Jennifer Flanders

Anybody who’s known me long knows I’m a huge believer in the power of prayer. God’s Word encourages us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and urges us to “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

So that is what I try to do.

When faced with trials or worries of any kind, I want prayer to be my first response, not my last resort. I want intercession and thanksgiving and praise to be my default reaction. The song of my soul. The habit of my heart.

My past thirty years of child training has provided me with ample opportunity to practice praying. To bring before God requests big and small. To beg of Him the wisdom and strength and patience I naturally lack, but desperately need to parent the children He had placed in my care.

I pray, not only on my own behalf, but also on behalf of my children — that God would meet their needs and mold their hearts and make them into the men and women He meant them to be.

My prayers do not stop when my children leave home. Rather, they multiply.

Over the years, I’ve printed a lot of prayer guides on my blog for people to use in praying Scripture over their spouses, their children, their parents, their pastor, their country, etc.

Recently, a reader wrote and asked if I’d please publish a prayer plan for parents of adult children, as well. It’s truly an oversight I hadn’t done that already.

So today I’m sharing some of the prayers my husband and I have voiced for our adult offspring over the years. I’ve divided these requests into sections that form an acrostic — A.D.U.L.T. — to make them easier to remember:

A is for Attitude. We pray the Lord will give our grown children a spirit of gratitude, a heart that’s inclined to rejoicing, and a mind that dwells on the positive: the good, the lovely, the noble, the true, the praiseworthy. We pray they’d adopt an outlook on life that is perpetually sunny in that it stays perpetually focused on the Son, the Light of the World, the Lord Jesus Christ.

D is for Diligence. We pray God would give our children a heart to work hard. That they’d be disciplined and dependable in discharging whatever duties He assigns to them. That they’d do their work heartily — as unto the Lord — and cheerfully, without grumbling or complaining. That they’d invest their time, talents, and resources wisely and would be faithful, competent, and compassionate laborers, doing whatever God calls them to do with excellence and integrity.

U is for Understanding. We pray God would give these young adults a spirit of discernment and grant them wisdom beyond their years. We pray they will seek hard after the Truth and never forsake it. That God would add to their faith virtue and to their virtue knowledge. That He would give them eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart that is ever attuned to His still, small voice. That they would love His Word and commit it to memory and meditate on it in the night watches and seek to live by it every moment of every day.

L is for Love. We pray that love would be the defining characteristic of our adult children’s lives. That they would love God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength, and would love their neighbors as they love themselves. We pray that Jesus would give them a heart wholly sold out to Him. That He would help them to follow in His footsteps and learn to forgive. That He would enable them to love their enemies and pray earnestly for those who persecute or despitefully use them, but that He would also teach them — just as importantly — to love those people who irritate, annoy, or rub them the wrong way.

T is for Testimony. We pray that our grown children will glorify God in everything they do. That they’ll value a good name above great riches, renouncing pride and hypocrisy and demonstrating the same virtue and moral strength of character in their private lives as they wish to be known for in public. That they’ll be quick to confess and repent of sin, acknowledging their utter dependence upon God for grace, mercy, strength, and endurance to stay the course, never failing to give all praise and glory and honor to Him. That their lives will continually point others to Jesus.

Jennifer Flanders offers pretty, free printable versions of all her prayer guides on her blog, Loving Life at Home. Please visit https://bit.ly/prayerprintables to download yours today.