Also by this author: 5 Things to Pray for Your Parents: Prayers That Change Things for an Older Generation
Published by Good Book Company on May 1, 2021
Genres: Non-Fiction, Christian Life
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The Bible calls us to honor our parents--and one way we can do that is by praying for them. Little children often see their mothers and fathers as the ones with all the answers. It's not until we grow up that we realize our parents are just like us--regular people in need of prayer.
This guide will help you to pray rich, intentional prayers for your mother or father--be they biological or adoptive, working or retired, frail or fit, married or separated, believers or not yet Christians. Whatever their situation, if we want to love them well, we need to pray.
Each of the 21 prayer themes in this book takes a passage of Scripture and suggests five things to pray for a particular area of your parents' lives. You can use this book in any number of ways: work through it as part of your daily quiet time or pick it up whenever a particular need arises.
The command to honor our parents comes with a beautiful promise--"that it may go well with you" (Ephesians 6 v 3). The hope of this guide is that you will reap this blessing as you come before God with prayers that change things for an older generation.
Prayer doesn’t always come easy (cue some Christian shouting in the background that praying is just talking to God and that shouldn’t be hard), despite those who would tell you otherwise. Scripture even says that the Holy Spirit will intercede for us when we don’t know what to pray, so, yeah, prayer doesn’t always come easy. For myself, it’s because there’s so much to pray about. It can be difficult to pray specifically—especially if there’s not an urgent, specific thing.
Five Things to Pray for Your Parents is a prayer guide that gives you a structured start in your prayer life. There are four sections of prayer types:
- Praying that God Will
- Praying that My Parents Will
- Praying when My Parents Are
- Praying that I Will
Each of these sections then has five or six subsections based on a passage of Scripture, then is further divided into the titular five specific things offered as suggestions to pray about. In this structure, you could use the book as a Mon-Fri devotional and pray specifically on each prompt every weeknight. You could pray straight through in a 3-week, 21-day period. Or you could pick and choose which ones you felt most appropriate.
While this is offered as an ebook, I would recommend purchasing a physical copy, because there are blank lines included for you to write down specific prayers, turning the book into a prayer journal.
To give an example, the first entry in “Praying that God Will” is “Save My Parents.” Four lines are given at the top for individuals to write in. The five things are:
- To know God’s love.
- Believe in Jesus
- Not perish
- Have eternal life
- Come to the light
If your parents are already believers, not every section might apply, but can certainly be adapted into a prayer that does fit their context. The purpose is not to rigidly proscribe a prayer, but simply to give it avenue to begin and then flourish. Obviously, in order to apply to the most amount of people, these prompts can be generic. It’s worth looking over the contents to see if there’s enough in it that makes you feel like it would be useful for your context.
Five Things to Pray for Your Parents is a useful guide for when you don’t know how to pray. Whether you’re new in the faith or simply need some structure to help you in your spiritual habits this book and this series as a whole is worth checking out.