Family

Dear Heavenly Father,

I am so very excited and extremely freaked out! You have blessed us with a son!!!! I can’t wait to meet him in August. You are entrusting a helpless baby with no knowledge or experience of the wretched world or your beauty to our care.

I’m typing this prayer with tears bursting from my eyeball sockets… in awe of you, overpowered by the responsibility you’ve entrusted to us, reverent of your sovereignty, and marveling at your creation.

Seeing our child wiggling around today in the ultrasound session was an unique and life-changing experience. What I’ve witnessed in this process so far is such a testament to your existence, creativity, power, and vastness. You have created LIFE in my wife! Only you have the power to create LIFE. Wow.

I am curious, excited, and anxious about the child you are forming in my precious wife’s womb.  Protect his body and mind as they grow and mature. I earnestly pray this boy is born healthfully. My biggest fear is losing him. My second biggest fear is having a son born with a deep physical or mental ailment. If I’m honest, the second fear is often my primary fear. Help us worship you and be thankful for your provision regardless of if our fears come to fruition. You are bigger than that. You are bigger than us. You are God.

Forgive me for my fears and anxieties. Please continue growing my excitement and trust in you in whatever happens and however you choose to bless us. Help me believe that. Much more importantly, help me live that in words, thoughts, and actions.

By your grace alone, help us be the parents you have called us to be. Help us model joy in and service of Christ, each other, your Church, and others.

I pray with every ounce of my body and spirit that this child meets you in a profound way as a young boy, and is never drawn away. They he is captivated by your glory, Son, creation, the Bible… Your people, and your commission. I hope he genuinely confesses faith in and allegiance to you as a young boy. I ask for miraculously profound faith in the death and resurrection of the crucified Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Savior of humanity. I pray his life is a testimony of a passionate and faithful soldier and servant of the risen Christ.

Please protect him from the sordidly pathetic Satan. The enemy is not welcome in our family or home. The enemy is fighting in a battle that has been over since the beginning of creation when you decided to come reconcile humanity to you through Christ. You have provided protection through the blood Christ… with a dependent, trusting, and humble heart… I run to your provision of protection.

Please provide him with good friends who know and love you. Help him be a shining light of your love as he encounters the darkness of the world. Help him trust you. Help him trust the wisdom and eternal Truth of Scripture.

Help him trust your commands over experiencing the sin of a fallen world. In moments where He ignores your divine design and sins… help him confess, repent, be fortified by Holy Spirit and Christian brothers, and have faith in the the complete provision of forgiveness and grace offered only in Jesus.

Give him wisdom and discernment in pursuing your plans and purposes for how he will glorify you in life… in school, in relationships, in occupations, when dating, and by your grace, as a husband, father, and grandpa.

Thank you for the church you’ve provided to our family… where we have the privilege of worshiping you and serving you with others. Our church is such a blessing. Please protect the leadership at our church and their families from the enemy. Please give them wisdom, discernment, passion, and humility to lead us and serve you and your people. Please continue growing their love and knowledge of you… and let that explode from within our church into the people, community and world.

Grow our appreciation and service of the church Christ died for… that He commissioned to reflect His glory, to preach and live the Good News to all the nations, to care for communities, and to pass on from generation to generation as a testament to Jesus. Your church is central to the great commission. Active engaged participation is not just our responsibility, but your commandment, and our privilege.

Help us serve our small group well. Thank you that our child will grow up in Christian community from birth… on day zero, our child will be around a flock of your seekers and followers.  Holy moly… that is amazing. Our child is being born into a spiritual family that is a community of people earnestly seeking you. Praise you for that. That is yet another overwhelming blessing.

I get worried about what kind of father I may be. The task and responsibility are overwhelming. Help me prioritize according to your design and the Holy Scriptures you have provided. Thank you for providing a book testifying to Christ and your design in creation of man and woman. Continue growing me in the grace and knowledge of Jesus for your glory.

I often feel unworthy of the precious wife you have provided. I adore her. Help me not idolize her. Help me worship you alone. Help me serve her. Help me love her ever so deeply. Grow our friendship and care for each other. Help me increase you. Help me glorify you in how I think about, talk about, touch, serve, protect, and care for her. Protect my mind, eyes, and heart from the enemy who desires to separate me from you and my wife. Please continue growing me into the husband you call me to be.

Thank you for her caring, compassionate, and tender heart. Thank you for her love of you. Thank you for the time she spends with you and in your word.  Thank you for the motherly instincts and skills that you have absolutely blessed her with.

Help my son see in me a father who serves, cherishes, honors, dates, respects, loves, and protects his mother.

I know my wife gets scared about the pain of childbirth. Please give her strength. Please protect her body during her pregnancy. While the pains of childbearing are a curse… pregnancy and children are a blessing. Help us cherish your blessing. Help her learn about you and relish the experience you uniquely created for and entrusted to women. If not for entrusting childbirth to women, humanity would surely have been short-lived.

My wife is scared about how physically demanding the next few years will be. As you know, she is quickly drained, feels sick, and get horribly exhausted when she does not get a full nights rest. I ask for a miracle in preparing her body for the sleepless nights required to nurse and care for a little baby.

Help me selflessly serve and pray for my wife. Help me go overboard in caring for and serving her. Give me energy to tirelessly serve her beyond my capacity. Grow my capacity to be more in line with yours.

Please give my wife’s and my friends and family wisdom on when to offer advice and wisdom. Please also help my wife and I humbly and excitedly receive the wisdom you provide through the wonderful community with which you have surrounded us. Help them give good advice!

As people attempt to push ungodly advice and opinions about our family’s decisions… help us be gracious. Help me not yield to anger. Help my wife not yield to insecurity. Help us use those opportunities to glorify you in action, words, or lack thereof when fitting and appropriate.

When moments of frustration, impatience, disrespect, dishonor, pain and everything else that comes to parenting arise… help us be thankful for the child-blessing we asked for… and remember your provision of the blessing… as a blessing and answer to prayer. 

Please give us wisdom and discernment for the 1000s of decisions required for parenting… from decisions over the next few months, before we meet him… to providing counsel on colleges and life in his adulthood. Help us run to you for answers and lean on the community you have provided to us. Grow our faith in you. Help us teach him well.

Please give my wife and I opportunities and courage to verbally share about our faith in you and the testimony of Christ with others… so our son will see parents that courageously and joyfully share the Gospel. Help our actions back up our words.

Thank you for how you have financially provided to our family. Thank you for health insurance. Thank you for the warm home. Thank you for the extra room. Help us be thankful, but not dependent on those things. Help us not take your provision for granted, not worship it, and to steward it for your glory and kingdom. I also unabashedly ask for a plethora of MORE resources that can be used for multiplying and glorifying your name. Please continue cultivating in us hearts of thanksgiving and gratitude.

We are yours. I am yours. I offer you all of me to serve you and my family well. All we have is on loan from you… whereby you alone provide the intellect, wisdom and opportunity to multiply it for your glory.

Help my wife and I serve and honor you with our lives and worship. Help us be unified in how we model you to our son. Give us strength and wisdom in how we discipline him.

Our family is yours. We offer you our decisions and futures. We are your missionaries and disciples.

We live for your glory, and worship you alone.

I pray these things in desperation, with my face and knees on the ground at the foot of the bloodied cross, and the feet of your beloved, risen, Son.

In Jesus’ name alone,

Amen.