Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 04:4 (Spring 2000)
Article: A Father’s Ministry of Prayer
Author: Paul Sailhamer

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A Father’s Ministry of Prayer

Paul Sailhamer

Modeling The Apostle Paul In Praying For Our Children

Any way you cut it, prayer is hard work. It takes concentration. When I was a young boy, we loved to play hide-and-go-seek until the sun went down or Mom called us for dinner. I remember one evening when it was my turn to be “it.” I ran to the street lamp pole and closed my eyes to start counting to a hundred. Instead of “1–2-3–4-5, ” out came … Dear Lord, bless this food of which we are about to partake.” That simple dinner prayer had become so routine that it came out of my mouth instead of counting to a hundred.

Anybody who’s honest will say that happens often in prayer. .. only in reverse. We start to pray, and before we know it, our minds wander off to other subjects. Or we are so bored with our same old requests that we know the Lord must be just as bored as we are. Sometimes we even develop shortcuts.

A Model for Prayer

A friend of mine once told me that his young son, when praying before a meal, concluded his prayer with “And God bless the you-know-what.” When asked what the “you-know-what” was, he said, “The food ... we always pray for the food!”

This all gets very critical when a father starts to take seriously his ministry of praying for his children. Is there a model for fervent and effective prayer that a dad can follow? I think there is. It is found in the first chapter of the letter by Paul to the Christians in Colossae. This was a church that Paul was able to disciple only from a distance—through prayer. That leads me to conclude that what he prayed for these folks was the kind of important things a father should be praying for his own children. In fact, it is an outline or a framework that can be personalized for the individual child s circumstances and needs. The prayer begins in chapter one, verse nine, and continues through verse fourteen.

For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

God’s Point of View

First of all we notice the consistency of the prayer and its main intere...

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