“In all these prayers for our children we seek your glory. Father, let your name be sanctified in our family. Let your kingdom come in our family. Let your will be done by us and our children as it is done by the angels in heaven.“

A Prayer That Parents May Offer for Their Children

O Lord our God, you are the God of the spirits of all mankind. All souls are yours. The souls of parents and the souls of their children are yours, and your grace is sufficient for both. You were our father’s God and we will exalt you. You are our children’s God, and so we ask you to fulfill your promises to us and our children. We recognize that you are a God in covenant with believers and their seed.

Lord, your good providence has built us up into a family. We thank you for the blessing of the children you have graciously given us. Make them a real blessing to us so that we may never be tempted to wish we had been written down as childless.

We are saddened when we think of the iniquity in which our children are conceived and born. We grieve over the corrupt nature which they inherit from us. But we thank you that there is a fountain opened for their cleansing from the pollution that goes all the way back to their origins. We thank you that they were born in the bonds of the covenant, and committed to you in baptism by covenantal oath. Thank you that they are born in your house and received as members of your earthly family.

They are committed to you by their baptism. We humbly plead with you to save them. Regenerate them so they can make it their own act to be confirmed in covenant with you. Claim them as your own so they may be presented as your precious jewels in that great final day.

Give them a good disposition of spirit and a good capacity of mind. Make them obedient and willing to receive instruction. Incline them early in their childhood to a godly lifestyle. Let them grow in wisdom and knowledge, and in favor with God and man. Let the rod of your chastening and ours drive out the foolishness that is bound up in the heart of the child. Save them from the vanity to which childhood and youth is subject.

We do not ask for the great things of this world for our children. But if it pleases you, give them good health and preserve them from severely harmful accidents. Feed them with food that is sufficient for them. Give them the special blessing of a life useful to your kingdom in this world.

Most importantly, pour out your Spirit on them. Let this greatest of blessings rest on our offspring so they may serve you in their generation. Let them find their chief pleasure in that best part of life which is living in closest fellowship with you. Let this blessing never be taken away from them.

Give us wisdom, meekness, tenderness and grace to bring them up in your fear and in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Help us to raise them up as obedient and respectful children. Teach us how to teach them the things of God suited to their level of understanding. Give us wisdom to know how to reprove, admonish, encourage and correct them in a right manner. Enable us to always set before them good examples of a life that is virtuous and deserving of praise from you. Give us success in promoting a lifestyle for them that pleases you. Help us train them up in the right way in which they should go, so that if they live to be old they will never depart from it.

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