by prayer and stand back to watch the Lord work.