Power of Praying(R) for Your Adult Children

Stormie Omartian

Description

Stormie Omartian's bestselling The Power of a Praying(R) series (more than 28 million copies sold) is rereleased with fresh new covers and new material to reach a still-growing market of readers eager to discover the power of prayer for their lives.In this important follow-up to The Power of a Praying(R) Parent (2 million copies sold), Stormie addresses areas of concern you may have for your grown children and shares how to lift them up to God. With stories from other parents and insight gleaned from personal experience, Stormie helps you pray with the power of God's Word over your adult children and theircareer choices and sense of purpose marriages and other vital relationships parenting skills and leadershipstruggles, addictions, or emotional trialsfaith commitment and prayer lifePerhaps you are watching your grown children step out into the world and wishing you could do more to support them while giving them the freedom they crave. You can. It doesn't matter how young or old they are, you can rest in the power of God working through your prayers.

Sujets

• Prayer in Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Harvest House Publishers, Inc.
• Date de parution: 01 février 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780736957939
• Langue: English

Extrait

HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Verses marked MSG are taken from The Message. Copyright by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
Verses marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. www.zondervan.com
Emphasis in Scripture quotations is from the author.
Cover by Harvest House Publishers, Inc., Eugene, Oregon
Cover illustration Komar art / Shutterstock
Back cover author photo Michael Gomez Photography
THE POWER OF PRAYING is a registered trademark of The Hawkins Children s LLC. Harvest House Publishers, Inc., is the exclusive licensee of the federally registered trademark THE POWER OF PRAYING.
THE POWER OF PRAYING FOR YOUR ADULT CHILDREN
Copyright 2009, 2014 by Stormie Omartian
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
ISBN 978-0-7369-5792-2 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5793-9 (eBook)
The Library of Congress has cataloged the edition as follows:
Omartian, Stormie.
The power of praying for your adult children / Stormie Omartian.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7369-2086-5 (pbk.)
1. Parents-Prayers and devotions. 2. Adult children-Religious life. I. Title.
BV283.C5O54 2009
228.3 2085-dc22
2009009301
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author s and publisher s rights is strictly prohibited.
Contents
What Every Parent of an Adult Child Needs to Know
Pray That Your Adult Children Will
1. See God Pour Out His Spirit upon Them
2. Develop a Heart for God, His Word, and His Ways
3. Grow in Wisdom, Discernment, and Revelation
4. Find Freedom, Restoration, and Wholeness
5. Understand God s Purpose for Their Lives
6. Work Successfully and Have Financial Stability
7. Have a Sound Mind and a Right Attitude
8. Resist Evil Influences and Destructive Behavior
9. Avoid All Sexual Pollution and Temptation
10. Experience Good Health and God s Healing
11. Enjoy a Successful Marriage and Raise Godly Children
12. Maintain Strong and Fulfilling Relationships
13. Be Protected and Survive Tough Times
14. Recognize Their Need for God
15. Walk into the Future God Has for Them
Other Books by Stormie Omartian
About the Publisher
All your children shall be taught by the L ORD , and great shall be the peace of your children.
I SAIAH 54:13
What Every Parent of an Adult Child Needs to Know
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 child s later adult years, everyone is silent. They only smile knowingly and say nothing about what is ahead. I m sure they re thinking, Why say anything now? They ll 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 and-you hope-graduates 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 born-and certainly far more ominous than when you yourself were graduating from high school-and you can t 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 graduate- if they graduate-you 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 grandchildren-that you will someday have some and that they will be healthy and raised up to be good, godly people.
Well, I m here to tell you what you may already be suspecting-or by this time you are certain of it. And I am not just revealing this truth to you-which someone should have told you long ago-I 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.
1. You Need to Know It Never Ends
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, Don t 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. That s 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 they re happy, you re 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 day-and many nights , I might add-about 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 home-which was only about 15 minutes since the university was not far from our house. It wasn t 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 o clock that afternoon I heard someone come walking into the house through the back door, and I heard my dad talking to that person.
Who could that be ? I wondered. Everyone who lives or works in the house is here and we aren t expecting anyone.
I walked into the kitchen, and much to my surprise I saw my son.
Hey, Christopher. What are you doing back home? Did you forget something?
No, I just wanted to say, Hi, he said cheerfully, and then he sat down at the kitchen table and talked to my dad for nearly two hours. At five o clock he said goodbye and left to go back to the university to have dinner with his friends on campus and then do some studying.
He did that nearly every day for quite a while, then several times a week, and finally once or twice a week in his junior and senior years. But that first day he came into the kitchen from college was when I began to suspect that it never ends. And it made me smile to think that, of all the places he could go in those two hours in the afternoon, he wanted to be with his family, talking to his grandfather, who was lonely in a house full of workaholics who didn t have time to sit down every day for two hours and talk to him about the old days. My dad lived to be 93, and till the day he died he never stopped talking about how Christopher would come home from college every day just to talk to him.
The truth is, you never stop being a parent who deeply cares about your child s well-being, no matter what age they are, wha