by Pastor Jeff McCourt
Confession: One of my regrets as a dad is my lack of intentionality and consistency in making prayer and God’s Word more foundational to our family life.
Grace: Nevertheless, in spite of my lack in this area, I remember a specific season of God’s kindness to our family when we specifically leaned into specific prayer.
Our children were still young when the church I was serving entered into a 40-day prayer focus (ironically, considering my confession above, I’m pretty sure I helped write the prayer materials for families!). Among other prayer opportunities, we encouraged our families to identify a specific personal need to pray for over those 40 days, being diligent to bring that request to the throne of grace, and writing down how they saw the Lord answering.
Our family chose to pray about an acute need: new tires for our car. As a young family with 4 kids on a pastor’s salary, we hadn’t been able to save up for this need. To us, it seemed like an insurmountable amount of money. So we started praying for tires every night. In unexpected ways (including one of our missionaries who “randomly” felt led to give us $100!), the Lord provided enough money for tires by the end of our 40-day prayer focus. It was a powerful opportunity to “connect the dots” with our kids and to give glory to God for His provision.
Wherever you’re at infusing prayer and the Word into your family life, I want to encourage you to take full advantage of Prayer Week at CHBC, Jan. 8-15, 2023. This will be an opportunity to demonstrate – before your children and with your children – faith, hope, and dependence on our All-powerful, Ever-listening God (Psalm 121:2-4). The Lord can use this season of prayer in your family to connect the dots between faithful prayer and God’s faithfulness.