The power of praying for our kids

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. ~Abraham Lincoln

In the rush of our everyday lives, it’s sometimes hard to set aside focused time to pray for our children, yet what a valuable habit it is to lace into our lives. Each day that we have with our children is another day, another opportunity to prepare the grounds for their future by praying into their lives, by praying for their future spouse, their character, friends and outlooks.
It is said that prayer moves the arm of God. You can pray and speak things into being, pray for protection and direction and purpose.
Sometimes from our perspective as mom looking into an unknown future, we may wonder what effect our prayers really have, wonder what exactly to pray for; but there is no greater proof and inspiration to pray than when we read how powerfully a praying mom shaped a child.

One of my favorite books is ‘How to be a God Chaser and a Kid Chaser’ by Thethus & Tommy Tenney. In it, Tommy says:
“My initial influences also entailed a small woman. Her pursuit began daily before I awoke. If I got up a bit early and ventured into the den or living room, I would see my mom ‘pursuing’ in prayer – Bible open, heart panting, passionately chasing God! Quietly observing that daily discipline affected me. It remodeled the blueprint of my future – and perhaps left a small footprint in the sands of time to mark the passing of a ‘God Chaser’. “

What a powerful and beautiful introduction to a child’s heart, to prayer and chasing God! Wiki says this about Tommy Tenney:

Tommy Tenney (born 1956) is an American preacher, best known for his message of “God Chasing”. In his book The God Chasers (1999), Tenney relates experiences of being “in the presence of God”, including one occasion when a pulpit was purportedly divinely split in two. He teaches that every christian should pursue an intimate relationship with God, and that supernatural occurrences are an ordinary outcome of the pursuit.

He has written over fifty other books and workbooks, including ‘Hadassah: One Night with the King’ with Mark Andrew Olsen, which was made into a film titled “One Night with the King”, in 2006. He is the CEO of the GodChasers.net which holds offices in Pineville (Alexandria) Louisiana. GodChasers.net operates under its parent of HDE.

If you don’t already have an outlined set of prayers and scriptures to pray over your child, Tommy Tenney’s book mentioned above, has a fantastic ‘31-Day Kid Chaser’s Prayer Guide for God Chasers.‘

Another worldchanger whose path in life was affected by the prayers of his mother, is K.P. Yohannan. In his book ‘Revolution in World Missions’ he says:
“Achyamma’s eyes stung with salty tears. But they were not from the cooking fire or the hot spices that wafted up from the pan. She realised time was short. Her six sons were growing beyond her influence. Yet not one showed signs of going into the Gospel ministry. Except for the youngest – little ‘Yohannachan’ as I was known – every one of her children seemed destined for secular work. My brothers seemed content to live and work around our native village of Niranam in Kerala, South India.
“O God,” she prayed in despair, “let just one of my boys preach!” Like Hannah and so many other saintly mothers in the Bible, my mother had dedicated her children to the Lord. That morning, while preparing breakfast, she vowed to fast secretly until God called one of her sons into His service. Every Friday for the next three and a half years, she fasted. Her prayer was always the same. “

KP Yohannan and his wife Gisela decided to give away their own possessions to help spread the good news of Jesus on the Indian subcontinent. They started by helping 2 dozen national workers in the first year. Then in 1979, K.P. and Gisela officially founded Gospel for Asia. After three decades, the organization now serves in 17 nations.Yohannan argues that Western missionaries are ineffective, and that it is more appropriate to provide financial support to missionaries from the relevant country; Gospel for Asia does this
KP Yohannan is the author of eight books published in the US and has authored more than 200 books published in India. His book Revolution In World Missions has over 2 million copies in print.

Let’s not underestimate the power of praying for our children, starting from today! Pray in front of them, pray over them at bedtime, pray for others with them, instill in their hearts a hunger and love for God that will stay with them when they have their children one day,  teach them to have a passion for God. Entire future generations under you can be changed and impacted by your daily prayers for your children in the next twenty years.
I encourage you to begin the habit of praying for your children daily, if you do not already!

In closing, here’s a prayer by Stormie O’Martian, on Developing a Hunger for the Things of God:

Lord, I pray that You will help (name of child) to be reliable, dependable, responsible, compassionate, sensitive, loving and giving to others. Deliver her/him from any pride, laziness, slothfulness, selfishness, or lust of the flesh. I pray that she/he will have a teachable and submissive spirit, yet be able to stand strong in her/his convictions. I pray that she/he will always desire to belong to a christian church that is alive to the truth of Your Word and the power of the Holy Spirit-led worship and prayer. Write Your law in her/his mind and on her/his heart so that she/he always walks with a confident assurance of the righteousness of Your commands. As shehe learns to pray, teach her/him to listen for Your voice. May there always be a Holy Spirit fire in her/his heart and an unwavering desire for the things of God.

TV viewing – how much & what?

A friend of mine recently spoke to her kindgarten class of four year olds about dinnertime and eating at the table. After a few blank looks and protesting, she discovered that the majority of them had no idea what she was talking about, as they ate with their parent(s) in front of the telly.
I was initially shocked, but thinking more about it, I realise how easy one can fall into doing that. You’re both tired, both get home after office hours, and all you want to do is relax and eat and not have to think or talk about anything much. Dinner + Telly, there you go.

Looking up the statistics on TV viewing, you realise just how many murders, violence and the likes you view over a year, or two or ten. It is shocking. Not only do you view a lot more than you realise, but you don’t really realise how desensitised you get to violence, violent crime news, etc.
A recent article I read online (found here) revealed a few of the following interesting, sad facts:

– The number of murders seen by a child by the time they finish elementary school: 8 000
– 54% of4 – 6 year olds who, when asked to choose between TV and spending time with dad, preferred TV
– 66% of Americans watch TV while eating dinner
– 200 000 acts of violence seen by age 18 on TV, including 40 000 murders

According to The Barna Group‘s research (George Barna wrote one of my favorite eye-opening books on children, called Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions, a must read!):

– a person’s lifelong behaviors and views are generally developed when they are young – particularly before they reach the teenage years
– a person’s moral foundations are generally in place by the time they reach age nine
– “In essence,” the researcher noted, “what you believe by the time you are 13 is what you will die believing.

Delving a bit deeper into this topic, I found it interesting that a friend of mine’s three year old began being suddenly defiant after watching a few episodes of a children’s TV program about rebellious sheep who defied their owner. It is amazing that a  child who can hardly speak fluent sentences yet can learn powerful habits and attitudes from cartoons.

So, where do you draw the line? Are you not supposed to just get home and relax a bit in front of the telly after a long hard day? Are you supposed to pick your viewing down to what cartoons you let your child watch? That’s for you to work out and weigh up. In our house we stick to two or three educational cartoons & a few christian programs, and the rest of the stuff out there’s unknown to us 🙂

Here are a few things to consider doing, to manouvre your family in a viewing -healthy direction:

1. TOSS THE TELLY!
Personally, I know all too well how hard it is to be adamant you won’t let your baby watch TV.. until he is two and his sister came along, and then I was ever so grateful for the telly to distract him so I could just have a moment to myself. The moments turned into an hour a day, and my obliging TV-glued toddler never protested once. I understand it’s appeal. What we did when we got married (and man am I grateful for it) is we chose to not have a TV in the house. This year we’ll have been married for ten years, and still.. we do not own a TV. Not to say we don’t hire DVD’s ocassionally, but the beauty of it is we try and get into the habit of eating dinner as a family. At a table. We try to get into the habit of reading in the evenings as opposed to watching DVD’s (a hard habit to shake sometimes, but we try), of getting into hobbies, or socialising with friends. Some days I long to sit in front of the telly and just veg, but I project and think of how I would like my kids to grow up after following our example and habits, what I’d like them to value and love doing, and then we go for a walk at the dam and feed the ducks instead, or swim, even though it initially takes a lot of energy, which we don’t always feel we have.
We have friends who have a large family, and next to their television they have a few scriptures on a page, one of them being from Psalm 101:3 –
I will set before my eyes no vile thing. The deeds of faithless men I hate; they will not cling to me.” I think of this often. Love it, they challenge and remind me to keep my heart and mind pure and to protect and guard my heart. Wise words!

2. FIND A REPLACEMENT ACTIVITY
So you feel the pain of that dead time where you’re tired and just want to be entertained. Well, there are stunning alternatives to the telly out there. Considering how powerful the first ten to thirteen years are of a child’s life, it is important that we do the most we can in those years. I have discovered Discipleland. They are on our list of stuff to buy this year. They offer awesome books on the stories of the Old and New Testaments, as well as great teaching resources with leading questions that make you and your children think! Basically you get (well, for my two children’s age range) 8 Old Testament quarters and 8 New Testament quarters, each quarter has thirteen lessons, each comes with a book for teacher (mom), an activity book for the kids with stickers, etc. and a teaching poster. If we view each moment as irreplacable, as an opportunity to actively teach our kids something, this is a big thumbs up in my home. It isn’t too pricey either, and is a stunning way to teach your child the bible and the character of God. Imagine replacing mindless TV cartoons with 45minutes of this? Nice! There are many other ways to spend your time, if you are looking at replacing TV time. Dig deep and think about it, it is a valuable thing to choose to do!

3. WRITE UP A LONG TERM LIFESTYLE LIST
My husband’s big on this one, and I respect him so much for initiating this. He gets us (well, him and I at the moment until the kids are older) to write (down to weekly activities) what things we’d both like to be able to do and be, study, learn. We start off thinking of no limitations, no excuses, nothing, just imagining that the world’s our oyster 🙂 Then we write a long list of things we love doing, things we’d like to learn to do, things we’d like to study, etc. Then we write next to each if we’d like to do that activity daily, weekly or monthly, and then put it into a calendar. You’ll be surprised to find that you can fit a heck of a lot into your week, and can start even now to slowly learn/study/begin those things you feel are impossible or too expensive. Surfing in Thailand may not be an easy thing to learn to do considering I live in a landlocked city on the other side of the world, but learning Spanish is totally doable. Two hours a week is not impossible if I just learn to stop doing things that waste my time (goodbye NCIS and hello productivity!!) They say that 10 000 hours in a field makes you an expert. Those hours add up over the years pretty quickly! Don’t let life pass you by. Picture yourself in ten or twenty years, what you’d like to do and who you’d like to be, and work at it, in a planned way. Remember  that bad habits also add up – although I am mildly proud in a geeky way to have watched all TEN Seasons of Stargate SG1 while pregnant with my first child, man, what a waste of time! I could be nearly fluent in Spanish by now, know what I’m saying? If I had kept on going with cheesy sci-fi where would that get me in ten or twenty years time? Most probably ten kilo’s heavier and into a SG1 fan conference. Oooh.

I hope I’ve helped you relook the value of your time, as well as the power we as parents have being examples to our children in how we choose to spend our time. I pray God would help you and I to be wise in moulding ourselves after Him, as well as our children.

Moulding worshippers out of our children

Are we being examples to our children on how to praise/worship?

I’m not into forcing my kids to raise their hands, or do anything they don’t fully understand at home or church. But I do pray often that they would learn by my example and choose for themselves what they will do. So I have started being an in-public worshipper, as opposed to just quiet devotion times worshipper. An uninhibited God- lover and praiser in my lounge, every morning, while they play. From Planetshakers to Psalty, I sing it, I dance, shout, cry and they dance with me, draw on things they shouldn’t, or climb onto the table and tear up printer paper. Whatever. I pray they will absorb my habits, my passion for God and choose to follow when they are ready and old enough to understand.

God, make worshippers out of my children, let them learn from my example,  raise them up to be passionate for you, break their hearts for what breaks yours.

Grace, my 22 month old, gets into bed most evenings and puts her hands up and sings Psalty’s  ‘I love you.’ THE cutest thing to listen to. Ethan, my 3 year old, went to bed feeling sick the other day, and came out ten minutes later and announced,”I’m better, Jesus loves me. Jesus made me better’ He strung that logic together all by himself and MAN was I proud, and totally humbled at how powerful an example we really are. How he got to that sentence I do not know, whether it was from singing Jesus loves me a thousand times at bedtime for 2 years, or following how we prayed for dad’s beesting to be healed, Im not sure, but I do know that they learn and copy, and it excites and inspires me to be a better mother.