Praying for your children, at every age including the ones who are far away
Fourteen verses for a parent's prayers, arranged for the small years, the years you are teaching, and the years when a grown child has wandered. With a prayer to write for each.
No one prays more, or more helplessly, than a parent. The prayers start before the child is born and never stop, and they change shape every few years without warning. The prayer for a feverish toddler is not the prayer for a fifteen-year-old who has stopped talking, and neither is the prayer for a thirty-year-old who has not been to church in a decade.
The verses below are quoted word for word from the World English Bible and arranged for those three seasons: the small years, when the prayer is mostly protection; the teaching years, when you are trying to hand something on; and the far-off years, when a grown child has wandered from faith or from you and there is nothing left to do but pray.
Each group ends with a prayer you could write down with your child's name in it. Those are the prayers you will most want to find again.
The small years
When they are little the prayers are simple: keep them safe, keep them well, let them know they are loved. Scripture has a high view of small children, higher than most adults do, and these verses say so.
Behold, children are a heritage of the LORD. The fruit of the womb is his reward.
Psalm 127:3 · WEB
A heritage, a reward. On the nights when they feel more like a siege, the verse is still true.
But Jesus said, “Allow the little children, and don’t forbid them to come to me; for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to ones like these.”
Matthew 19:14 · WEB
Jesus wanted the small children near him when the adults were shooing them off. Your child is not a distraction from the Kingdom.
But when Jesus saw it, he was moved with indignation and said to them, “Allow the little children to come to me! Don’t forbid them, for God’s Kingdom belongs to such as these.
Mark 10:14 · WEB
Moved with indignation, this time, at the ones who would keep children away. The same scene, with the anger left in.
All your children will be taught by the LORD, and your children’s peace will be great.
Isaiah 54:13 · WEB
Taught by the LORD. Their peace will be great. A promise to hold over a sleeping child.
A prayer to write
Keep her safe tonight. Keep her well. Let her grow up knowing she is wanted, by us and by you. Teach her the things I will forget to.
The teaching years
Somewhere in the middle, the prayer becomes a prayer for yourself as much as for them: that you would hand on what matters and not just what you are worried about. These verses are about that handing on, and they are honest that it happens in ordinary places.
These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.
Deuteronomy 6:6-7 · WEB
When you sit, when you walk, when you lie down, when you rise. Faith is handed on in the car and at bedtime, not in lectures.
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6 · WEB
A proverb, not a guarantee. It describes how things tend to go, and it is a reason to keep training even when nothing seems to be taking.
We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, his strength, and his wondrous deeds that he has done.
Psalm 78:4 · WEB
Telling the next generation what God has done. Your own answered prayers are the most convincing thing you have to tell them.
Correct your son, and he will give you peace; yes, he will bring delight to your soul.
Proverbs 29:17 · WEB
Correction is part of love, and the verse promises it comes back to you as peace. Eventually.
But the LORD’s loving kindness is from everlasting to everlasting with those who fear him, his righteousness to children’s children,
Psalm 103:17 · WEB
To children's children. The loving kindness you are praying into your child is meant to outlast you both.
A prayer to write
Give me wisdom to raise them well. Let the things I say in the car and at bedtime carry more than I know. Correct me when I am correcting them out of fear instead of love. Make your kindness reach their children.
When a child has wandered
This is the prayer that keeps parents awake in their sixties. A son who does not believe. A daughter who has not called in a year. The verses here do not promise a timeline, but they do describe a Father who runs toward the returning child, and they were written to parents who had watched their children walk away.
“He arose and came to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion, and ran, fell on his neck, and kissed him.
Luke 15:20 · WEB
While he was still far off. The father was watching the road. He did not wait for the son to arrive before he moved. Pray like that father.
There is hope for your latter end,” says the LORD. “Your children will come again to their own territory.
Jeremiah 31:17 · WEB
Written to parents whose children had been carried into exile. Hope for your latter end. They will come again. It was true then.
But the LORD says, “Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the plunder retrieved from the fierce, for I will contend with him who contends with you and I will save your children.
Isaiah 49:25 · WEB
I will contend with him who contends with you, and I will save your children. God takes up the fight for the child you cannot reach.
I have no greater joy than this: to hear about my children walking in truth.
3 John 1:4 · WEB
The joy of hearing that your children walk in truth. Write this verse down now, before it is true, so you have it on the day it is.
A prayer to write
My son is far from you and far from me. I cannot reach him. You can. Watch the road for him the way that father did. Contend for him where I cannot go. Bring him home, however long it takes, and let me live to see it.
Keep every prayer for each child in one place
A parent prays for a child over decades, and almost none of it is kept. The prayer for the sick toddler, the prayer before the driving test, the prayer the night they moved out: gone as soon as they are prayed. And then the child comes back, or grows up, or the fever breaks, and there is no record that you asked.
Prayed is built for exactly this. Tag each child as a subject and every prayer for them gathers on one timeline, from the small years to the far-off ones. Each prayer comes back to you at three days, a week, a month, a year and two years, so the prayer from the hospital when they were four is put in front of you when they are six and fine. You can set a rhythm for each child, every day or every week, and their name is the only thing a notification ever shows. Nothing you write leaves your phone.
Write one prayer for each of your children tonight. Put their names in. Date them. Then let them come back.
Write the prayer. Prayed finds the verses.
Prayed is a private prayer journal for iPhone. Write what you're praying for and it matches three verses from the same Bible quoted above, on your phone, then brings the prayer back to you at three days, a week, a month and a year so you see what came of it. No account, no server. Writing is free forever.
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