Tag: family

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

adbLeave a comment

For Dealing with Difficult Family Members

Loving Father,
Family relationships have the potential to be among the most treasured connections we have, as well as some of the most challenging. Since we generally tend to be as close to our family as we are to anyone else, that tight bond can amplify both the best and the worst of any relationships. Give me the awareness to recognize family members who manipulate the shared bond and twist it to induce guilt or shame on other family members. Grant me patience with difficult family members, as well as the courage to lovingly call them out whenever necessary. Let me be unafraid to call believing family members to repentance when they have sinned, and also unashamed to evangelize unbelieving family members. While I cannot change or control the behavior of my biological family, I am responsible for how I respond to them and handle them. Let me do so with a balance of firmness and grace, seeking always to do what is in the best interest of their eternal good.  

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

adbLeave a comment

To Eagerly Serve My Home

Selfless Savior,
Just as you gave Adam the responsibility to lead his wife and family in the home, so you call all men to do the same. But, since we cannot possibly measure up to this calling on our own, we need you to lead us and equip us. For any man to lead successfully in his home, he must first be willing to be led by you. 

When men see their marriage, family, or home as something from which they need to escape or avoid, correct their view. Whatever challenges they face in any of those situations, you have also placed them there to address those issues and take the lead in working through them, rather than ignore them. Bring repentance where needed, and gospel restoration to redirect and strengthen them for the road ahead. Be their guardian and guide, providing an example of what sacrificial service for others looks like, and also compelling them by your grace to imitate you in their marriage and home. Use them to build strong and sturdy homes, solidly grounded on the powerful promises of your Word. 

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

adbLeave a comment

For Families with Little Ones in Worship

Heavenly Father,
Sundays are sacred. Jesus told his disciples to let the little children come to him. Therefore, I thank you for young parents and families who faithfully attend worship. That season of life can be filled with more than enough hassle and headaches that would make it easy to stay home. Those parents recognize not only their own spiritual needs, but also the needs of their children. They are establishing healthy worship habits that can serve to bless their children for a lifetime.

When their Saturday evenings or Sunday mornings are filled with stress and frustration, and the pull to just stay home is strong, let your Spirit provide the determination they need to stay the course. And, when they do, and little ones are out of sorts or unsettled during worship, give other worshipers an extra measure of patience, and remind them how good and healthy it is to have little ones together in worship. At the same time, give parents the discernment to recognize when circumstances call for them to take a break if little ones have become a distraction for other worshipers, while also compelling other worshipers to lend a helping hand whenever possible. When we view worship not just as an opportunity to be served, but to serve, we’ll gladly welcome all worshipers – including children – and rejoice that they are present. 

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

adbLeave a comment

For the Gift of Mothers

Heavenly Father,
Sundays are sacred. I have countless reasons for which to give you thanks, and on this Mother’s Day, I give you thanks for mothers and the irreplaceable role they play in families and homes. Of all the ways you could have chosen to bring up children, in your divine wisdom you established families, providing mothers to love and nurture their children. Thank you especially for mothers who prioritize bringing their children to Jesus. 

While no mother is perfect, they so often model selfless sacrifice in putting their children first. They reflect our Good Shepherd when they display gentle tenderness and patience. And, just as our Good Shepherd does, mothers lovingly discipline and correct their little ones, both to show them the right way and also to protect them from future harm. You have established motherhood as one of the most noble callings of all. Lead our society to uphold it as such, and see that mothers are respected and honored among us. Richly bless their labors of love, encouraging them with supportive husbands and rewarding them with obedient children who are a delight to raise.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

adbLeave a comment

For the People You’ve Placed in My Life

Triune God,
When I think of all the people you have placed in my life, I am grateful. Over time, so many others have left their mark in my life. Still today, so many surround me with encouragement, support, and direction, as well as correction and rebuke when necessary. When I consider the impact others have had in my life and the roles they have played, it is quite clear that your intent was never for our walk of faith to be one lived and carried out in isolation. I thank you for those who bless and challenge me in so many ways, and I ask you to bless them in return.

Bless my biological family and my church family. Bless my friends in general, both far-away and nearby, and especially those with whom I share tighter bonds and closer connections. Bless my neighbors and coworkers. Bless my online connections, and bless those right now whom you plan to bring into my life at some point in the future. Continue to weave your blessings into my life and into the lives of many through all of these interconnected relationships.  

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

adbLeave a comment

For the Witness of Believing Homes

God the Father,
Wherever believing families are spiritually strong and healthy, use them as beacons of light to model on a small scale the blessings of belonging to the body of Christ. Let the world see in our homes the best qualities of the Christian faith in practice. Let love and forgiveness flourish. Allow patience and humility to abound.

Through Christian families, display a setting wherein truth is treasured and care and support are present in great measure. Where discipline is lovingly practiced in families, let those children embody what it looks like to honor and respect those in authority. Finally, by whatever means possible, allow such sanctified living within believing homes to serve as a witness to the gospel, so that it may be clearly known that any good work done in believing homes is a testament to your power and grace.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

adbLeave a comment

For Children in the Home

Lord God,
Children are a gift from your gracious hand. When you directed Adam & Eve to multiply and fill the earth, you attached your blessing to homes where children are present. Help us always to remember this and to thank you for the undeserved gift of children.

When couples who desire children struggle to conceive, use that season of life to provide them with patience and deepen their trust in your timing and your path for them. When children are born into broken homes, surround them with friends and extended family to provide them with support and nurture. Through the playful innocence of children, bring joy and delight into homes. As they grow, enable them to do so in step with your Spirit, producing abundant fruits of faith in them. Mold and shape sons and daughters to contribute in meaningful ways to the family while they learn the value of obedience, honor, and respect.

In a world filled with so many dark and dangerous forces at work, guard and protect the hearts and minds of children and provide them with positive and pure influences. Use little ones to remind adults what a child-like trust looks like, that we might remember to follow their example in how we place our trust in you. 

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

adbLeave a comment

For Home & Family

Loving Father,
Through Adam & Eve you established the first marriage and home. As a result of the fall, homes have been crumbling apart ever since Adam & Eve. Your plan called for the home to be a wellspring of blessing for all, but too often we see trauma and tragedy flow from it instead. Marriage is minimized or mocked, parenting is neglected, and children are either idolized on one extreme or ignored on the other.

Forgive us for allowing our homes and the families inside them to be such poor reflections of what you intended them to be. Guide us along paths that will successfully restore the home to a place of protection, nurture, and loving, patient discipline. Allow commitment – not fleeting feelings – to be the anchor of marriages. Equip parents to love their children by teaching them to obey and respect those in authority. Bind siblings together through their special bond to build up and encourage each other. Lead families to celebrate milestones together, to be there for each other, and to be a force for exemplary good in their neighborhoods and communities. For all of this to happen, Lord, let your Word dwell richly in as many homes as possible. 

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

Follow with Family

adbLeave a comment

(Ephesians 5:21-6:4)

On my last sermon post we were reminded of the importance of embracing that followership is not a solo act. As much as it might feel like it at times, as Moses experienced, we aren’t ever actually following Jesus alone. Following Jesus is done together, and our own followership is better off when we not only remember that, but also take advantage of it. That, by God’s design, is one of the great blessings of belonging to a local congregation, of having a community of believers to follow together.

But – also by God’s design – your church family isn’t even intended to be your first line of defense or system of support in following Jesus. That role belongs to your family. And, while our family makeup may vary widely from one person to the next – married or single, blended or traditional, children or no children, adopted or biological, etc. – these words from Ephesians speak to each of us wherever we’re at. That’s because in one role or another, we all belong to family. Furthermore, strong families that are faithfully following Jesus together are going to have an impact that stretches well beyond the home and into the community.

In other words, I am not just blessed by my own family following Jesus; I am blessed when yours does as well. Together, we can collectively raise the bar in our community and absolutely extend Christ’s Kingdom in the process. Let’s give our focus and attention to what that looks like, and commit to raising the bar of followership in our homes.

As we do, we encounter an unexpected plot twist, the kind of surprise that leaves our jaws open and our eyes widened. We didn’t see it coming. We couldn’t have anticipated it. It catches us completely off guard and totally changes our perception of everything.

If this section of Scripture has not yet hit you in that way, I pray that it does this time. I hope that the five words we find tucked inside these verses will leave you with a totally different perception.

Of what? Not just of marriage, but also of the church. Those five words are at the start of verse 32: “This is a profound mystery…” And, following those words are the unexpected twist that we didn’t see coming: “but I am talking about Christ and the church.” 

For those to sink in, we need to step back and revisit what it is we think Paul is writing about here. That would seem pretty obvious, wouldn’t it, just on the basis of the titles leading verses 22 and 25 – “wives” and “husbands.” OK, we’re obviously talking about families, and more specifically, the foundation of family – marriage, right? 

No. Not just marriage, anyway. Something much more profound – a mystery actually. But one that marriage helps us understand: the relationship that Christ has with the church, the connection every believer has with Jesus.

So marriage is much more than just bringing a man and a woman together to start a family; marriage helps us better understand the whole gospel that is the basis of our relationship to Christ. And our relationship to Christ, in turn, helps us better understand the blessing of marriage.

It all begins with a word that everybody loves to hate: the word “submit.” It’s a word that makes us bristle and cringe. No fallen sinner is born into this fallen world immediately seeking to place himself beneath someone else, which is what it means to submit. It’s not natural. The rebel in me refuses to envision a life that is better off when someone else tells me what to do or calls the shots!  

If we’re ever going to shift our perception of that word, it will only ever happen by linking it inseparably with the last word in the same verse: “Christ.” “Submit” and “Christ” must always remain connected, because submitting to Christ is nothing more than a faith that knows and needs what Jesus has done for us. What is that? Paul spells it out so beautifully: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (v.25-27). 

Paul helps us grasp the cleansing work of Christ by using the familiar picture of stain removal. What Jesus did for us is successfully manage to permanently remove that stain that we thought was never in a million years going to come out, no matter what trick we tried. The stain is completely gone – no remaining discoloration, not a trace of it left! 

To submit to Christ is to lay claim to everything he has done to leave me blameless and blemish-free, to have every stain of sin scrubbed out, to have every wrong washed away, and to replace my unholiness with his holiness. See how different that word submit is when connected to Christ – it makes all the difference in the world. 

Without a right understanding of it, the family fails to function as God intended. Instead of the training ground God intended family to be, it becomes a dumping ground. Husbands will twist their leadership role into a self-serving dictatorship. Wives will never see how God intends to bless them through the leadership of their husband and will continually push back against it. Children will never see how God intends to bless them through boundary-setting parents who care enough to discipline them and nurture them with law and gospel, while modeling grace in abundance. These things will be foreign to the home that does not grasp the infinite blessings – literally, by the way – of submitting to Christ. It is everything. 

When we make the connection that submission to Christ has nothing but our best interest in mind, then we can embrace the roles God has given us within the family. Now if we followed Paul chronologically in these verses, we’d start with the wives, then move on to the husbands, and wrap up with the children. But we’re going to start with the role that is foundational to all others: the husband’s role. Why does this matter? Without sounding overdramatic, everything else hinges on how the husband carries out his role. The home in which the husband succeeds in carrying out the essential role God called him to is a home that will thrive. In that home, through the sacrificial leadership of the husband, a wife and children will find the service, security and support they crave to carry out their respective roles. 

To emphasize this, I need to make a rather blunt statement: contrary to what our culture communicates, men and women are not equal.

Now that I have your attention, allow me to clarify. Here’s where they are equals. Though not there yet, men and women should be equals in terms of wage equality – whichever sex is getting the job done should be paid on the basis of job performance and not on the basis of biological sex. Men and women are equals in terms of the blessings they bring to a marriage and to the family. Men and women are equals in terms of sinner/saint status: we are sinners who need a Savior. Men and women are equals in terms of being on the receiving end of God’s love and mercy.

But where mean and women are not the same is in regard to the role and responsibility that God has given to each. Equals can have different roles. Different. Not superior and inferior. Not greater and lesser. Not demanding and demeaning. Just different. 

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord” (v.22). “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church…” (v.25). “Children, obey your parents in the Lord…” (6:1). If we were just talking about husbands and wives and children as we address marriage and family, it would be one thing. But Christians are never just talking about husbands and wives, marriage and family; we’re always talking about Jesus.

So when we talk about the roles God has given to husbands, we’re doing so in relation to Jesus. When we talk about the roles God has given to wives, we’re doing so in relation so Jesus. When we’re talking about the roles God has given to children, we’re doing so in relation to Jesus. Paul punctuates that point in these verses by anchoring the respective responsibilities of each family member to Jesus! Whenever Paul lays out what we are to be doing within the family, every time he does so with respect to our faith in Jesus! We’re never “just” serving family, but always following and serving Jesus as we do so!

Consider why we are drawn to Jesus when our eyes have been opened to the Bible’s teaching of law and gospel, that we sin and need saving. Are we drawn to Jesus because of what he demands of us or because of what he had done for us? Does Jesus appeal to us because of the obedient life he demands from us or because of the innocent life he gave for us? There is no discussion or debate – we willingly follow Jesus and submit to him because of what he did for us. And both husbands and wives then carry out their respective roles as submissive head and submissive helper, not because the spouse has earned it by perfectly carrying out their role, but because Jesus did. We submissively serve our family because Jesus submissively served us.

Another way of saying it? As we focus on our roles within the family, we aren’t focusing on what the other family members are or aren’t doing to determine how we’ll carry out our roles. In fact, we aren’t even focusing on grading ourselves in carrying out our respective roles. No, we’re focusing on how perfectly and beautifully Jesus carried out his role for all of us, freeing us to find joy – not drudgery – in our respective roles, as we follow Jesus with and through our family. 

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

adbLeave a comment

For Families

Loving Father,
You have established the family to be a blessing – a blessing that extends well beyond the walls of a home, into communities and societies. Since healthy families begin with strong marriages, thank you for bringing husbands and wives together and binding them in dedicated commitment to each other and to you. Fill them with the grace to love and forgive each other unconditionally. 

Where you have granted the gift of children, guide parents to raise them under the shadow of the cross and to model for them what a love for you and your Word looks like. Lead them to exercise godly discipline always in love, that you might produce righteousness in and through their children. Grant children a willing spirit of obedience and help them to respect their parents. Make the extended family to be a system of support and encouragement as well, providing nurture and direction as needed. 

While all homes are broken to some degree by sin, some struggle with unique challenges. Bring your healing especially into those homes, so that even when families are dysfunctional, your grace might abound and bring blessing. 

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.