Loving Father, Equip fathers to be strong spiritual leaders in their homes. While it is one of the greatest responsibilities of Christian fathers, it is also among the most neglected. Many fathers struggle so much with leading themselves spiritually that they are not prepared to lead their families. Others may prioritize their own spiritual health, but lack the ability or confidence to lead anyone else.
Help fathers see how important their role is in shaping the spiritual health of their children. Children whose fathers worship with them are far more likely to continue attending church as adults, so lead dads to embrace the blessing of regular worship together and to take responsibility for leading their family to your house for worship. Make them aware of informal and unplanned opportunities to discuss your Word and their faith. Provide fathers with pastors and strong believing friends who can support them in their leadership. Move wives and children to encourage fathers in this area, and to cause their collective efforts to bear abundant fruit.
Loving Father, Thank you for the gift of daughters. All children are a blessing from your hand, but sons and daughters are each unique in their own ways. Daughters often display natural relational abilities and an empathy for others that you develop into a blessing to serve both families and society in general. They can exhibit both determination and a genuine sweetness in their demeanor that provides unique perspectives and approaches to responsibilities and tasks.
I pray that you provide daughters with strong fathers who love and protect them, and who welcome their hugs and affection so they know how to express their feelings and emotions appropriately. Lead fathers to raise them to be prudent and careful, and to be able to know how to defend themselves. Use fathers to model what a godly man looks like, so they have high standards and expectations in their relationships.
Bless daughters with mothers who foster a strong mother/daughter bond, establishing a beautiful relationship that will bring joy to the lives of both. Let mothers show them what godly confidence and drive look like. Use mothers to help their daughters discern healthy avenues along which to direct their determination. Teach them also what a blessing meekness and a submissive spirit can be through mothers who model it.
Through both parents, ensure that above all else, Christ is central in the home and in life, so that daughters may learn to know what unconditional love is, and love Christ and others deeply in return because of it.
Heavenly Father, Sundays are sacred. Satan knows this and tries to throw every excuse, hindrance, and obstacle in our way to keep us from gathering together around your Word. Parents with small children are in a season of life marked by the uphill challenges of bringing their little ones to your house for worship. So today I pray for them.
Help fathers and mothers to provide a united front in modeling a regular and consistent worship life for their children. When they are on the same page, they provide each other with the blessing of mutual encouragement and support. Reward their efforts by allowing them to see the fruit of their labors as your Spirit nurtures and grows the faith of their children. Let their children, too, see and experience the richness of regular worship. Lead them to appreciate the sacrifices their parents make to keep Jesus at the center of their lives. Provide struggling and single parents with a church family that welcomes them and finds delight in sharing the burdens of bringing up little ones in the shadow of the cross.
Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?
On the one hand, I don’t want to come across as insensitive to people who have struggled with this question; on the other, I have to be honest and share that it’s not a question that has ever weighed heavily on me. Why?
I have yet to meet any “good” people.
Now before you dismiss me as having a very low opinion of people in general, let me just say this: I have a very low opinion of people in general. There – glad we got that out of the way.
Let me at least explain why I hold that opinion. See, I have kids. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, and I think they’re the greatest! However, there’s something I notice about them that I also found to be true about my own childhood (and let’s be honest… my adulthood as well): they/we all need to be taught and trained how to do the right thing.
I haven’t had to teach my children how to lie. I haven’t had to teach them how to say mean things about people. I haven’t had to teach them to be disobedient to me or others in charge. I haven’t had to teach them how to get angry and hit each other. I haven’t had to teach them to be selfish. Somehow they have each had a good handle on how to do and to be all these things without a single how-to lesson.
However, I have had to teach them to tell the truth, to say kind things, to obey, to not lose their temper and keep their hands to themselves, and to think of others first. And I had to be taught all these things as well (and still need to to this day – I think that is why God tends to bless us with saints for spouses!).
Now to me, that says something. Why is there not at least one parent in this world who has had a different experience, whose child never required an ounce of discipline or correction because the child naturally knew only virtue and goodness? I’ve always found that to be rather curious.
So, while I don’t deny that people have carried out countless achievements that we might view as positive, good, noble – phenomenal even – contributions to society, such things don’t whitewash the inherent reality that each of us starts out as something rotten, and throughout our lives we strive to be… less rotten.
That is why I have such a high opinion of God. And, that is why I have always struggled with a different question than the one originally raised: Why does God allow good things to happen to bad people?
He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.”
(Psalm 103:10 NIV)
I personally think that’s pretty good news. Wouldn’t you agree?
