Praying for Our Children
Charles
Spurgeon: “How can a man be a Christian, and not love his offspring? How can a
man be a believer in Jesus Christ, and yet have a cold and hard heart in the
things of the kingdom towards his children?… It is our business to train up our
children in the fear of the Lord; and though we cannot give them grace, it is
ours to pray to the God who can give it; and in answer to our many
supplications, he will not turn us away, but will be pleased to regard our
sighs.”
Let’s together keep
seeking grace to pray as Alexander Whyte did for his children:
O Almighty God, our
Heavenly Father, give us a seed right with You! Smite us and our house with
everlasting barrenness rather than that our seed should not be right with You.
O God, give us our children. Give us our children. A second time, and by a far
better birth, give us our children to be beside us in Your holy covenant. For
it had been better had we never been betrothed; it had been better had we sat
all our days solitary unless our children are to be right with You…. But You, O
God, are Yourself a Father, and thus have in Yourself a Father’s heart. Hear
us, then, for our children, O our Father…. In season and out of season, we
shall not go up into our bed, we shall not give sleep to our eyes nor slumber
to our eyelids till we and all our seed are right with You.
- From Alexander
Whyte's, Bunyan Characters (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1902),
3:289-90.
O God, I cannot
endure to see the destruction of my kindred. Let those that are united to me in
tender ties be precious in thy sight and devoted to thy glory. Sanctify and
prosper my domestic devotion, instruction, discipline, example, that my house
may be a nursery for heaven, my church... the garden of the Lord, enriched with
the trees of righteousness of thy planting, for thy glory.
Let not those of my
family who are amiable, moral, attractive, fall short of heaven at last. Grant
that the promising appearances of tender conscience, soft heart, the alarms and
delights of thy Word, be not finally blotted out, but bring forth judgment unto
victory in all whom I love. AMEN.
- From Arthur
Bennett's book entitled, The Valley of Vision (Edinburgh: Banner of
Truth Trust, 1975), p. 113.
“Earnest, secret, believing prayer should never cease to be daily presented for our offspring…Daily we should wrestle with God for their eternal salvation….That parent has neglected a very important branch of his duty, who has suffered one single day to pass by without bearing his children upon his heart before God in private prayer.
-- John Angell James
“Parents are sometimes thrown off track by unsound thinking that warns, ‘don’t force your faith on your children, or they will resent it. Don’t make them go to church or participate in church activities.’ As long as our children’s feet were under our table, they were expected to participate in church life. Too often parents fear their children’s dislike more than they fear God’s displeasure…When children are resistant, we must pray for them, but we must not give in to them.” -- Susan Hunt“Let me exhort all governors of families, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, often to reflect on the inestimable worth of their own souls and the infinite ransom, even the precious blood of Jesus Christ, which has been paid down for them…and you will no more neglect your family’s spiritual welfare than your own” -- George Whitefield
“My brethren, by all that is tender in the name of parents, by all that is sacred in the vows of the covenant, by all that is interesting in the riches of divine grace, by the value of our children as immortal beings, by the joys of heaven and by the woes of hell, let us be incited, seriously and earnestly, to attend to this subject, and bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” -- Samuel Worcester