Prayers from a Mother's Heart

Prayers from a Mother’s Heart Because We’re All Mothers Together

Posted on by Michele Morin

When I have visiting grandchildren on a Sunday morning, sometimes I get to sit with them in the church nursery. It’s a break for their mother and a treat for me.

On a Sunday morning nursery date with Ruthie, we had a packed house with every rocking chair occupied and mums sitting on the floor among the Duplos and the plastic train tracks. Looking around the room, I started doing some mental math around the ages of all the mums, and the movie reel of memory began playing footage of the youngest mum in the room running wild in my backyard with my four sons and her brother, the lot of them covered in orange paint from a birthday party craft.

Now, she’s a fellow boy mum.
Now we are mothers together, and we occupy the same church nursery.

Two of my daughters-in-law are learning that parenting little Morins is full-time and usually exhausting work. I love that they’re doing it with so much more skill and composure than I did, and it’s my privilege to inform them that their husbands used to engage in the same infuriating behaviors that are driving them crazy right now—and look how great their husbands turned out!

Now we are mothers together, and we understand that it’s not an easy job.

That’s why the most important thing we can do for our children at any age is to pray for them. I remember feeling the weight of that responsibility when we were a family of six. Now, with four married sons and six grandkids, we’ve grown to a family of sixteen, and our prayers are heavy with life.

Two verses from the Word of God are guiding my prayers for my kids and grandkids these days. I’ll share their challenge and encouragement with you today as we celebrate—together!— Mother’s Day 2024:

A Heart of Wisdom

My son, if your heart is wise,
    my heart too will be glad” (Proverbs 23:15).

We ache for our kids when they make poor choices. We work hard at respecting boundaries, and we reject the knee-jerk impulse to give unsolicited advice.

Therefore, we pray for our children to live and move and have their being from a foundation of wisdom. And we start when they’re young! I remember praying that our children would get caught when they did something wrong. (It’s never too early to start teaching cause and effect…)

“Lord, wrap their lives in your wisdom. Guide them in every decision, and help them to value your wisdom and your ways as their highest treasure.”

Pray for your children to live and move and have their being from a foundation of wisdom.

A Life of Goodness and Mercy

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life…” (Psalm 23:6).

We know in our hearts that hard times will come. Young kids and our “adult kids” are all confronted with challenges, disappointments, and discouragement. We can’t rescue them from every setback, but we can pray for God to pursue them with his own unique brand of goodness and mercy.

Eugene Peterson writes, “Your beauty and love chase after me,” and I want to fix that image in my mind. I also want my kids to turn around and see it happening with their eyes of faith.

“Follow my children, Lord, chase them down with your goodness and your mercy. You are the One from whom we deserve nothing and yet you have given us everything. I pray that my children and grandchildren will see your love behind every success and your mercy in every challenge that comes their way.”

Pray that your children and grandchildren will see God’s love behind every success and God’s mercy in every challenge that comes their way.

How are you praying for your children?
Do you have answers to prayer that will encourage other readers?

We’re mothers together, all of us, and by faith, we can support our children with prayers from a heart that has been formed by Truth.

Holding You in the Light,

We’re mothers together, all of us, and by faith, we can support our children with prayers from a heart that has been formed by Truth.

We’re taking a Mother’s Day vacation today from our Sunday series about Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. We’ll be back next Sunday with part five.

You’ll find part one on the Beatitudes HERE, and part two on Salt and Light HERE. In part three, we wondered what motivates teachers to take on the heavy responsibility of communicating the truth, and in part four, Jesus answers the question, “What does it really mean to be righteous?” I invite you to join me each Sunday for the next few weeks as we sit under the teaching of Jesus together and consider how his words and his life should be impacting the way we live, work, think, and pray.

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Published by Michele Morin

Michele Morin is a Bible teacher, writer, reader, and gardener committed to the truth that women can become confident Christ-followers and students of God's Word. She has been married to an unreasonably patient husband for thirty-plus years, and together they have four married sons and a growing fleet of adorable grandchildren. Michele loves hot tea and well-crafted sentences, poems that stop her in her tracks, and days at the ocean with the whole family. She laments biblical illiteracy and advocates for the prudent use of “little minutes.” She blogs at Living Our Days, and you can connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

30 thoughts on “Prayers from a Mother’s Heart Because We’re All Mothers Together”

  2. The week my granddaughter started college as a freshman, I was memorizing parts of Psalm 92, and I realized my prayer for her was Psalm 92:2– I prayed that she would be reminded every morning of God’s unfailing love for her, and that each evening, she would look back over the events of her day and realize how faithful He was that day. Since then, I use that prayer constantly… for everyone in my prayers!

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  5. Beautiful post, Michele! Happy Mother’s Day! I pray that our kids and grandkids would “follow me as I follow Christ” – that they would emulate the things their parents did right and well by the grace of God, but that they would do better and be free to follow other examples in the areas that we did not do as well as we wanted to. We follow Jesus first, but what an encouragement it is to find the footprints of our parents on the same path!

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    1. I love the way you’ve described this. Like you, we want to be on the same team with our adult kids, reinforcing the messages they are faithfully giving to our grandkids.

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  6. Oh my goodness, so much truth here, Michele. My prayer life is doing nothing but growing more steady, more constant, more necessary. As the family continues to grow that’s all we can do, right? Without a faithful, ongoing prayer life we’d surely be swept away by all the very real drama and trauma that is part and parcel of living in this fallen world.

    Without Jesus, I’d be hanging on a hook somewhere. I’m so grateful to ‘cast all my burdens on Him.’ And that is an understatement at best.

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    1. As grandmothers, we’re in the perfect position to pray for our kids and for THEIR kids. And hopefully we can go to that particular posture to keep us from getting swept into the drama or lapsing into advice-giving or well-intentioned meddling.
      I’m glad we’re doing this grandmothering gig together!

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  7. Belated happy Mother’s Day! I often pray Colossians 1:9-12 and Philippians 1:9-11 for my kids. But most often, lately, it’s been the phrase from the “Lord’s prayer,” that He lead them not into temptation but deliver them from evil, and Ephesians 3:16-19: “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” I’m encouraged that the Ephesians passage is followed by verses that talk about God being able to do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think!

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  8. Isn’t it delightful how the children we knew decades ago can become young adult friends? My prayers for our children and grandchildren have included: guidance for their loves (who and what), a guard over their integrity and their minds, and fruitful lives for God’s glory. These ideas came from a blog a number of years ago. (Maybe yours, Michele?!) I also pray Philippians 1:6 over them and selected verses from John 17.

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  9. This is such a beautiful and wise post, Michele. As our families grow, so does our prayer lists. There is more of them to love and pray for.

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  10. There’s 10 souls in my little family circle and this year I’m praying that each one can comprehend how wide, and deep the Father’s love for them is. Seems to me, if each one could grasp it, they’d want to grab onto it and never let go.

    Thanks for once again giving me things to think about!

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  11. This is so beautiful, Michele. I enjoy being a mom with my daughter who is mothering two littles. And doing a fantastic job of it. I’m thankful she’s such a godly woman, not perfect, but her mama heart prays for her kids and wants them to grow up in the admonition of the Lord. I still pray for my adult children and my grandchildren. Love this statement, “we pray for our children to live and move and have their being from a foundation of wisdom.” Yes, Acts 17:28. One of my favorites.

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  12. Michele, this is a beautiful message. Praying with you for our children today.

    Visiting today from Joanne’s

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