Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Proverbs 4:23
In the first article of this series "Pray Over Them" we discussed the importance of praying over your children. Now, we will take one verse at a time to focus on specific ways we can pray for our children.
In Proverbs, we are commanded to guard our hearts. I've been focusing on it personally for quite a while. Given as a commandment that is "above all else" puts the highest priority on it. It is not just something that we can complete, but rather a daily, even hourly, struggle to shepherd our heart away from sin.
The second half tells us that everything we do flows from our heart. Our daily interactions and conversations with our family, actions that we take (even in the small tasks), and also our thoughts. When we guard our hearts, it can shape everything we do throughout our day into God-fearing and Christ-honoring actions.
Now, why do we want to use this verse to pray for our children since it seems so personally applied? We first want to ask God to help us guard our own hearts that we would be Christ-like examples to our own children in order to lead them to His throne. But how can we specifically pray this verse for our children?
Pray that your children would learn to guard their hearts from all of the things they will learn every day, essentially watching the 'gate' to their heart and only allowing in what will produce an obedient heart. Pray that they will be able to assess everything they come across to know whether it will honor Jesus or not, and if it does not, that they will walk away from it.
Finally, pray that they would understand how important it is to guard their heart. That they would be aware that their heart's condition affects every interaction they have during the day. Pray that everything that flows from their heart would honor Christ!
Article written by Ashley Eason.
Add comment
Comments