Spare time to pray for your children

It seems that my quiet time is all too frequently gone before I’ve had time to get to some of the intercession I want to do for my children. For a few years this has frustrated me- but I don’t want to give up my Bible reading or general prayer journaling which I do before I turn to the “Intercession” section of my journal. Well, inspired by my husband’s lengthy prayer “showers”--- hey- the shower is pretty close to a closet-
       “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room [King James says 'closet'], close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” Matt. 6:6
                                 -I decided perhaps that place, THE SHOWER, might be a good opportunity to recapture and repurpose minutes I desired to use, continuing in my quiet time, in prayer for the kids! Let’s face it, the shower is sometimes the only quiet place in the house- though for Mom, not even always then!!!
In pursuit of this project, I laminated my prayer pages and hung them on the shower wall. I used some little suction cups, but found that on our smooth walled plastic shower, I didn’t even really need those. When moistened, the laminated pages cling to the wall. So now, while I’m suds-ing up my hair, I’m praying a virture. And while I’m rinsing out shampoo, I’m speaking verses of blessings for them. An added bonus is that my husband has joined me in praying the same things for our kids each day.
        "For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst." ~Matt. 18:20

In case it would bless you to know, I use two different things for this everyday praying for the kids. One is 31 Biblical Virtues to Pray for your Kids. I pray the virtue by the day of the month. Then, I have for years used some prayers out of a book called Prayer Portions for the Family. I retype them and personalize them with my kids’ names each January for the upcoming year. I have used basically Sylvia Gunter’s numbers to correlate with their age (with a few exceptions) and I wrote my own for the year they are in utero and infancy. I also type out a few of her Scripture references underneath as they spawn more prayers for me as the year goes on. So the virtue changes daily, but the large prayer focus of the year is the same everyday. I do the same thing for my god-children.

I have been SO BLESSED this year by this simple act of laminating these two prayer pages for my children and hanging them up in my shower. I hope one of you can recapture a few moments you didn’t even realize you had and spend it in fruitful prayer for your children!

God bless you as you fulfill the Great Commission to “Go and make disciples…”- starting at HOME!

Katherine

© 2011 Katherine Clark | All Rights Reserved.