Prayer is my finial TIP-ON THINGS I (WE) DID TO RAISE SUCCESSFUL TEENAGERS, I have heard it said (I can not say by whom) that in times of trouble or crisis, we must pray, I have found this to be true. As I mentioned in my previous blogs, we are a Christian family and our values are based on the teachings of the bible, and as such, I believe in the power prayer holds in helping you to resolve and see you through tough and trying situations.
When our children were in their teenage year’s prayer was and still is a major part of helping us raise them. Prayer saw us through many trying situations, when we did not understand our teens, we prayed, when my husband and I were at loggerheads about an issue with our teenagers we prayed.
I do not want to give you a lecture on prayer, however, I will share a little of what I believe prayer to be. Prayer is a way by which I communicate and build my relationship with God – the creator, thereby, through this relationship I have been able to ask for help in difficult times and gain wisdom and bring change to many situations. I am aware that for some who are reading my blog you do not know this God I am referring to, that is ok. If that is the case you may know someone that has a relationship with God and you can ask them to help you pray for a situation you might be going through or you can contact me through my blog and I can pray for you.
There were so many times my husband and I received answers to prayers regarding our children, three, in particular, come to mind and I believe these were major in helping us to raise successful teenagers. When our children were going through their teenage years, my husband and I always prayed for peace, to this day we still do. This prayer was answered, we did not have squabblings, quarrels, or fights in our home. There were many
disagreements that got settled. Every time we saw and thought there was a situation at hand that could cause unrest between our children we prayed. Till today, we have peace in our home and not disharmony. Our teenagers staying out of trouble was a major prayer that we got an answer to. It is very difficult many times to know what thoughts are running in the minds of your teenager, which means when your child is thinking unsafe, unhealthy, and unproductive thoughts of themselves or towards others, the only thing that can intercept and interrupt those thoughts is praying and asking God to give them a changed mind. My husband and I would always pray for God to help them make the right decisions, and we watched our
teenagers go through their teen years making the right decisions about friends, keeping safe, and staying out of trouble with the law.
This third answered prayer was a big one for us, one of our teens got delivered from drug-taking. For the sake of anonymity, I will not mention which number child it is, I was oblivious to the fact that our child was smoking marijuana but one day I found a small bag of the drug in my house laying on the floor by the bathroom, this I totally believe was an act of God in itself. I was shocked because I did not expect this as we raised them to know the harm of drugs and also the fact that this was not in line with our beliefs and values. May I say here that sometimes answers to prayer can come in different forms, what I mean is your prayer may come with instruction of something to do. As we prayed for this child, we followed it by reminding them of our core values, talking together as a family about the issue, and holding them to account for their actions. What I began to notice was as the weeks and months went by the drug taken got less, it probably took just over a year to finally stop.
Prayer works, it works for us and it still works even now, above all of this we have used and still do use prayer as a big way to say thank you to our maker, God. We have found that gratitude has kept us grounded, focused, and appreciative for what we have.
I end with a prayer:
LORD I thank you for my family, thank you for always taking good care of us.
