If we were to represent what many parents do each day with a pie chart, a huge slice of it could be labeled “helping our kids in one way or another.”
I’m talking about all the meal prep, diaper changing, bedtime routines, laundry, car rides, birthday parties, helping with homework, volunteering for activities, emotional encouragement, device management, life skill coaching, educational and career counseling, and relationship/marriage advice. Add to all that the jobs you may work at to provide for them. And did I mention the cleaning? There always seems to be more cleaning.
Despite doing all of this and more, you may be overlooking one of the best things you could do to help your kids mature and flourish.
I’m talking about prayer. After all, who knows more about what your kids need than the one who created them in the first place? Who can be a better help to them than the Lord, the source of wisdom, power, and love?
That said, I’m not sure I know any parents—including me—who couldn’t use some encouragement and guidance in this area. So, let’s consider a few ideas to help us pray both for and with our kids.
Tips on Praying FOR Your Kids
1. Something is better than nothing.
It’s easy to get demotivated when our ideal doesn’t match up with reality. Since we can’t get five things marked off our to-do list, we end up doing nothing. We can’t get a full hour at the gym, so we don’t go. But we’d often be better off if we took care of at least one thing on our list or put in 20-30 minutes of a workout. The same is true here. What if we pray for our kids at least once this week, no matter how brief or basic? Because in this area, something is always better than nothing. (And that will be true next week, too.)
2. Keep the main thing the main thing.
If you take one thing from this list, let it be this: the absolute best thing you can pray for your kids—better than that they would do well in school, be successful in their career, get married and have kids of their own, etc.—is that they would trust and follow Jesus. So when you pray for them, let your prayers consistently reflect that. You can’t ultimately change or shape their hearts, but God can.
3. Pray for the needs of the moment.
While my kids having a heart for Jesus is the most important thing I can pray for them, it’s certainly not the only one. The Bible encourages us to pray for our everyday needs, and our kids will have a lot of them! So don’t be afraid to pray for the next need of the moment, whether it’s your newborn needing to eat and sleep well, your teenage driver being safe on the road, or your adult child interviewing for a job.
4. Pray for character.
In addition to our kids’ immediate needs, we’ll also want to keep the future in mind. And in the long run, our kids’ character will go a long way in determining how they will respond to challenges, responsibilities, and even blessings. So let’s ask God to shape our kids’ character in ways that reflect who he is and what he loves (Matthew 5:3-16, Galatians 5:16-26, Psalm 1).
5. Pray for your own faith.
Besides praying for them, one of the best things you can do for your kids is to pray that God would develop and strengthen your own faith. Depending on their stage of life, you’re quite possibly the most immediate and effective model your kids have for what it looks like to follow Jesus. So why not pray that God would give you a heart that increasingly loves and trusts him?
Tips on Praying WITH Your Kids
6. Something is better than nothing. (Not a typo!)
This applies just as much to praying with your kids as it does to praying for them.
7. It’s not how long you pray.
Regardless of their ages, most kids aren’t going to sit attentively for long periods with heads bowed and a glow emanating from their angelic faces. So while I want to model a respect for God, I take comfort in the fact that the Bible doesn’t teach that the significance of our prayer is directly tied to its length (for example, the Lord’s Prayer is pretty short). Our best bet is usually to keep things short and trust God to use it.
8. Repetition isn’t a bad thing.
Will your kids tune you out if you keep praying the same things over time? Maybe. Then again, you probably still remember a lot of the things that your parents repeated to you over and over. (I will never forget my dad saying, “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”) If something is important—like #2 above—then I don’t mind praying for it with my kids again and again. Doing so makes it more likely that your kids will embrace that importance for themselves over time.
9. Involve your kids.
You can do this with kids of any age when you pray with them. And it can be something as simple as asking them about one thing they’re thankful for and/or one way they need God’s help. This will not only help your kids to see the very real link between prayer and their everyday lives, but it will also give you a better idea of what your child is excited or worried about—which can inform your own prayers. Also, don’t be afraid to ask your kids to do the praying some of the time. That’s a great way to help them develop good habits for their own lives.
10. Pray the Bible.
Wondering what else to pray with your kids? Pray the Bible!
- If you read something that sticks out to you, read and pray through it with your kids. Like Isaiah 41:10 or John 8:31-32.
- Pray the Lord’s Prayer with them.
- Pray from the Psalms. My wife and I prayed Psalm 23 with our kids over and over. But there’s lots more where that came from. Psalm 34:8-9, Psalm 73:25-26, and Psalm 103:8-12 are great places to start.
- Pray blessings over them, like those found in Numbers 6:24-26, Ephesians 3:17-19, or Jude 24-25.
God’s word is supposed to shape every area of our lives. It only makes sense that it should shape our prayers.
We know that God's word is supposed to shape every area of our lives, but how exactly does that work with prayer? Learn the best practices in how to pray through scripture and transform your prayer life.
