Appendix 13. A Prayer for the Children

Parents do not begrudge the time they spend praying for their children. I too, of course, prayed a great deal for my children. I could not help praying over so many things I could not count them: their faith, their future, their behavior, their studies. But while I prayed, on the other hand I also scolded them, trying to raise them well by human wisdom, and, unable to give up my own ambitions, I took up the rod and wanted the children to understand my heart 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 must raise my children for them to be raised according to God’s will. One day, through prayer, I came to know how God wants parents to raise their children.

Put your child in my arms, and then pray…

If you hold your child in your own arms and pray because they are your child,

will you not see only the back of the child’s head?

A parent looking at the back of their child —

what prayer can they pray?

Isn’t it because you cannot read your child’s heart that you flare up,

and because you cannot see the child as a person that you do as you please?

Put the child in my arms, and then pray.

Then, because you pray seeing the child as a person,

you will not fail,

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

you will not be greedy,

and seeing me and the child together, rather than thinking this is your child,

you will think of them as a child entrusted to God,

and so you can pray an honest prayer.

I have entrusted the children to you;

keep it in mind that I have not given them to you.

Oh! So this is God’s heart… From then on I obeyed, and I raised my young children talking with them constantly. I respected the precious children God was holding in his arms, and I prayed that he would help them grow up to be people who take on the mission God has given them. I am lacking, so even though I tried, how could I have done everything well? But because I raised them turning back from my own ambitions, I think I raised the children as persons. The children began to pray on their own, calling God their Father, and began to pray with tears for our family and for their own future.

What I want to ask of parents is this: listen to what is inside your child. You must help your child know that they really are being treated as a person by their parents, and that there is always someone who will listen to them, so that they come to trust that they can simply say what they need instead of crying and whining. Make a point of looking for your child’s strengths rather than their weaknesses, and keep praising them. You must not attack your child, either. If you seize on the child’s words and respond with your feelings, rather than hearing what they mean, children close their hearts and retreat into their own world. Loving parents must make clear only what is right and wrong, and be patient.

I hope that you parents will not lose patience in the end and say, “I tried to do well by you, but seeing what you do, I just can’t stand it any more,” and then think, act or speak foolishly. If you approach your child slowly and consistently, with your eyes on their future, then even if the child is unhappy with your thoughts or advice right now, they will see your deep love and turn back.

Show your children your love, now. Go into your child’s room often and hold them tight. Even when you pass each other in the living room, hold them with love. When you walk down the street, always hold their hand and talk about happy things as you walk. I hope you will let your child know that even though they are little, you are asking them, who can read their mother’s heart and their father’s heart, for help; that you rely on them; and that you love them, and love them. When parents praise even small things, children try to find their own weaknesses and fix them. They cut back on their own pocket money, and even in a young heart a protective instinct rises, so that the first thing they want is to help their mother. And then they come to feel that they are someone the household truly needs. It is the same with faith in God: when children see their parents live a diligent life of faith and change for the better, they think that of course they too should live a good life of faith, and like their parents they will read the Bible and pray and try to be praised by their parents for having good faith.

Do you want your children to do well at their studies? Then you parents must first throw away a faith that is only a formality. If you pass on the living God to them rather than studies, your children will build a good relationship with God, receive wisdom and grow on their own. When a mother lets go of her ambitions, reads her child’s heart, treats the child as a person, and shows in her life restraint, letting go, forgiveness, lowliness and reliance on God alone, the children naturally grow up in the Lord. But you must never keep it up for a few days and then collapse. And you must not treat your child with your feelings and drive them by force. You must first build a good relationship between parent and child.

God set parents in place to stand in for God. Their mission is to pass on the heart of God in place of the God who cannot be seen. Children learn the love of the invisible God through their parents. Watching parents who truly love God, a child will slowly take their first steps and then go on ahead. That is why God wrote in the Ten Commandments that you must honor your father and mother. When children honor parents who pass on God and save souls, they are blessed.

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