Pray up the kiddos

Recently I was talking about baptizing your babies with a friend. The point came up, "What about the baptized babies who don't grow up to become Christians?"

My thesis: I am confident that God will give us our children to be saved if we are annoyingly, repetitively bold in our offering that desire to him in prayer.

Our kids becoming believers should be the norm, and not the other way around. Pray for those kids to become Christians. God may be pleased to save them through decades of persistent prayer.

I don't hear about Christians today persistently grabbing hold of God in prayers that they won't give up on. But Jesus says there's special power in going back to God over-and-over-and-over again until he grants your request.

The persistent widow

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

The exact topic of persistent prayer here is justice. I believe it applies to more than justice, including praying for loved one's salvation. My non-biblical argument is "How did such an undying, persistent plea get into the believer's heart, but the Lord put it there to magnify his glory when he grants the request.

The bold requester

After teaching the Lord's Prayer in Luke, Jesus taught praying to God with crazy boldness:

And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence* he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

*offensively bold behavior

Now in context Jesus closes that the Father will eagerly and freely give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him, but I believe this passage is relevant for praying for kids.

Jonathan Edwards

The puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards raised 11 believing children! I guess no one can really know if they were true Christians, but nor can we even know if Edwards was a true Christian. I think a little more research is needed for me to be confident in the 11-believing-children fact, but this google search does pretty well in establishing the point for me.

Conclusion

From these two passages, I believe that God will grant salvation to our kids if we are un-ashamed and unfailing in our unending boldness for our kids to be saved. The fact that a parent would be unfailing in prayer for their children is already an amazing sign that God is working!

But what if I'm a big failure about praying for my kids?

Go right now and ask him for what you lack--the desire to even pray!

Who doesn't feel really bad about their prayer life? Even the great praying men started out lame as prayers. But we can ask God for help where we are--to become praying parents! Ask now!

What might God do regarding parents who stayed up past midnight, wrestling with God to save their children?

Still interested, I would go to Gregg Harris's article. He and Sono have raised 7 kids with a multi-generational vision that they be lovers of the Lord. (His kids include Josh Harris of "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" and pastor of Covenant Life Church in Maryland; and Alex and Brett Harris, authors of Do Hard Things.)