How are you praying for the next generation?
Over the past several months we are concentrating our prayers on the larger purposes of God for our children, our grandchildren, the children in our church, and the children we have the opportunity to teach--the kind of prayers that we are confident align with the will of God and can be assured of His answers. For example, right now, the church where I serve needs about 90 more workers to volunteer in the next two weeks. Certainly we should not hesitate to ask God for those 90 workers, but we want to concentrate our prayers on larger purposes for which those workers are needed. The challenge for us has been to “seek first” these larger purposes for our children and trust God that all the other things (like the 90 workers) will be provided. In my prayer at the Truth78 inauguration event this past April, I attempted to pray a “big and bold” prayer for the next generation. We are passing that prayer on to you in the hope that it will encourage you in your prayer for the children the Lord has brought into your life as well as children in your community and in communities around the world.
Lord, I pray that the truth that has been entrusted to us and the lessons we have learned will not be hidden from the next generation. Would you grant us every grace we need to make known to our children, even the children yet unborn, the path that leads to life?
Make us a generation of parents and educators and pastors and resource developers and publishers and writers and translators and supporters and partners who will teach them your ways and how to walk according to the truth, so that they might set their hope and confidence in you and not forget your works.
Give to our children, and to their children, souls that are anchored in heaven. Sustain in them a deep and substantial assurance of things hoped for like Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Moses and Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah and David and Samuel and the prophets and all the saints who, through faith, obtained the promise.
Turn the hearts of the next generations away from the deceptive promises of sin toward the all-satisfying promises of God, who swears by himself, that they might be strong and confident and secure and ready and bold to lay down their lives for the sake of the ministry and the glory of God.
May our children live as sojourners who desire you, and all that you have promised, more than they desire money, more than sex, more than power, more than popularity, more than anything else. Give them faith to be strong and faith to be weak. Faith to be married and faith to be single. Faith to have children and faith to be childless. Faith to be wealthy and faith to be poor. Give them faith—that can stand even when crisis comes and when tragedy strikes.
May they never lose sight of the reality that You are better than what life can give them now, and better than what death can take from them later. Give them faith to suffer willingly as they await something better than what this earth can offer. May their hunger for the superior worth of our glorious God be so great that bridges are burned to a hundred sins and a hundred fears.
May they yield to you as a father who disciplines those He loves and who comes to us painfully and mysteriously through the hostility of sinful adversaries and the natural disasters of a fallen world. Make them submissive to your sovereign, fatherly care and may they not grow weary or lose heart.
Help them lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles so that they can run the race that you have set before them, holding fast to hope—and holding firm their confidence until that day when your Kingdom comes in all its glory, and truth once and for all triumphs over sin and death and mourning and tears and all that hinders the everlasting joy that is ours through Jesus Christ.
About the author: David Michael is a co-founder of Truth78. In April, 2014, David was called to serve as the Pastor for Next Generations at College Park Church in Indianapolis. For 28 years (1986-2013) David served under the shepherding ministry of John Piper; the last 16 years as the Pastor for Parenting and Family Discipleship. He and his wife, Sally, have two daughters and three grandchildren.
