A Prayer for our Covenant Children

Our great covenant-keeping God who shows steadfast love to thousands of generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments (Ex. 20:6) and whose righteousness is upon our children’s children who love Him and remember to keep His commandments (Ps. 103:17-18), we come before You to pray for the children whom You have graciously given Your servants (Gen. 33:5).  May You find the godly offspring You seek from our marriages (Mal. 2:15)!  We plead Your promise to circumcise our hearts and the hearts of our offspring that we might love You with whole hearts (Deut. 30:6).  Grant our children to remember their Creator in the days of their youth (Eccl. 12:1), trust in You at their mothers’ breasts, be cast on You from birth (Ps. 22:9), be children of promise, not merely of flesh (Rom. 9:8), as we faithfully teach them the Scriptures from their infancy in order to make them wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3:15).  According to Your covenant mercies, may Your Spirit and Your Word never depart from the mouth of our offspring or our children’s offspring (Is. 59:21).  Give us one heart and one way that we may fear You forever, for our good and for the good of our children after us (Jer. 32:39).  Grant us that we might train up our children in the way that they should go so that they might never depart from the right way (Prov. 22:6).  May we love our children enough to discipline them rather than hating them by sparing the rod (Prov. 13:24).  Strengthen our fathers to command their children and households after them to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice (Gen. 18:19).  Help our fathers to teach diligently Your commandments to their children and talk of them when they sit at home, walk by the way, and when they lie down and rise (Deut. 6:7).  May they not provoke their children to anger but raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4).  Keep us from hiding Your truth from our children but grant us to tell to the coming generation of Your glorious deeds and the wonders You have done (Ps. 78:4) so that they should set their hope in You and not forget Your works but keep Your commandments (Ps. 78:7).  Turn the hearts of our fathers to our children and our children to our fathers (Mal. 4:6).  Grant our mothers to look well to the ways of their households and not eat the bread of idleness (Prov. 31:27); Grant that their children call them blessed and husbands praise them (Prov. 31:28).  Although they are federally holy (1 Cor. 7:14), may our covenant children not presume that though they walk in the stubbornness of their hearts that they will not perish (Deut. 29:19) and may they never say, “We have Abraham as our father” (Lu. 3:8) in the presumption of unbelief and sin.  Bestow upon them Your grace so that they might become the sons of Abraham through faith (Gal. 3:7), as You produce a spiritual seed from our physical seed (Gen. 17:7).  Make them members of the covenant of grace in inward reality as well as outward form (Rom. 2:28-29)!  We pray for these things believing that Your promise is to us and to our children forever (Acts 2:39).  Hear us as we pray in the name of Jesus Christ Your Son, Amen.