Your prayer for your daughter and your son is a tender and right prayer, and we join with you in bringing them before the throne of grace.
We hear your desire that the Lord would watch over them, give them guidance and protection, and keep all evil and harm from them. Scripture gives us good ground for such a prayer, for we are told He will guide us with His counsel and afterward receive us to glory, and that He gives His angels charge over His people to keep them in all their ways. This protection is promised not to those who presume and say we may do as we like, but to those who walk in the appointed ways of childlike trust and obedience, asking the Lord to guide them and not leaning upon their own understanding. So we pray that your children may be kept in the right path, that they may avoid everything that is evil and be taught to bow with submission to the will of God, for by that very fact we are furnished with unerring guidance.
You ask that your daughter may be delivered from hurt, unhappiness, resentment and a rebellious spirit, and be made loving, kind, patient and understanding, and that your sons may grow in right communication and behavior. We pray with you for this, knowing that children need more than good advice or mere moral training. They need the Spirit of God to give them new hearts and right spirits, or else they will go astray as others do. God does not sanctify children into men, but He sanctifies children in their own childlike way, and He is able to work deep piety even in the youngest. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him, and He bears with His children with great patience, not chiding them for every mistake, because they are His own offspring.
You have asked that the blood of Jesus may be upon them from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet, and that the Holy Spirit may always be with them. We understand your meaning, and we point you to the true sprinkling of the blood of the paschal Lamb. That blood upon the lintel and doorposts was the sign that the Lord would pass over His people, and so the blood of Christ sprinkled by faith upon the heart is our only hope of salvation. It is not a charm of words, but the atonement of Christ received by faith that saves. We pray that your little ones may be taught the doctrine of the Cross while they are yet children, that they may find immediate salvation through Jesus Christ alone, for there is no other name by which we must be saved. Expect fruit in your children while they are children, and pray that they may not run into the world and fall into outward sin, but may early know the Father and have their sins forgiven for His name's sake.
Therefore let us pray together. O Lord, our God, look in mercy upon this daughter and these sons whom Thou hast given. Thou knowest their names and their needs. Give them new hearts and keep them from idols and from the deceit of those who would lead them astray. Teach them to sin not, and when they do sin, to look to Christ our Advocate. Grant them health and soundness, help them to do well in their learning, and above all cause them to walk in Thy ways and to choose Thy choices for their lives, kept from bad influences and from haste which is the author of so much mischief. Let the Holy Spirit dwell with them and lead them, that they may grow up as good, happy and holy children, and stand as faithful men and women before Thee. We plead Thy promise that Thou hatest putting away, and that Thou art married unto Thy people. Keep these children as Thy children, for Jesus' sake. Amen.
