…And Especially Your Children

“Let your kindness be known to all people.”  – Philippians 4:5

This passage is where Pastor had us first open our Bibles this morning to begin our “Back to School Prayer” message.   He continued…

“and especially your children.”

 

So, let your kindness be known to all people, but, most importantly, your children.  As a teacher, this spoke to me greatly.  Whether or not you have your own children, we are  surrounded by their little faces, within our circle of family and friends, in outside activities, in our workplaces, we are constantly in contact.   We are always being watched, and we are actively shaping the minds of our future leaders and world changers.

Pastor spoke of that tired story we tend to hear a lot these days within the school system, “well, we can’t do that because they have removed God, or prayer from our schools.”  He quickly shot that down with the reminder that we, as teachers and faculty, cannot have that taken away from us.   We have the power and authority to pray for our students without any consent forms.  And we should be doing it, daily.

He broke this all down into some specific prayers that we can easily pray each day, and I felt compelled to share those with you.

Number one:  Prayer of Protection.   “No harm, no evil, no damage can come near myself or these children.”    This prayer pertains not only to our students while they are at school, but, as they are riding the bus to and from, as they are home with their families, and so on.

Number two: Prayer of Comprehension.  “Thank you that these kids have the mind of Christ, therefore they can comprehend and make wonderful choices.”

Number three: Prayer for Favor.   “God, I pray that my kids will excel in all their studies, that their scores will be higher than all the others.  I pray that they are circled with friends, and that they are highly favored.”

We could pray these three simple prayers as soon as our eyes open in the morning, while we are brushing our teeth, or driving to work, or the moment we walk into our classroom.  And not only over the kids, but over ourselves.

Our students live in a scary world.  We have children who are scared to come to school because they feel unsafe, or unpopular, or uneducated.  Maybe they are lacking the support system of someone constantly encouraging them.  “You are smart, you are capable, you are noticed.”   It can be so simple, and so life changing.

We as teachers, and educators, have to do better.  Be better.  And make sure that prayer is never truly taken away from our kids.   These kiddos we spend our days with are not a coincidence, but are in our lives due to divine purpose.

Today as my church took out the extra time to pray these prayers for all of our kids, and our teachers, my heart and my eyes swelled.   Someone standing behind me approached me afterwards and said, “as I touched you today during prayer, I felt a spark and an energy so intense I almost had to move my hand, you are truly blessed and were made for this.”    Talk about the water works.

Life is hard sometimes, and we let a lot of ugly get in the way.    But, the future of the world is in our hands, with these kids.  Let us never forget to nurture and take care of them, starting with prayer.