BONUS - Praying Prayerfulness for Our Kids

I always bristle when I read the passage in Matthew 26 where Jesus asks the disciples to stay awake to keep watch and pray with him the night before he’s arrested to be crucified.

Do you remember what happens?

Not once or twice, but three times Jesus comes back to find the disciples asleep because apparently “their eyes were heavy” (Matthew 26:43). This passage makes me sweat a little bit because I kind of think that might have happened on my watch too.

It’s easy to think that surely if Jesus specifically instructed us to stay awake to keep watch and pray, we would understand the urgency and make it our first priority to get it done. But then, if you’re like me, we find ourselves lying in bed each night with great intentions to pray for our families and, well, our eyes get heavy.

Today on our podcast, Becky Jones joins me to talk about our prayer lives. She reminds us of God’s grace in the places where we haven’t prayed well in the past but also encourages us to make changes moving forward by treating prayer as a continual conversation with God instead of a list to check off.

As we’re praying for our kids this year, let’s pray they understand the transformative power of prayer and how it leads to God’s guidance and provision in their lives. Let’s also pray that their lives are marked by prayer and they can remember it being a significant priority in our own lives.

Your eyes may be heavy, but God has asked us to pray always (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

Let’s do this!