by Idalina (Sussex)
Dear Lord,
Grant me (and my husband) your blessing that we may have children. I pray Lord that you will make me like a fertile vineyard.
Abba, Father… you have the power to make miracles happen…I pray that you don’t forget me, your humble servant. Lord, I have wanted children for as long as I can remember, please grant me this wish Lord. In you I trust.
I pray that you bless us with a healthy baby. That we may love and cherish and raise to know you Lord and your ways.
Thank you Lord for all you’ve done in our lives, all the blessings you’ve already given us…I pray that you continue to keep us in the palm of your hand Lord, and bless us with a lovely family of our own.
Thank you.
Amen.
Return to Fertility prayer
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Are you trying to have a baby or do you want to conceive a child? The proceeding prayer for a baby will help you in this season of frustration and helplessness.
God’s original intent is for man to have an intimate relationship with Him and to procreate and subdue the earth. As such, deep into a man’s heart and spirit is the desire, yearning, and longing to have a partner and build a family together through their children. Father God put this built-in propensity of mankind to relate, commune, love, be loved, and multiply.
For the majority of the population since the beginning of time, there is a desire to find a spouse, marry, and bear children. However, statistics show that a number of married couples are incapable of procreation thereby denying them of the enjoyment of having their own kids.
The Scriptures is replete with many examples of parents particularly women who were barren, infertile or unable to have a child. Like for instance, Sarah, the wife of Abraham way back in the Genesis account. God spoke and promised to Abraham that he will become the father of many nations and his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the skies and the sands on the seashores. Many years have gone by but the promise seemed elusive. Out of desperation and frustration, the couple devised their own scheme to bear a child, Ishmael through Hagar, Sarah’s maidservant. But, God’s promise of a child (Isaac) happened when they least expected it.
Then there’s Rebecca, the lady who agreed to marry someone (Isaac) whom she has never seen nor met initially. She was infertile for twenty (20) years until Isaac declared a prayer for a baby for her and she was able to bear the twins—two nations — Esau and Jacob.
Rachel, the second wife of Jacob also was barren but God opened the womb of her older sister Leah, Jacob’s first wife when Leah was not loved. Later on, Rachel bore Joseph and Benjamin.
Who have not heard of the beautiful story of Hannah? His husband Elkanah had another wife Peninnah with children and year after year when they worship God and sacrifice at Shiloh, Peninnah will irritate and insult Hannah for being barren. Until one day, Eli the high priest saw her thinking she was drunk for being down in heart and whispering to herself. In reality, Hannah was uttering a prayer to have a child. It happened and the child became the Prophet Samuel who anointed King Saul and King David.
In the New Testament, Elizabeth the cousin of Mary, the earthly mother of Jesus was also well advanced in age without any child. God granted her desire and gave her John the Baptist, the preparer for the way of the Lord Jesus Christ.
These women are much like you and me longing to have a child. Many years passed by and it seemed that God has forgotten them and His promises to each one of them. They never wavered nor faltered and better yet, they persevered in faith believing and trusting in God.
You may be married right now and you may have known the Lord for many years or decades. Day by day, you and your spouse are constantly and consistently praying to God for a baby and yet nothing is still happening despite all efforts, sacrifices, and untainted devotion.
Do not lose hope, keep on asking, knocking, believing. Do not just hope but expect things from God.
Do not pray wishes, do not pray dreams. Pray the word of God as exemplified by the characters in the Bible who waited patiently for not only years but decades and God came through for them in due time.
God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. (Isaiah 55.8) Sometimes, God moves in mysterious ways but be assured that He makes all things beautiful in His time. (Ecclesiastes 3.11)
For couples praying and trying to have a baby, it is best to allow God to cleanse you from all unconfessed sins. If we cherish sin in our hearts, the Lord will not hear or listen to our prayers. Do a spiritual inventory of thoughts, meditations of the heart, words, actions, habits and even sins of omission. God will be pleased if we come clean, pure, and holy before Him in love in all areas of our lives. Here’s a prayer for removing generational sins.
Begin thanking the Lord for the child. We can call on things that are not as though they were. (Romans 4.17) Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not yet seen. (Hebrew 11.1) Bless the Lord for all His goodness, attributes, and character. Declare, believe and live out the promises of God for you and your family. Meditate on the passages of Scriptures or the stories where God was true to His word and delivered His promises.
Bless your life, your bodies, and everything concerning you and your spouse. Bless your reproductive and sexual organs to be able to conceive or bear a child. Lay hands on your womb and continue to believe God for a miracle. By faith and in the supernatural, cancel all the diagnosis of the medical professionals that you or your partner were barren or sexually dysfunctional. God can turn around all those negative pronouncements and make His power real in your life.
For the practical side of it, maintain and achieve a healthy diet and lifestyle. Eat healthy foods, exercise, sleep, wake up, and eat on time. Do a research on the sexual and reproductive aspects. Lessen, if not remove, stress and pressures in your life. Put everything in balance, rhythm, and harmony – intimacy with God, spouse, career, business, ministry, finances, time, relationships.
You may pray this prayer to have a child—
“Abba Father, thank You for giving me hope and expectation that one day I will conceive and bear my own child. Your ears are not closed to my prayers and you know the deepest desires and intentions of my heart. I love You, Lord and it is You who put this longing to be a mother/father and consummate our marriage through the gift of a child. I repent for the many times that I almost gave up and felt frustrated, lonely, and miserable… for doubting your promises, power, and wisdom in the dark days of our lives. I let go of all the stress, pressures, fears, pains, shame, and grief associated with this yearning to have a child and I put this in Your hands.
I bless You Lord for You are in full control and dominion over everything great and small. Nothing is hidden from Your sight and You have the ability, authority, and majestic power to do what I cannot do for myself, my spouse, and our future and destiny. I completely entrust our lives in Your hands knowing that You know what is best for us. I come to You now reminding You of Your wonderful promises to me and my family. No good thing will You withhold from those whose walk is blameless. Those who put their hope and trust in You will never be put to shame nor disappointed. That if I abide You and Your Words abide in Me, I can ask for whatever I wish and it will be granted to me.
I bless our bodies that we can produce and conceive a child. I bless our sexual and reproductive organs to function to the way God originally intended for them to function. I bless my intimacy and union with my spouse to be clean and pure before the eyes of God and that out of our love for God and love for each other, a child will be formed and this child will bind our love for each other and he/she will be used by God for his kingdom.
Thank You Father God for giving us your Son, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit to save, heal, deliver, and restore us. Jesus Himself was born to an earthly mother and it was such a joy for Mary to conceive and bear Him, the Savior of the world. Grant me this same privilege and joy to conceive and bear a child in Your own perfect time. My sorrows will turn into joy (John 16.20), my wailing into dancing. (Psalm 30.11) This is my prayer for a baby, In Jesus’ precious name. Amen.”
There is a story of one young lady trying to have a baby and cannot conceive a child properly. She became pregnant but after 6-8 weeks of conception her body will produce anti-bodies killing the baby in her womb. It happened twice. So, for the third baby, the ob-gyn advised her to inject in her stomach daily for nine months of conception so that the baby will live. She did not heed the doctor’s prescription but just believed God for the baby to conceive well. She visited a local Christian Healing Rooms for prayer and the baby was formed and born normally without any injections whatsoever. Right now, she has two children aged 3 and 6 months both healthy and without any disability or deformation. Not that we are against medicines because sometimes you will need the medicine but always remember that it is the Lord that does it!
If God can give a child to Sarah, Rebecca, Hannah, Rachel, and Elizabeth, He can do the same for you. Every time you feel frustrated and losing hope, return to this prayer for a baby and you will find encouragement. It is God’s will. Always remember that EVERY story in the bible of barrenness where prayer was applied it was answered with conception. Did we say EVERY? Yes, EVERY person in the bible who prayed for a child received it. We serve a God who is no respecter of persons which means if He will do it for those women in the bible He will also do it for you. Be patient, have faith and believe God.
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Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you so much for my life and for my husband’s life. Thank you also for all the husbands and wives around the world. I lift up marriages to you and ask that you would strengthen love between husbands and wives. I specifically pray for husbands and wives who desire to have children. Some may already have children and want more, while others have been trying for years yet still have no children. I pray firstly that your will is done in these marriages and that you would give them your powerful peace. For some your answer may be to wait, for some you may have answered yes, for others it may mean a different way such as adoption, while for some you may answer no. I pray for your peace which is above all understanding to comfort their hearts no matter what your will is. I pray that children would never be a source of contention for husbands and wives. If they are please remind all of us how much of a blessing they are and that your will shall prevail in Jesus name AMEN!
unveiledwife.com
Length: 14:12
Transcript
Today, we are talking about teaching prayer to children. We need to develop a vocabulary to communicate the significance of prayer in terms that they can understand and apply to their own spiritual lives. And then, we’ll need to offer them opportunities to put it into action. We should pray with them and encourage regular family prayer times.
Now, parents have a lot of control over this. We can personally implement family prayer time. As Sunday School teachers and Youth Ministry leaders, we can train our students about prayer and open their eyes to its meaning and blessings. And we can also send them home with tools to equip their parents to take on family prayer time.
The first question is: How are we teaching what prayer is? We can explain that praying is like talking with God, and children largely understand it. I like to talk with children about Genesis; about the narrative of man’s creation. God makes man in His image, and then talks with him. He creates a beautiful garden for him, offering him all sorts of delightful plants and animals to enjoy.
And even as we discuss man’s fall, we see that Genesis 3:8 reads, “Then, they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden that afternoon.” This was a routine occurrence. Adam and Eve were accustomed to walking with God; enjoying conversation and communion with Him right there in their beautiful home. That’s what prayer is. Prayer is our opportunity to commune with God in the garden. God wishes to spend time with us, and this is how we do it.
Now, on the other hand, it is also important to communicate with children that prayer is not exactly the same as a conversation between people. The very young ones are concrete thinkers, and they can be troubled by the idea that they are talking to God, and He is not answering. They say words and ask questions, and they aren’t getting words back like they think they should. This can be confusing and frustrating, and it can lead them to abandon prayer as a worthless project.
Children need to understand the subtleties of how God communicates with us. And I find that the image that has served me best, both with my own children and in my Sunday School class, has been the soft heart, which we read about in Ezekiel 36:26 where God says, “I shall give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I shall take the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” We may have hearts of unfeeling stone, but God can replace them with soft hearts of flesh.
Children can easily grasp the idea that our souls have hearts, much like our bodies. Now, this is not the same heart that beats and sends blood to our organs, but it’s the heart that hurts when we’re rejected or lonely. Kids understand whether this heart is hard or soft already, because they’re seeing it on the playground all the time.
Some of their peers are hardhearted, teasing other children and feeling no compassion or sympathy for the pain they cause. Others have softer hearts, which are easily bruised and which ache for people in pain. We can teach our kids to develop softer hearts by using the tools that God gives us – prayer, fasting, attending church services, charity and service work, and study.
In particular, prayer changes hearts. As we spend more and more time in the presence of God, he transforms our hearts from stone to flesh. You might offer them a piece of clay to rub in their warm hands. The clay begins hard and almost solid and impenetrable, like our hearts, but as we work it with our hands, the warmth makes the clay soft and pliable.
God’s warm presence does that for us. It transforms the hardness of our hearts into softness, and just like that clay, our hearts might just grow hard again if we stop praying for awhile. But simply returning to prayer begins to warm us up again. Kids can really hold onto this analogy and understand it. Once they have this concrete image in their minds, we can present them with the key piece of information. A soft heart loves more, feels more, and most importantly is more able to receive God’s love and mercy and His messages.
If we want to walk in the garden with God, we need soft hearts so that those hearts can feel the messages that God sends. Now, this makes a lot of sense, because God is love. And a soft heart really feels love more intensely. Indeed, Christ teaches us to love one another as we love ourselves, and a soft heart has empathy. It feels the pain of others.
Children can understand this concept and make it their own. This idea clarifies the purpose of all sacraments and worship. We spend time in the presence of God in order to soften our hearts that we might feel His presence and live in His love.
Now that we have the concept of prayer and its purpose, we need to give our children the opportunity to practice prayer and to see its effects firsthand. In the Sunday Schools and Youth Ministries, we should be sending home kits and practical tips for making this happen in every family’s home. And as parents, we must be consistently creating family experiences.
Now, of course, most families are already coming together for some evening family prayer time. But here are some ideas to make sure the kids are active participants. Even if we already have a solid tradition working in our homes, it can be invigorating to mix it up a little bit; to introduce something new to bring it alive for our children.
The first obvious questions about family prayer time are when and where? For most families, evening prayers are the logical time to bring the family together for prayer. In some households, this is best done right after dinner. While in others, it’s the last thing to do before the children are tucked in for bed. In a large family like mine, with children spread in age from toddler through middle school, it’s a tricky question. We like to bring our family together for prayers just before the first child heads off to bed, though it will be a few hours before the oldest ones retire.
Once a family has found a good when, they need a good where. And the clear answer is to create an icon corner. Having a small space set aside for prayers is such a beautiful Orthodox tradition. And I love how we literally carve out a space for Christ in our homes. Although of course, He’s welcome throughout the house. But how wonderful to have a sacred space in the home – a space reserved for Him. I think of Christ preparing us rooms in His Father’s mansion, and I smile to think that we’ve prepared Him a room here too.
Now generally speaking, the icon corner is the space where the household keeps its icons – certainly one of Christ and one of His mother, the Theotokos, and then some icons that are special to the family. Perhaps there’s a little table or bookshelf, which holds candles or prayer books and incense. Many people set this up in the parents’ bedroom, which is beautiful because it’s a distinctly private and intimate space, protected from the more public spaces in a home.
On the other hand, in my house, our icon corner is right up front near the entryway. I like that too, because it makes a statement in the public place that this house is dedicated to God. But the real reason we have our prayer space out in the open is because we’re a large family, and we need some elbow room when we gather our five children and two parents for prayers. I also like the idea that the kids can approach the prayer corner at any time day or night, without disturbing the rooms inhabitants.
This icon corner is generally is something that the parents set up and design, so how can we give our kids ownership in it too? For one thing, I think it’s lovely when the kids are able to select some of the icons on the wall. You may wish to hang icons of each of their name’s saints. Now, our family is of Montenegrin heritage in the Serbian Orthodox Church, where we as a family share a patron saint, our Krsna Slava. In our house, that’s St. Luke the Evangelist, so we have an icon of St. Luke or Sveti Luka, as I fondly think of him.
Along with icons of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His holy mother, our intercessor, the Theotokos, we have all sorts of icons up there. Each of our children were allowed to look through some icon catalogs and select their contribution to the icon corner. One chose the Prophet Elias’ ascension in the chariot of fire. Another chose an image of Christ walking on water and reaching out to St. Peter, because she so loved the children’s song on the subject in Gigi Shadid’s Fruits of the Spirit. We have Christ’s creation of the cosmos for my future astronaut, and St. Mary of Egypt for my lion lover. Each child has a special icon up there, because she loved it, and that invites them into real ownership of this space.
Hanging besides those icons, I have a white plate on the wall. I’ve painted some gold crosses on it and divided it into two spaces – one for the living and one for the dead. With dry erase markers, our family is constantly writing names on this plate. Every night when we say our prayers, we read this list of names and ask the Lord’s mercy on them. Throughout the day, my children are comfortable grabbing a marker and adding a name to the plate. I always know who is absent from school as they are sure to be added to the sick and suffering list.
Whenever we see a news report about a deceased celebrity, that name suddenly appears on our list with additional prayers for their family on the living side. My kids are always on the lookout for people who should be on the list. Perhaps the best, way for them to learn intercessory prayer is to do intercessory prayer.
I absolutely recommend that every family have such a list with a pen right there, so that their children can add names in their own hand; writing the names of their friends and loved ones and even strangers in need to lift them up to the Lord in prayer. Whether we’re using an attractive plate or a white board or a pad of paper, we should all have lists available to our children, so that they can request prayers and then see their whole family come together to offer them up.
Another great way to keep children directly involved in the prayers is to think about our prayer books. Kids who can read should have copies of the prayers we’re praying. And in my experience, even the kids who can’t read like to hold books. I like the little blue book, My Orthodox Prayer Book, published by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Department of Religious Education, as it’s printed in large font, and it uses simple and clear language that children can read and understand. I have enough copies for our whole family on the prayer table, plus a couple of extras for when we have an overnight guest or two.
In addition to the evening prayers we read, I like to select a few other prayers – prayers of thanksgiving or prayers for the sick or the dead; short psalms and neat prayers I found in various places. I print them on index cards. The kids who are old enough to read are welcome to select prayers from this pile and read them during prayer time. In this way, we give them some ownership over our choice of prayers, and we’re also training them to have variety in their prayer life.
I am particularly hopeful that my children will have various prayers memorized (prayers for the sick or the dead, for troubled times, or offered in joyful thanksgiving), so that whenever they need them, whatever happens, they’re always armed with the wise spiritual guidance and nourishment, we find in our rich Orthodox tradition.
These prayers that we read are not just one-way messages sent up to God, but they’re also little lessons in how to approach God; how to think about our struggles and our joys. They teach us the right attitude toward God and toward life, educating us on how to live a good life with God’s love and His peace. We are so blessed with a rich tradition of prayers that simultaneously express our thoughts to God and offer us guidance about how to think about things. Let’s make sure that our children are enjoying this blessing right along side us, and let us hope that they’ll have these words within easy reach whenever they come across a difficult situation or a bump in the road.
So whether you’re a Sunday School teacher offering parents a way to improve their family prayer life or a parent shepherding your own personal flock, let’s take the time to talk about prayer with children. Let’s tell them about how prayer will transform their hearts; how it will soften and warm them so that they can be filled up with God’s love and His mercy.
And then, let’s make sure that they have plenty of opportunities to pray, practicing right alongside their families and teachers. Let’s find ways to make them partners in family prayer routines. Let’s do what we can to equip these smallest saints through a good Orthodox life.
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