No matter how your school year started, it probably wasn’t normal. For some, there was no need to rush to catch a bus or carpool or fuss about dress codes or school uniforms. For others, your dining room table looks more like a tech startup than a family gathering place.
Even for those whose kids were able to attend school in person, things haven’t been normal. This year, along with pencils and notebooks, you had to think about masks and classroom spacing. Not to mention that your schedule has been disrupted with digital days or alternating attendance.
What should we do with this strange new normal? If all these changes make us as adults uncomfortable, what about our children?
These difficult times should motivate us to pray for our students, as they face major disruptions to their usual school year start-up routines. But how do we pray for them? And what do we pray for?
One Request
Once again the Scriptures help us know how to pray. In Colossians, Paul reminds believers of the deity and the supremacy of Jesus Christ. The believers faced opposition, including the rise of a prominent heresy, so Paul opens the letter with a beautiful prayer with one primary request—that believers would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will—that they would be completely consumed by doing what God desires.
As Christian parents and teachers, we want our children to follow Jesus despite all the obstacles they face, and they need divine knowledge and understanding to do so. Would you pray, then, that your children would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will—that God would help them to have a deep understanding of what He desires?
One Reason
Knowing the will of God can be somewhat nebulous, but this prayer is very concrete. We pray that God would help our students know what He desires so that they would live in ways that please Him. As our students understand what God wants, they will…
- show spiritual fruit through good works.
- increase in the knowledge of God.
- demonstrate spiritual stability by enduring difficulties with patience and joy.
One Hope
This may seem to you like an impossible request, but we have a secure hope that God will answer because of what Jesus Christ accomplished for us on the cross. This is why we give thanks (verse 12). God, through Jesus Christ, enables us to do what He wants because He has delivered us from the power of sin and changed us. We have been redeemed, and our sins have been forgiven.
This miraculous work of God gives us confidence that He can help our students know His will and do it. It motivates us to pray with conviction that they would be filled with the knowledge of His will and live for His glory because of the gospel.
So, what’s the most practical and important thing you can do for your students? Pray.
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