Stormie Omartian - The Power of Praying® for Your Adult Children

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THE POWER OF PRAYING is a registered trademark of The Hawkins Childrens LLC. Harvest House Publishers, Inc., is the exclusive licensee of the federally registered trademark THE POWER OF PRAYING.

THE POWER OF PRAYINGFOR YOUR ADULT CHILDREN

Copyright 2009 by Stormie Omartian

Published by Harvest House Publishers

Eugene, Oregon 97402

www.harvesthousepublishers.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Omartian, Stormie.

The power of praying for your adult children / Stormie Omartian.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-7369-2086-5 (pbk.)

1. ParentsPrayers and devotions. 2. Adult childrenReligious life. I. Title.

BV283.C5O54 2009

228.32085dc22

2009009301

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 / BP-SK / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Pray That Your Adult Children Will

All your children shall be
taught by the L ORD ,
and great shall be
the peace of your children.

T here are seven things every parent of an adult child needs to know, and often no one tells you any of them. I think it would have been nice if someone would have at least mentioned a few of these things before my children grew old enough to enter into adulthood. Then I could have prepared myself.

When you are a young parent-to-be, the older and more experienced parents eagerly congratulate you on expecting a child. And then they do it again when your child is born, but this time they also give you advice on early child raising. However, with regard to a childs later adult years, everyone is silent. They only smile knowingly and say nothing about what is ahead. Im sure theyre thinking, Why say anything now? Theyll find out in time. Or else they believe they are the only ones who are experiencing any challenges with their adult children, so why frighten anyone? Whatever the reason, no one talks about it. At least I never heard anything.

I thought that when your children are 18 they graduate from high school and go to college, and then that is pretty much it for the parenting responsibilities. They have their lives and you have yours, and they remember everything you taught them, and so they go on to find high paying jobs and get married and come to visit you a few times a year with the grandchildren. Voil! Parenting season is finished! Now you can do the things you have always dreamed of doing, but were too busy raising children to do.

FORGET IT!

None of that happens!

Your child turns 18 andyou hopegraduates from high school, and then you discover your days of serious parenting are just beginning. You pray he (she) gets into a good college or trade school and that the professors are not teaching him (her) that God is dead and communism is great, or that morality is relative and perversion is to be desired. The influences on your adult child are now more sinister than you ever imagined they would be years ago when he (she) was bornand certainly far more ominous than when you yourself were graduating from high schooland you cant stop thinking about all the frightening possibilities. And while there is more to be concerned about, you have less control over anything having to do with their lives than ever.

After your children graduateif they graduateyou hope they will find work with some kind of security and benefits. You are always concerned that they will meet someone great to marry, and after they are married you hope they will stay married. You are concerned about how careful or careless they are with their health and whether they can make the payments on their house. You are concerned about your grandchildrenthat you will someday have some and that they will be healthy and raised up to be good, godly children.

Well, Im here to tell you what you may already be suspectingor by this time you are certain of it. And I am not just revealing this truth to youwhich someone should have told you long agoI am also giving you a way to handle it. But first I need to share with you SEVEN THINGS EVERY PARENT OF AN ADULT CHILD NEEDS TO KNOW.

The part no one tells you about being a parent is that parenting never stops.

I used to joke with tired, frazzled, and overwhelmed new parents who were worried about the sudden 24-hours-a-day-7-days-a-week responsibility and the unending list of things to do with not enough time in a day to do it all by telling them, Dont worry. This will only last another 18 years.

I knew that this was a semi-cruel joke, but I wanted them to know the truth. And besides, I loved to hear their weary groans followed by a reluctant laugh. However, I now see that the joke was on me. And it is even crueler than I thought. Thats because the truth is that it never ends! Although there are different stages and seasons of parenting responsibilities, your heart and mind will always be with each one of your children for the rest of your life. And this is no easy task, for no matter where they go or what they do, a part of you goes with them. When theyre happy, youre happy. When they suffer, you suffer. Even after they grow up and you are no longer with them physically on a daily basis, you are still concerned every dayand many nights, I might addabout their safety and struggles, their fears and weaknesses, their successes and failures, their choices and mistakes.

Not only is your heart still with your children after they become adults, they are often physically still with you, as well.

I remember the day my husband, Michael, and I took our son, Christopher, to college and moved him into his dorm. I cried the entire way back homewhich was only about 15 minutes since the university was not far from our house. It wasnt that I would never see him again, but I knew the days of him living with us were over and this was the end of an era. I was feeling sad the next day too, but I busied myself with a writing project that was due; plus I had the company of my 85-year-old dad, who was living with us in the house; my sister, who worked in our home office; and my husband, who was working from home in his studio. At three oclock that afternoon I heard someone come walking into the house through the back door, and I heard my dad talking to that person.