Relationships

A Different Kind of Back-To-School Prayer

Like many parents I have spent time over the summer praying for my child’s school year. As she enters a new school with all the trepidation associated with making new friends and getting used to new routines, I repeatedly petitioned God to provide her just the right teacher and classmates. My concern for her was understandable; she is growing up quickly but she is still my little girl, and I want this new experience to be a good one for her.

However, a few weeks ago as I was praying that God would give my child the best teacher as well as sweet friends, my heart was pricked with a pain of conviction. My prayers were fixated upon what would be best for her without much thought to the people that she would come into contact with. My child was not only going to a new school with her cares and concerns but she would be interacting with a teacher and with classmates that would have their own burdens to bear. Ostensibly she was going to school to learn, but regardless of the reason she is going somewhere, I want her to see any place that she is in as a place to display God’s love. I was concentrating on with whether the new school year would be a blessing for her – without bringing before God the prayer that she would be a blessing to others.

And so the aim of my prayers shifted. Not because my previous prayers were in error; it certainly makes sense to pray for your child’s well-being. However, if I want my child to develop an eternal mindset, it certainly seems reasonable that my prayers for her reflect the concerns of eternity. I concentrated these re-focused prayers in three areas:

My Kid’s Teacher

The angst that goes into finding out which teacher your child has been assigned is a scenario every parent understands. However, rarely do we think about the process from the teacher’s perspective. In less than 24 hours, names on a page become young people entrusted to their care – with their associated quirks and differences in abilities. A teacher’s job is not easy – and there are many students who make this job harder. Instead of simply praying that my kid would get the teacher that would be the best for her, I started praying that my child would be assigned the teacher to whom she could be the biggest blessing. I prayed that my daughter would be an encouragement and help to a teacher who is likely stressed while balancing a myriad of competing priorities. I asked that God would give my child the teacher who would not only appreciate her intellectual curiosity but who would be blessed by her sweet and caring spirit. My heart’s desire became not that my child would have the teacher with the best instructional methods or greatest classroom environment, but instead to have the teacher that will know Christ more fully because of the year spent interacting with our family.

My Kid’s Friends

As we all know from our own growing up experience, kids can be cruel. Therefore, it is tempting to focus my prayer for my child’s friends solely on whether they will be people who will show kindness and grace to her. However, I also know that there will be people that my child will play with who need the opportunity to laugh at her silly jokes and be blessed by her sensitive heart. In other words, there are kids who will become my kid’s friends not because it is God’s primary purpose that they will be a blessing to her – but because she will be a blessing to them. I pray that God gives me the grace to see who these friends are and that my child will, in her childlike way, show them the love of Christ.

My Kid’s Classmates

Although there will be individuals who my child will naturally get along with, there are some kids that my child might not be friends with but with whom she will come into contact. At every school, and in every classroom, there are kids who sit on the fringes. They may think or behave in ways that kids don’t quite understand, and without knowing any better how to handle it, they may be quickly ostracized, or worse, ridiculed. Instead of praying that my child would not find herself as one of the outcasts, my prayers became that she would find these kids. My petition has been that God would grant my daughter the eyes to see the people that are hurting and that she would reach out to them; that in a world full of sin and pain, she would be a light in their lives. You never know the difference that a smile or gracious word can make to a hurting child, and I pray that my kid would be the one to provide it.

Preparing My Heart

I didn’t know why I experienced the prompting to change the focus of my prayers a few weeks ago, but I now know that it was, at least in part, to prepare my heart. In the last few days we have learned more about what this school year will look like for my daughter, and it wasn’t what I expected. In His kindness, God had already begun the process of shifting my mindset to consider how He may want to use my child to bless others, rather than focusing solely on the blessings He has prepared for her. And even though the school year begins with more uncertainty than I originally anticipated, I can confidently still utter my back-to-school prayer. Because regardless of whether it is a great or challenging year for my kid, I pray that because of her, someone else’s year is blessed.

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Growth

Quick To Pray

There’s an old adage that God gave us two ears and one mouth because we are supposed to listen twice as much as we speak. As a general principle, this works. We can all probably attest to a time that we were too quick to open our mouths only to wish in retrospect that we had listened a little more. While many people have been accused of being a “chatterbox,” I have never heard of someone who over-listened.

However, there is one time that we should be quick to use our mouths and that is when it comes time to pray. In fact, when it comes to petitioning God we should be eager to bring Him our concerns, our thoughts, and our feelings. Too often we enthusiastically share what’s in our minds with everyone else, and never think to take time to pray through the situation beforehand.

I was reminded of this recently when my husband and I faced a challenging situation. I am the type of person who likes loose ends tied up and a comprehensive plan in place. However, this situation had dragged on for months. As I was preparing to talk to my husband about it yet again, I was reminded of some wisdom that a friend had shared. “Make sure you’ve prayed about your concerns at least as much as you talk about them.” Immediately I was convicted. I was jumping to formulate a plan but hadn’t sufficiently prayed for the people involved. I was quick to spout my wisdom without first bringing it to the One from Whom all wisdom comes.

So I prayed. With intention and with specificity I brought my concerns to God. And instead of checking off the box and then moving forward with what I thought was best, I waited. I didn’t even bring up the incident to my husband until later that day when he called to tell me that progress had been made. Without any direct intervening on my end, God had worked. The situation hadn’t changed in months, but on the very day that I was intentional in praying for everyone involved, things begin to take place. And because I waited rather than meddling, I could clearly see His hand and His grace.

This shouldn’t be taken as a promise that God will always give us an immediate answer to our prayers. But it is illustrative nonetheless and it helps demonstrate at least four benefits of being quick to pray.

In The Right Hands

When we bring our concerns to God first, we rightly give them to the One who can wrought change and orchestrate any situation for His Kingdom’s purposes. I had waited months for the situation to change, and it didn’t. No amount of my worry or concern brought us any closer to resolution. But God can. In His timing and in His ways, He can change circumstances to accomplish what He wills. When we pray we are compelled to recognize that and we are then less likely to think that we have any control over things we do not.

Refocused Hearts

When we pray first, it helps ensure that our hearts are aligned with His and that our desires mirror His own. This means that if and when we do talk about the situation we are doing so with God’s priorities in mind. It becomes less about getting our way and more about making sure that we are acting according to His.  When we share our stress with others, especially those that care the most about us, they are likely to take our side and want to contend for our desires. Praying first helps ensure that what we desire is what God desires. And it helps us to talk about the situation in a way that brings glory and honor to Him.

Protected Relationships

When we pray first, it reduces the chance that we will create unnecessary tension and divisiveness in our relationships because we will have His love for those in the situation and those with whom we share. Sharing our concerns with others involves them in the situation, whether they are directly a part of it or not.  This often means that they take on that which offends us and they seek to protect us. When restoration later occurs between us and the offending party, those that we share with may not be involved in our reconciliation. Therefore, they continue to think of the offending party in less-than-flattering terms.

Additionally, when we are eager to spill our thoughts we often say things thoughtlessly. We may hurt those that we love by “venting” to them in a way that demeans and dishonors them. Praying first helps protect our relationships because we are more likely to share in a mindful and loving way.

His Ways, Not Ours

When we pray first, we are more likely to see things from God’s perspective rather than our own. When we think about a situation, we tend to focus on how it affects us and our viewpoint is very limited. God, however, sees the big picture. Bringing our concerns to Him helps us remember that while we only see part of the equation, He sees it all. Realizing that His intentions may be different than our own, we can also trust that His purposes are for the best – not only for us but for all of His kids (Rom. 8:28).

Don’t Just Act, Wait

If you are anything like me, when you are upset or concerned about something you want to act. However acting rashly is rarely in our best interest. Instead, we need to bring those concerns to God and wait until our perspectives, our hearts, and our desires align with His. As we do so we may realize that we don’t need to act at all, but we do need to wait to see what He is going to do.

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