Season 20 Episode 12

For This We Have Jesus #RTTBROS #Nightlight

For This, We Have Jesus

A Prayer Guide for Parents Who Know They Are Not Enough

Sandy and I have discovered something about parenting that no one warns you about clearly enough: the problems your children face do not stay simple. They compound. They multiply. They become, in time, almost infinitely complex, and you are not infinite. You are very, very finite. You run out of answers. You run out of energy. Sometimes you run out of words entirely.

My Uncle Tommy had a saying for moments like that. Whenever life presented something too large for human hands to handle, he would lean back and say, quietly and with complete conviction: “For this, we have Jesus.” I have never found a better theology than that.

If there was ever an endeavor that required prayer, it is surely parenting. And if you have ever stood in the middle of your own living room, looking at the life of someone you love more than your own, feeling that desperate, hollow not enough feeling, welcome to my club. The membership is large. The dues are humility. And the only way through is on your knees.

“I didn’t have a role model in my home to teach me how to be a husband or a father. So I find myself coming up short in both, again and again. But I have learned that an honest prayer beats a confident mistake every time.”

— Gene Kissinger

I want to be honest with you the way I wish someone had been honest with me. I did not grow up with a man in my home who showed me what a husband looked like, or what a father did when things got hard. I have been learning on the job, and the job is harder than I ever imagined. I come up short. Not sometimes. Regularly. The grace of God is not a decoration in my house; it is load-bearing.

What I have found, slowly and imperfectly, is that prayer changes things, not always the circumstances, but always me. It changes what I see when I look at my children. It changes how long I can hold on. It changes the atmosphere of a home in ways I cannot fully explain but have absolutely witnessed.

Stormie Omartian’s book The Power of a Praying Parent gave me language and structure for something I desperately needed to do but did not know how to do well. Her central teaching is simple and liberating: you are not meant to fix your children. You are meant to bring them to God. Prayer is not your last resort after everything else fails. It is your first and most powerful act as a parent, a spiritual hedge built around a life you love but cannot fully protect.

The Prayer Guide

I built a prayer guide based on Omartian’s framework, one for every stage of a child’s life, from the first year through adulthood. My personal version has prayers written out for each of my own children and runs fifteen pages. That one stays private.

But this version, the one I’m sharing here, is a quick-start guide any parent can use. It gives you specific, scripture-rooted prayers for each stage of childhood and adolescence, drawn from the same principles that shaped my own journal. Use it as a starting point. Adapt it. Make it your own. Build something that fits your family.

One last thing before you go. There is a principle in scripture about the prayer of agreement, that when two or more come together and ask, something shifts. I believe that. So here is my offer, and I mean it with everything I have:

Will you agree with me in prayer for my children? I will agree with you in prayer for yours.

We are not enough. But He is. And for this, we have Jesus.

Here is the Link to "The Praying Parent's Quick Start Guide"

https://rttbros1.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-praying-parents-quick-start-guide.html?fbclid=IwdGRjcAQTE49jbGNrBBMTh2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHk5HzXGxSwFGpReLc6dPlZ67tu5mQqh1w5X8_SEaRymOAHg5yBpG1bMZuu9W_aem_o60h54cSn9WoHc9VzGprJA&m=1

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