Prayers to an Eternal God
What your prayers for tomorrow can teach you about today
I am reading To the Tenth Generation: God’s Heart for Your Family, Far into the Future (review and final thoughts to come once I complete it). The book is about how we can live our present life for the sake of our future family. I’m only a few chapters in but wanted to share something that I’ve already done as a result of starting the book.
In the book the authors discuss how we pray to an eternal God and because He is eternal our prayers to Him will live on long after we are gone. Our prayers for our family, for future generations, for this world, will live on. Thinking about that I wanted to think about my specific prayers for my future generations.
I sat down one morning and typed out everything that came to my mind and before I knew it I had typed three pages.
I typed things like
I pray that they will love God with all of their heart, all of their mind, all of their soul, and all of their strength.
I pray that they will love one another and remain close in relationship to one another.
I pray that they will esteem the Word of God and live as disciples of Christ.
I pray that they are grateful, that they are worshippers who delight in living for God.
I pray that they will contend for the faith, that they will live as living sacrifices before the Lord.
I pray that they are faithful unto death or until the Lord returns.
I pray that they do not faint in the day of adversity.
I pray that they will be slow to anger.
I pray that they will be bold and courageous for the Lord but display both with wisdom and love.
I pray that they will be faithful stewards of their time.
I pray for their work environments and that God will grant them wisdom and favor with man.
And it goes on and on and on. I prayed about every detail and facet of their lives that I could think of and will continue adding to the prayer. At some point I will give it to my children in hopes that they will give it to their children and continue to pass this prayer on. I also want to ask my husband to add his prayers as well so that we can deliver our children with our joint prayer.
But, the thing that sitting down to think about my prayer for future generations brought up for me is—Shunta, how well are you planting the seeds for each of these prayers in your children today?
Am I teaching my children to esteem God’s Word, for example?1 If I want future generations to hold God’s Word in high regard I begin that now with my children. Praying for the future made me think about today and how much more intention and mindfulness I can put into the seeds that I am planting.
The authors write,
Many years from now, when they [your children] are in their fifties and sixties and seventies, facing challenges we cannot even imagine, they will gain courage just by remembering you. They will even turn aside at times to be alone and quietly weep with gratitude, thinking of your love for Jesus, your reverence for the Bible, your loyalty to your church, your steady faithfulness to earn and provide and give and pray, your sacrificial services to them through the years, your hope in God through thick and thin. They’ll remember how you found significance in doing small things that didn’t matter to this world, but they mattered to God, like you matter to Him, like your family matters to Him. By His grace, your children will then hand down that same gift to their children, and on into the future, until it becomes your family’s generational story of what God can do through broken people who find their identify as children of the heavenly Father. And you know what? They might keep telling that story for a long time. Even to the tenth generation.
I share this to invite you to think about what your prayer is for the future of your family, whether it’s nieces and nephews or children of your own. I found a call to more intention to the seeds I plant today, in the every day. And for that I am grateful and so full of joy and hope and accountability!
Yes, I am. But I want to do an even better job at it!