Love Always Hopes, Never Stop Praying for Your Prodigal
It’s day two of Prodigal Prayer Week at the American Family Association and the prayer requests keep flooding in! For more info on Prodigal Prayer Week and how to submit your prayer request Click Here. Below is a special prayer specifically designed for parents to pray over their prodigal children. It was written by a parent of a prodigal. We invite you to join us in praying for restoration, transformation, and liberation in the mighty name of Jesus!
Below is a prayer for all of our children adapted from Stormie Omartian’s prayer. (See The Power of Praying for Your Adult Children by Stormie Omartian.)
Lord Jesus, I pray for our children that You would help them to recognize their need of You.
Don't let them love as though there is no reason for You to be in charge of their lives. Help them to see that the anti-God culture offers nothing lasting, but You, Jesus, offer everything. Don't let them become Your enemy by being a friend of the world.
I pray You would extinguish the lure of every seed from the world’s mind that has been sown in them so that it cannot grow and deceive them more. I pray that You would silence every voice that is not of You that speaks error to their hearts.
We long to know that our children are walking in Truth (3 John 4). If they have fallen prey to deceptive spirits, may Your Holy Spirit of truth set them free. Help them learn to love You more than they love the world and to realize that loving the world and following in the ways of the world is not profitable to their souls and their future (1 John 2:15-17).
We pray that our adult children will hate evil. Enable them to restrain their "feet from every evil way" so that they "may keep Your Word" and look to You to teach them the right way to live (Psalm 119:101). Protect and deliver them out of the hands of the wicked and may they not be companions of fools. May You aid them to stop walking in the counsel of the wicked, stop standing in the path of sinners, and stop sitting in the seat of scoffers.
May their delight be in the law of the Lord and may they meditate on it day and night (Psalm 1).
Disrupt the relationships that drive them away from You and help them to seek after You alone. May they never be lukewarm in relationship to You (Revelation 3:16), but may Your Word be like fire in their bones so that they grow weary of holding it in and stop resisting its pull on their hearts and minds (Jeremiah 20:9). May they never be satisfied with this life and think to themselves that they have need of nothing (Revelation 3:17). May they not have peace in their rebellion against Your Word, but rather learn to love and delight in Your Word (Psalm 119:92).
Help our children understand that You know their needs better than they do (Luke 12:29-30). Help them seek after you as their hiding place, their refuge, and their strong tower. Strengthen them to choose to keep Your commandments and depart from those who would lead or have led them astray (Psalm 119:115). You know their sins and where they have strayed from Your ways and truth. In mercy, Father, gently lead them home to you.
May we as parents walk closely with you, learn to walk in utter dependence on You, and walk in love towards them as a model that they may want to follow us as we follow You.
We pray this all in Jesus' name with great hope that You can do immeasurably more than we can think or imagine according to the mighty and glorious power that works within us.
To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever!
