Praying Circles Around Your Children -Week One
Week One, Chapter 4
I have been excited about doing this study together! for this week, read up to and including Chapter 4. It’s a quick read. If you don’t have the book, no worries, join me anyway!
The first Circle: Circling the Promises
“Drawing prayer circles is a metaphor that simply means “to pray without ceasing.””
Before the Guire family adopted, I prayed specific prayers concerning spiritual health for my biological children
– to grow in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man
– to accept Jesus as their savior at an early age
– to have the discipline and desire to study and read the Word
along with prayers for physical health:
-healing from various diseases and sicknesses
-protection physically, mentally and spiritually
When I began the adoption journey, I began to pray for children who would become of my forever family that I had never met, never been to their country, their home, met the friends or family or seen a picture of. I didn’t even know their names. WOW! Talk about waving a sword in the dark. I looked back in my old pre-adoption journals. I wrote a lot of general- let them be fed, warm and have someone to take care of them prayers. Then the Holy Spirit quietly prodded me to begin to pray for their inner healing as well as their outer well being.
I began to pray from Ephesians 3:16-19 for my pre-adopted children as well as my biological children.
“May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell (settle down, abide, make his permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love,
That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God’s devoted people, the experience of that love] what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of it]: (emphasis mine)
[That you may really come]to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ which surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!
Powerful WORD!
I prayed that my pre-adopted children would be healed from the wounds of the past….hearts, minds and bodies healed. (Isaiah 61).
Remember God is:
Omnipresent- all present
Omnipotent- all powerful
Omniscient- all knowing
He was there when my pre-adopted children experienced hideous trauma. He can transcend time and heal the brokenness. I have seen it. Nothing is impossible with God. If you find your child in a situation that seems hopeless, too bleak to endure for another day, too painful for the family to handle, if you have a secret of a wound so deep you are afraid to bring it out into the light, a past full of regret the impedes your parenting, then get out your pen and circle. Circle the promises of God for you and for your children. I’m doing it with you! I’m praying for you!
“And their offspring shall be known among the nations and their descendants among the peoples. All who see them [in their prosperity] will recognize and acknowledge that they are the people whom the Lord has blessed.” Isaiah 61: 9
*I’ll be sharing more on Monday, March 16th