Keeping A Prayer Journal

When our first child was still a baby, my mentor suggested I ask the Spirit to give me a verse to pray over him. As I considered this, Deuteronomy 6v5 came to mind.

“ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

This, more than anything else, is what I hoped for my son. I knew if he grew up to love God with all-in passion everything else would fall into place. I prayed as I rocked him to sleep, when I comforted him, when he woke up first thing in the morning full of joyous energy. As each of our other children were born, this became my prayer for them too. 

I soon learned that praying Scripture over my children brought me peace and focus. As they grew older, I started to jot down other verses to pray over our them. When I read my Bible or listened to a teaching, it seemed as if the Spirit of God would nudge me, “Pray this!” I’d scribble it in my prayer journal and pray as I worked, as I took my morning walk, and as I tucked them into bed. 

Verses like Jeremiah 32v40: “I will put a desire in their hearts to worship Me, and they will never leave me.” 

Or Isaiah 46:3,4: ‘I created you and have cared for you since before you were born. I will be your God throughout your lifetime—until your hair is white with age. I made you and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you.”

I’d grab hold of that bit of gold and ask it for each of our four. I knew full well that children are born with a choice whether or not they follow God. Yet I sensed the Father urging me to pray His will and mine. After reading Hosea 2v14 I asked Him to send His Spirit to allure John Mark and Rebekah and Elizabeth and Matthew to Himself, to speak tenderly to them in a way that they could hear.  

My kids grew up knowing I was praying for them. That’s the one thing I knew I could do. I wouldn’t always be patient, or memorize Scripture with them like I knew I ought to— but I could pray. 

Later when my kids were older, I started writing down in a notebook all the Scriptures I was praying for my children. It became a catch all for what I was praying  and certain Scriptures that related to my kids in general.  But it was also, at times, where I wrote down particular needs for one of my kids who needed a specific touch from God in an area of their lives. 

Now I read back in that notebook and cherish the memories of those days of coming to the Father with real, sometimes urgent needs, and finding His answers to my desperate prayers. I only wish I’d started earlier.

That’s what a Parent’s Prayer Journal is for. 

It accomplishes two really important things:

1. It keeps you alert and listening to the Spirit about your children.

Instead of going about the daily business of parenting oblivious until some need hits you full in the face, you’re listening every day for what God already knows is ahead.

2. It serves as a reminder of God’s faithfulness to help you when you cry out for wisdom.

For those times when we think our needs are too big, too impossible for God to answer, we remember that He’s shown His involvement in their lives— and ours— through all the ups and downs of real life.

3. It begins to build your children’s trust in a God who hears and answers prayer.

When your teenager questions God because life isn’t going as they think it should, you have a thick journal full of evidence of God’s faithfulness from the moment they were born— their own life stories to remind them that He has never stopped loving and caring for them.

Can I just urge you to start this right now? Make your own prayer lists, jot down Scriptures you hope your children will hold tight to, pray with the Spirit because when it comes to building a house…

Prayer is like putting the roof on to protect them from the rain we know is coming.

- Diane, with the Intentional Parents team