Fighting for Your Child in Prayer

• Pray that your children will continually ask the Lord to examine their hearts and minds so that they will be able to walk in truth and purity. “Examine me, O Lord, and test me; try my affections and my heart. For Your lovingkindness is before my eyes, and I have walked in Your truth” (Ps. 26:2-3).
• Pray that your children will use their minds to understand and search out wisdom so that they can recognize the stupidity of wickedness. “And I turned my heart to know, and seek and search out wisdom in how things are and to experience wicked folly, even foolishness and madness” (Eccl. 7:25).
• Pray that their minds will be steadfast as they trust in the Lord. “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for in God the Lord we have an everlasting rock” (Is. 26:3-4).
• Pray that your children will keep the greatness of the Lord’s faithfulness always in their minds, so that they will have hope. “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed; His compassions do not fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (Lam. 3:21-23). 
• Pray that your children will always have the mind of Christ, “casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).
• Pray that your children’s minds will never be led astray and that they will always have sincere and pure devotion to Christ. “But I fear that somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve through his trickery, so your minds might be led astray from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3).
• Pray that your children’s minds will be saturated with God’s peace in every trial and difficult circumstance. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will protect your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7).
• Pray that your children will be drawn to value spiritual truths over earthly things. “Set your affection on things above, not on things on earth” (Col. 3:2).
• Pray that your children’s minds will always be prepared for action, so that they can live out lives of holiness. “Therefore guard your minds, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children do not conduct yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance. But as He who has called you is holy, so be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy'” (1 Pet. 1:13-16).

Now that you have the Lord’s perfect strategy for keeping the minds of your children protected from Satan, be diligent in your prayers. Be consistent in your teaching of the Word and in your personal study and devotion. Most of all, be a godly example for your children and grandchildren to follow as they mature in Christ. {eoa}

¹ Stormie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Parent, (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1982).

Kim Butts is the co-founder of Harvest Prayer Ministries and the author of The Praying Family, available from prayershop.org. © 2013 Prayer Connect magazine.