Appendix 13. A Prayer for the Children

Parents spare no time in praying for their children. I, too, have prayed a great deal for mine. Their faith, their future, their conduct, their studies—there were truly countless matters I could not help but bring before God. Yet even as I prayed, I also scolded them, determined to raise them well by human wisdom; unable to give up my own ambitions, I took up the rod and wanted them to read my mind and do everything just right. Just as all parents worry because they do not know how to raise their children, I asked God how I should raise mine so that they would grow up according to his will. Then one day, through prayer, I came to understand how God wants parents to raise their children.

Place your child in my arms, and then pray…

If you hold your child in your own arms because the child is yours, and pray,

can you see anything but the back of their head?

When a parent looks only at the back of their child,

what prayer can they pray?

You lose your temper because you cannot fathom your child’s heart,

and is it not because you cannot see your child as a person that you do as you please?

Place your child in my arms, and pray.

Then, because you will pray seeing your child as a person,

you will not fail,

and because you will pray looking at me as I hold your child,

you will not grasp after your own desires,

and seeing me and your child together, rather than thinking, This is my child,

you will think, This is a child entrusted to God,

and so you can pray an honest prayer.

I have entrusted the children to you;

never forget that I have not given them to you.

Ah! So this is the heart of God… From then on I obeyed, raising my little ones through constant conversation. I honored these precious children whom God holds in his arms, and I prayed that he would raise them up to take up the calling God had given them. Weak as I am, how could I have done everything well, however hard I tried? But because I raised them while turning back from my own ambitions, I think I raised them as persons in their own right. The children began to pray on their own; they began to call God Father and to pray with tears for our family and for their own future.

What I would ask of parents is this: listen to what is inside your child. Help your child come to know that they truly are treated as a person by their parents and that there is always someone who listens to them, so that they come to trust that speaking up works better than crying and fussing. Look deliberately for your child’s strengths rather than their weaknesses, and keep praising them. Nor should you attack your child. If you seize on the tail end of what a child says and respond with emotion, instead of hearing what they mean, children close their hearts and retreat into a world of their own. Loving parents need only make right and wrong clear, and then be patient.

I hope no parent will run out of patience and say, “I tried to do right by you, but watching what you do, I just can’t stand it anymore,” or think, act, or speak foolishly. If you approach your child gradually and consistently, with an eye on their future, then even if they resent your thoughts or advice for now, they will see the depth of your love and turn around.

Show your children your love now. Go into their rooms often and hold them tight. When you pass each other in the living room, embrace them with love. When you walk down the street, always hold their hands and talk about happy things as you go. And I hope you will let them know that, little as they are, they read your heart, a mother’s heart, a father’s heart; that you turn to them for help and lean on them; that you love them and love them again. When parents praise even small things, children try to find their own faults and correct them. They may cut back on their pocket money on their own, and even in their young hearts a protective instinct stirs, so that the first thing they want is to help their mother. And then they come to feel that they are someone the family truly needs. Faith in God works the same way. When children see their parents walking earnestly with the Lord and being changed for the good, they think that they too ought to follow him well, and like their parents they read the Bible and pray, trying to earn their parents’ praise for having strong faith.

Do you want your children to do well in school? Then you parents must first cast off a faith that is mere form. Pass on the living God rather than schoolwork, and your children will build a close relationship with God, gain wisdom, and grow on their own. When a mother lays down her ambitions, reads her child’s heart, treats the child as a person, and shows a life of self-restraint, of giving things up, of forgiving, of humility, and of leaning on God alone, children grow naturally in the Lord. But you must never give up after a few days. Nor should you drive a child by force, dealing with them out of your own feelings. First you must build a good relationship between parent and child.

God set parents in place to stand in for him. Their calling is to convey the heart of the invisible God on his behalf. Through their parents, children learn the love of the God they cannot see. Watching parents who sincerely love God, a child slowly takes their first steps, and in time will go on ahead. That is why God wrote in the Ten Commandments that we are to honor our parents. When we honor parents who make God known and so save souls, we are blessed.

If you want to see your children blessed, I hope you will first humble yourselves before God, die to yourselves, and turn back from the road you were on. No child takes a dark road while watching parents follow the light of God. Children will run of their own accord so as not to lose sight of parents who carry a lamp through a dark world.