Nancy Guthrie - The One Year Praying Through the Bible for Your Kids

These spiritually based prayers for your children will give you a deep, settled confidence before the throne of grace. Knowing that God has heard your prayers will keep your heart in great hope.

FERN NICHOLS

Founder, Moms in Prayer International

There is one thing you can pretty much count on: a godly parents desire to parent well. Yet at the end of the day we find ourselves woefully inadequate. We cant change the hearts of our children. We cant bring them to faith. No matter how consistently we teach them, their hearts are not in our hands. And that is why this wonderful gem of a book is so important. In it, youll not only be encouraged to read through the Bible every year for the sake of your own faith, youll also be encouraged to do the most important thing when it comes to your parenting: Youll be encouraged to pray. My friend Nancy has given you a priceless gift a book of devotions and prayers so you can read and pray through the year for your little (or big) darlings. The Lord, in whose hands are their hearts, is able to do wonderful things.

ELYSE FITZPATRICK

Author of Good News for Weary Women and coauthor of Give Them Grace

Regardless of the other areas of life in which I have convinced myself I am making straight As, parenting shows me my need for my heavenly Parent with complete clarity. Nothing has brought me to my knees quite like being a mom. What Nancy gives us in this book is better than a how-to on prayer or on parenting. It doesnt guarantee us a safe child or a successful child or an obedient child if we follow its words. But it does point us toward words of life. Nancy helps us invoke the pattern of Scripture in our daily battle for holiness as parents as we make our requests known to God with humility and hope. Where our own words fall short, His Word supplies our need.

JEN WILKIN

Author, Bible teacher, and mom of four

I love how Nancy Guthrie has taken the method of praying the Bible and applied it specifically to parents praying the Word of God with and for their children. Each devotional is simple and easy to use, including a brief Bible passage, a paragraph or so of devotional thought, and a prayer Nancy composed in connection with the Scripture selection. She has even included blanks so you can insert the name(s) of your child(ren) as you pray for them. I wish Caffy and I had had this book when our daughter was growing up. Ill certainly be giving a copy to her and her husband to use with our grandchildren.

DONALD S. WHITNEY

Professor of biblical spirituality at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; author of Praying the Bible

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The One Year Praying through the Bible for Your Kids

Copyright 2016 by Nancy Guthrie. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph copyright Michael Hudson. All rights reserved.

Interior photograph of paneling texture copyright fotofund/Adobe Stock. All rights reserved.

Interior photographs of watercolor and scratched board textures copyright flas100/Adobe Stock. All rights reserved.

Designed by Beth Sparkman

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson, copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible, copyright 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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I REMEMBER AS A YOUNG STUDENT being startled by a paragraph in the journal of the nineteenth century Danish writer Sren Aabye Kierkegaard (18131855). He wrote that the greatest danger a child could experience is not to have a free-thinker as a parent but to have an orthodox father from whose life the child subliminally draws the conclusion that God is not infinite love. Kierkegaard was an unusual man (he wanted the words The Individual on his gravestone!). But unusual men often have unusual insights, and this one has lingered with me from those early years until now.

It is all too easy to be drawn into a performance-based mind-set when we think about being Christian parents to say and do all the right Christian things, and in the process produce the kind of atmosphere in the home that Kierkegaard described. But the truth is that children breathe in the spiritual air their parents have breathed in and out the sense of who God is as Father, of the love of Jesus as Savior, of the help of the Holy Spirit or otherwise. And if I am to be wholly honest, I would say that it is this element that is often absent from the counsel and the how-to-be-a-Christian-parent manuals offered to us by parenting gurus. We can try to program our lives and our homes to do the right thing, but parenting is much more about being, about who we are as Christians, and about our communion with God. It is about our trust in him as our Father, our love for Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord, and our walking in the wisdom the Spirit gives to us in the pages of Scripture.

Our children are not simply atoms and molecules to be manipulated by the use of the right techniques. In fact, breathtakingly, if we are their birth parents, we have participated in bringing into being eternal creatures who bear the image of God. If we are adoptive parents, we still welcome into our homes and hearts little people who are destined to last for all eternity. And it is our first, our highest, and our most demanding role in life to prepare them to live eternally. Yes, parenting is that important. And the key to it is our own walk with God.

Since you have picked up and begun to leaf through the pages of The One Year Praying through the Bible for Your Kids, this is where Nancy Guthrie enters the picture. If you have not already done so, I urge you to get a copy for yourself! For this book is a labor of immense love (not only Nancys, but shared by her husband, David). It is not a how to do manual. No, it is a how to be guidebook. It is about who we are, what we become, and how well we know God in our joys and trials, our burdens and our prayers as parents. It does not take the low road of offering us a series of things we must do to be successful Christian parents. Instead it takes the high road of patiently, daily, guiding us through the message of the whole Bible so that we may reflect on it and pray through it, all in a way that is related to the nitty-gritty, day-in and day-out experience of being a mom or a dad.