A Prayer For My Children To Know God's Love | Christie Thomas
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When I don’t know how to answer my child’s questions, I pray this prayer for my children.
The question came out of nowhere.
“How do I know God exists when I can’t see him?” asked my four-year-old son.
My jaw dropped; I had never heard a young child ask such an existential question before.
I hemmed and hawed and finally came up with an answer, and later that evening I remained extra grateful for the verse we had been praying over him every night at bedtime.
A prayer for my children, right from the Bible:
Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
(Ephesians 3:17-19 NLT)
(This song comes to mind when I read this verse: listen to it as you read this prayer!)
This is my prayer for my children. Read on to find out what it means, and how I answered my son’s question that night!
May Christ make his home in your heart as you trust in him.
My prayer is that the relationship between Jesus and my son would be a partnership.
Christ’s job description is to make a home out of my son’s heart, and my son’s job description is simply to trust.
May your roots grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.
God’s love is central to WHO God is.
Without His love, all is lost. It is too easy to focus on the behaviors and attitudes of my son without laying him at the feet of God, where His extravagant love can change the hardened heart.
I pray that my son’s faith roots will be entrenched in God’s immense love so that when the strong winds of temptation and doubt begin to blow, he will stand.
May you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is.
God’s love
is as wide as His outstretched arms on the cross,
as long as the time from creation to salvation,
as high as the expanding universe
and as deep as our darkest depressions.
All God’s people ought to understand this truth, but many choose to brush it off. It’s boring, mundane, predictable. God’s love is the farthest thing from boring, mundane, or predictable, but we need His power to understand it.
We can’t even understand God’s love without God opening our hearts and minds; all is bound up in Him.
May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.
The deepest answer to my son’s question resides here:
I have experienced the love of Christ.
That is how I know God exists.
My prayer is that my children would also experience and recognize the love of Christ, even though it is impossible for their human hearts to truly grasp.
Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
This is the ultimate goal of this prayer:
that through
understanding and being rooted
in the love of Christ,
they would experience a life characterized by
completeness,
fullness,
and power.
I pray that they would learn to trust Him
no matter their circumstances
because they have a deep belief in God’s enveloping love.
I pray this verse over my children often, and keep a poster of this verse and several others hanging on the wall of my boys’ bedroom. These are all available as free printables through my 7-day Blessings Challenge. Sign up today to collect them all!
Other articles on praying for my children:
- Use this 10-day prayer challenge to learn to pray for your anxious child
- The easiest parenting habit with the biggest eternal impact.
- A prayer for your anxious child
This post was originally shared at The MOB Society.
