Praying for Your Family - Part two

​In my last blog, I laid the groundwork for the strategy of praying powerfully and effectively for your families and your children. The principles covered in the first blog are:

1. Satan is the number one enemy of our children and, therefore, also our families. 
2. Parents have been given the assignment to pray for their children every day.
3. God has given parents spiritual authority over all the works of the enemy in the Name of Jesus and a better position legally concerning their children under the age of 18.
4. We begin our prayer with thanksgiving.
5. As parents, walking in obedience to the assignment we have been given, we will thwart the devil’s plans to destroy our children.

After the prayer of thanksgiving (provided in the previous blog), I thank God for the full armor He has provided as I begin to put on the armor of God, piece by piece. In Jesus Name, I buckle about my waist the belt of truth (Ephesians 6:14), for you desire truth in the inmost parts (Psalm 51:6). You have promised that we will know the truth and the truth will set us free (John 8:32).

What does it mean to have truth in the inmost parts?  What is the inmost part? The inmost part of our being is our soul. Our soul is that part of us that is eternal.  In my book, In the Round Pen, there is a chapter entitled “He Knows Your Name”.  In that chapter, I explain why the soul is so important.

"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. (Jeremiah 1:5) The Hebrew word translated “knew” in this verse is “yada”; and it means “to have an intimate, experiential knowledge of.” (Strong's 3045) God knows everything about you because you were with Him before the universe was created. That part of you that is unique and eternal, your soul – that is your mind, will and emotions – was with Him in an intimate relationship that both of you were fully aware of and fully enjoyed before He ever placed you in your mother’s womb."

It is the soul of man that Jesus died to save.  It is the soul of man Satan desires to steal, kill and destroy.  Jesus is the Truth, so we want Him in the innermost part of our being. How does He get in there? The answer is: we invite Him to come into our inmost being.  We submit our will, our rights and all control to Him and we ask Him to bring the Light of His glory into our souls so that the eyes of our enemy are blinded and he cannot see to hit his mark. When Jesus lives in our soul, the Truth and the Light occupies that territory and leaves no room for Satan to get a foothold. The darkness has to flee.

But what about the bad things I’ve done? The memory of those things is always with me.  King David had those same thoughts after he sinned with Bathsheba.  What David did was to appeal to the One who had made him.  Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. (Psalm 51:7) Our God is a holy God and He desires His children be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:16). He doesn’t want us to remain in our sin or the darkness that enters our souls when we’ve tried to hide what we did.  He wants us to be clean.  And He has provided a way – through the cleansing of repentance, acknowledging that what we did was wrong and that He is justified in judging us for our actions.  The good news is that God would rather restore us to Himself than judge us for our sin!  That’s why we can come to Him anytime, anywhere with a humble heart and simply say, “Father, forgive me for all my sins.” He promises that when we do that, He will not only forgive us of our sins, He will put them under the blood of Jesus.  The blood literally blots out our sin!  But He doesn’t stop there.  He also promised He will remove the guilt of our sin (that’s the memory of our sin that Satan wants to use as a weapon to beat us up in our minds and make us feel guilty all the time so we can never live in the freedom Jesus provided for us on the Cross). But God says he removes that guilt as far away from us as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).  If you think about it, if you start going east around the world you will find you cannot go west!  But if you go north to the North Pole, you will eventually go south to the South Pole.  God knew that Truth before He wrote it in the Psalms!

We buckle the belt of Truth around our waist. That word translated “waist” or “loins” in the Greek is osphyn and it means “the reproductive, creative capacity of the renewed mind”. (Strong’s 3751) The belt of truth then becomes the necessary protective and productive tool that enables our children to grow and develop properly in their bodies, souls, and spirits, and achieve all they were created for.  The belt of truth binds them to the perfect will and purposes of God; and because the belt is Truth (it is the Truth that sets us free from the bondage of sin and death), our children can be free to become all they were created to be.

Now do you see why it is so important to buckle the belt of truth around our waist every day on behalf of our families and our children? Now do you understand why Satan does not want us to pray for our children? He wants not only to limit or confuse their understanding of their identity – who they were created to be, but he also wants to detour and disrupt their destiny so they never achieve their God-ordained potential.

Thank you, Father, for giving us the belt of truth that we and our children may be free to live our lives in the power of your limitless Love!
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Next time: The Breastplate of Righteousness, the Helmet of Salvation, and the Combat Boots
Blessings,
Linda