Visible Hope: Involving our Children in Prayer

“But mommy, shouldn’t she have had the baby by now?!?” my daughter asked, but I could see questions already forming on her face.

She’d just remembered a joyful pregnancy announcement from over a year ago and was slowly realizing “nine months” had come and gone.

Lord, how do I answer this? How do I share something so sad while affirming you are still good?

Gently, I told her the truth: her former babysitter and dear friend had miscarried—again.

There were more words spoken; I don’t remember them all now. We knew this dear sister’s longing for a baby, and even at seven, my daughter’s sadness was palpable. But the Lord gave me one token of hope to hold before my grieving daughter, “But K, we can pray? What if we started praying for Lynn** every day?”

We did. For more than a year, I’d show up at my daughter’s bedside and ask, “K, do you have anything you’d like us to pray about?” Night after night, she gave the same unprompted reply, “Let’s pray for Lynn.” We did, and eventually, my sons began mentioning Lynn’s name, too.

Of course, I wondered, Lord, should I involve my children in such hard prayers? We know God is good and does all things well, but as adults, many of us have also tread through the deep waters of “even if you don’t.”(1) Was I making a mistake in encouraging my children in such prayers?

But when our dear friend conceived, and a new baby came into the world—the entire family rejoiced. “Mommy, we prayed for this baby!!!!!” they said. Joy filled our home, along with a fresh assurance and testimony of his goodness: God had answered their prayers.

When we see our kids navigating grief, or bullied by their peers, or struggling through some difficulty with their siblings, we often feel the need to do something. Often, we rush to the internet, Googling any possible resource to answer these difficulties. Or we reach out to friends, “Help, my son just encountered (fill in the blank) —what do I do?” Yet…

Sometimes, in our rush to fix the ones we love, it’s easy to forget that our greatest Ally and help for every circumstance is longing for us to come to him, with our children by our side.

Prayer gives us a place to begin again

As a homeschooling family, we endure many arguments together. One sibling hits, another stomps off in a huff. Mom reacts to the whole situation with an exasperated yell that brings the baby to tears. And more days than I’d like to confess, it’s seemed as if the day is lost before we’ve even begun. But just as one look to our Savior canceled our debt, one desperate cry for help amid a sin-filled day holds gospel hope before our children. Sometimes it’s in the car on our way to gymnastics, sometimes we stop and bring everyone together around the school table. But as we gather before the Lord in prayer, we confess, “Lord, we’ve messed up, but we know your mercies are new, not just every morning, but every moment, and we just ask you to help us begin again.”

As we pour our hearts before the Lord with our children, we demonstrate that nothing is too hard for the Lord, that we can come to him, no matter how messy our hearts may be.

I can’t even count how many times the Lord has gloriously answered these desperate prayers and changed the entire course of our day.

Prayer helps our children understand we’re not alone in our struggles

“Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?” the classic hymn reminds us. “We should never be discouraged; take it to the Lord in prayer…”2

As Christians, God hasn’t promised us a life without crisis. In Psalm 73, David reminds us that often, it seems the children of God know pain and grief even more than the rest of the world.
Certainly, the shepherd King was no stranger to trials, but he knew where to go when trouble met him. And at the end of this same Psalm, David testifies, “Whom have I in the heavens but
you, and besides you, I desire no one on earth.” As David came before the Lord, time and time again, he discovered a glorious truth: there is none like the Lord. His Psalms bear testimony of one who found peace, victory, and hope—even when outward circumstances remained unchanged. Isn’t this what we want our children to discover, too? When we take our children to the Lord in prayer, we help them to begin to fellowship with the one who understands, who sees, and who went this same way, t00.

Let the little children come to me

Sometimes, as adults, we’ve navigated so many unanswered prayers that we hesitate to involve our children in faithful intercession for harder things. We know God’s answer for a baby might be no, and we don’t want our children to experience this disappointment. But what if God does answer their prayers? "Let the little children come to me," 4 Jesus told his
disciples. While unanswered prayers are part of growing in the Lord, learning that God is still good, even when he withholds the desires of our heart—we need to remember that God still delights to answer prayers, too.

How many times did Jesus say, “I am willing,” in the Gospels? How many times does he encourage the disciples to learn from the simple faith of a child? 6 As we kneel beside our
children for bedtime prayers, and they ask to pray for something crazy—remember our Lord, who told the disciples, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them.” That same God listens as our children pour out their hearts to him. Scripture tells us he responds to faith, something our children often more readily possess than us. And who knows—what if something extraordinary happens? What if God answers their prayers, and he works a miracle in someone’s life as a result? He is able to do far more abundantly beyond all we can ask or think, 8 Paul tells us. What could bless a young child’s faith more than an answered prayer?

Not so long ago, as I stopped by my daughter’s bed for evening prayers, our dear friend Lynn came up again, and how God had answered our prayers.

“Yeah,” she sighed, “that was pretty amazing…”

My almost 9-year-old daughter doesn’t think about the miscarriages, the pain, the sadness, or even how long it took to receive an answer. She’s just awestruck that the God of the entire
universe answered her prayer.

“What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.” —can we not say, amen? But what an even greater privilege to bring our children alongside, and watch as they realize this, too.

1 Daniel 3:16-18; Even If by Mercy Me

2 Take it to the Lord in Prayer by Joseph Scriven and Nolan Williams
3 Psalm 73:25
4 Matthew 19:14
5 Matthew 8:3 This exact phrase is only found 3 times, but similar phrases and the expression of his willing heart to
heal, help, and lay down his life are found everywhere.
6 See Luke 18:15-17, Matthew 18:3

7 See Hebrews 11:6, Matthew 9:22, Luke 17:19, Luke 18:42, and elsewhere
8 Ephesians 3:20