A Practical Guide for Praying Parents-Dr. Erwin Lutzer

Do you need help praying for your children? You're a practical guide for praying parents, today on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. All that you look at is your child and you have all this discouragement.

Look beyond them to God. God may take a lot of time to answer your prayers, might not be answered as quickly as you would like, but keep praying. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Today Dr. Erwin Lutzer provides a practical biblical approach to prayer that will encourage every parent.

His latest book is our featured resource at the website fivelovelanguages.com. And this is going to be such a shot in the arm for a mom or dad or maybe a grandparent who's frustrated with their inability to consistently pray for a son, a daughter, a grandson, or granddaughter. Our featured resource is a practical guide for praying parents.

You can go to fivelovelanguages.com. Gary, as a pastor, as a counselor, can you tell the difference when parents pray for their children? You know, Chris, it's not always, you're not always able to observe the answered prayers because you don't always know what the parents are praying for. But I tell you, when I do hear most often at weddings, I'll hear a parent say, I've been praying for that guy as long as I've had a child.

I've been praying for that gal. You know, they're praying for the spouse of their child, you know, and I think it's great, you know. But I think personally for me, I just think about the impact of my parents' prayers for me.

I remember my dad worked in a textile mill on the third shift from 11 o'clock at night to seven in the morning. So when I was getting ready to go to school, he was getting ready to go to bed in the morning, but he would always kneel by his bed. That was his stance when he prayed. And sometimes I would hear him call my name, and he prayed out loud, and I would hear him call my name. And I knew mom and dad prayed for me all through my journey, you know. So yeah, I believe in praying for your kids, and I'm excited about our conversation today, because I think parents are going to find some practical ideas that are going to help them really be effective in their prayers. I am excited as well, because we are joined by Pastor Emeritus of the Moody Church, Dr. Erwin Lutzer. You hear him on Running to Win, The Moody Church Hour, Songs in the Night, prolific and award-winning author of dozens of books, including Rescuing the Gospel, One Minute After You Die, When a Nation Forgets God, The Church in Babylon, and many others, our featured resource today is A Practical Guide for Praying Parents.

You can find out more at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Well, Dr. Lutzer, welcome back to Building Relationships. So glad to be with you today. I want to get right to really sometimes a hard subject, and that is, when we think about prayer and how it works, I think many times Christians are struggling with this. You know, if God knows everything, and if he has a sovereign plan, you know, at work, then why does he want us to pray?

How does prayer fit into that? Well, you know, you've asked a very interesting theological question, but isn't this interesting, Gary, that when Jesus was giving instruction as to how to pray, he said these words, he said, don't use repetition like the heathen do, because your Father already knows what you need. This is the way you pray. And then he leads into the Lord's Prayer.

Give us this day our daily bread, etc. So Jesus recognized that tension, but he certainly didn't say, you know, don't pray because your Father already knows. And the best we can do in terms of a quick answer is to say that prayer is one of the ways that God uses to accomplish everything that he knows, and to accomplish his will.

And you see this throughout the Scriptures. You see that the Apostle Paul talks about all that we have in Jesus Christ in the opening part of the book of Ephesians, and then he says, for these reasons I bow the knee, and then he basically prays that what God has promised is going to be fulfilled. Well, of course it's going to be fulfilled, but he prays that it will be. And effective prayer, therefore, is really, in many respects, echoing back to God his will. And that's why it's so important for us to pray Scriptures we'll be talking about today. So let's not let the fact that God knows everything and has planned everything, let's not fall into fatalism and not pray. The fact is that we live with the tension, that we have a sovereign God, but we also have human responsibility. And throughout the Scriptures, God led people to pray, and we should be open to that too. Even if we can't resolve all the tension, the fact is prayer is absolutely essential. It is the work that God does in our heart to accomplish his will. I hear you saying that very much like teaching and preaching, that prayer is a method that God uses to accomplish his will.

Exactly. And as we pray together, you know, in terms of the sovereignty of God and the means that God uses, let me give this illustration. God knows the exact day that I'm going to die. So does that mean that I stand on a tall building and jump off and say, well, it doesn't matter what I do because God knows when I'm going to die?

No. The way he keeps me alive until that date is by giving me enough brains to know that jumping off a building is a very bad idea. So all that we can say is that the end that God accomplished and the means are all woven together, and one of the means mentioned in Scripture repeatedly and examples given, one of the means is prayer. So many parents pray for their children, I think.

Others maybe not so much. Maybe where a parent is listening today and looking back and say, you know, I didn't pray for my kids very much when they're growing up, and I don't know. What would you say to that parent? Is it too late to start praying at any juncture?

Oh, the good news, Gary, is that the answer is no. In fact, I'll tell you exactly when you should begin if you haven't been praying for your parents, and that is today. Immediately after you've listened to this program, you can begin to pray, and as we shall explain, pray something different, pray Scripture, and not just say the same old thing in the same old way.

Yeah, yeah. How about you and your own personal life? Did you struggle with praying for your children, or did it come rather naturally for you? Well, in some sense, it came naturally, but I was brought up in a Christian home where my parents prayed every day. We had morning devotions before breakfast, and I don't know.

If we missed once or twice a year, that would have been unusual. They read the Bible in German. We prayed in English, but here's the point. God blessed them. I believe that my ministry today is still the result of their prayers, and maybe I'll talk about that later, but they did essentially pray the same thing. I can still hear them in German praying that we'll be kept from evil, that we might love God, that we might say no to temptation.

So when I got married and we had children, I tended to follow that pattern. You know, God blessed them, keep them, help them to love you, help them to do well in school, protect them physically. But you know, after a while, you say the same thing in the same old way, and you kind of lose your enthusiasm for prayer.

And I guess I shouldn't say this on moody radio, but it can actually become somewhat boring because, as I mentioned, you are saying the same thing in the same old way. So that's why the book that I've written, I feel so deeply about, and I know that I'm not the first one to say this. There are all kinds of books out there, I suppose, on this topic, but how do you give people a practical guide for praying parents where you excite them? Because what you are going to pray is Scripture, and it's going to be different every time. Well, I think that's one of the positive things about this book. It is practical. So you take an interesting approach in the book in addition to praying Scripture, and we're going to talk about that more later, but you decided on the idea of choosing a different topic each day of the week.

Tell us a little bit about that. Well, what I do is we have eight grandchildren, and so I pray for one every day. Saturday I pray for two. And usually I choose a passage of Scripture to begin the week, and I will pray that Scripture.

Right now, because recently I read the 55th chapter of the book of Isaiah where it says, come to the water, and you know, without money and without price it is all free. And then it says, why are you giving your life on that which is empty and your labor on that which doesn't satisfy? So I look at that and I say, you know what I'm going to do this week? I'm going to pray that my children will understand that the world, despite all of its allure, that the world can't keep its promises and all of its and all of its wells are dry. So I'm going to pray that God will—and of course you can use other passages, you know, 1 John where it talks about if you love the world you're an enemy of God—so why not this week pray against worldliness and that the children will understand that God is satisfying? So that's a different prayer. Previously, last week I was praying based on my reading of Ecclesiastes that they might fear the Lord and keep his commandments. So what you do is you read a passage of scripture, you look at it, and then you say, is this a passage that can be prayed? Now sometimes that may not work, but as you read your Bible every day it's amazing how you come across passages of scripture that obviously can be turned into prayers. So you pray for a different grandchild every day and two on Saturday, but you're using the same scripture for each one of them for that week?

Oftentimes I do, yes. I find a scripture and say this week this is going to be the prayers, but here's the advantage, Gary. The reason I pray for a different one every day is that prayer becomes applicable to each grandchild differently. They are in different ages, they are different stations of life, so you adapt the prayer in accordance with their other needs. So this isn't as if this is the only thing that you pray, but it's sort of the centrifugal force that gives your prayer some guidance and some direction. But then you'd be sure to pray also for other needs that they have, and for that each grandchild is different.

Dr. Lutzer, I'm a grandparent, you're a grandparent. One of the things I hear other grandparents saying to me, you know, my children aren't taking my grandchildren to church, they aren't reading the Bible to them, this greatly disturbs me. How should a grandparent in that situation be praying? Well, you know, in the book what I do is I talk about the fact that we should pray, first of all, for ourselves. It's so critical that we recognize that oftentimes children aren't walking with God because the parents aren't.

Now that's a different subject. But I would say this, what you have to pray for those children is a change of heart. Or if they are walking in disobedience, you can also pray, and I discuss both of these ideas, plus a couple of others, let sin run its course, let sin become bitter so that grace may become sweet. The simple fact is that when you look at the Scripture, the key idea has to do with a human heart. The heart is the place where people make up their minds.

Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. So always we have to ask, you know, getting back to my parents, here's another prayer they used to pray for us regularly, that we would have a hunger and thirst for righteousness, that there might be something changed within us that changes our desires. So if you're living with or you have grandchildren that are not walking with God, that's the way to pray. Pray that they'll have a different appetite, that they will find out that the world, as I mentioned earlier, can't keep its promises.

And what you always want to do is to make sure that it is a change of heart. But even before that, maybe, you have to pray that you yourself are changed. You know, somewhere here I need to tell the story here at Moody Church a number of years ago, on Wednesday evening, and this was for Wednesday evening prayer for a whole month, we had Pops. Pops is praying for prodigals, prodigal parents also. But the point is, parents of prodigals, they're the ones that came to pray.

I think I finally got it right. But here's the thing. I was so surprised, number one, we doubled our attendance, but number two, I was so surprised at the number of people who had prodigal children. And when a person stood up and talked about their child, I had their permission, I would interview them. Because what I was interested in is, why did this child go astray? Now sometimes there are no reasons that we can really determine. Sometimes children from good homes go astray. But I was surprised at the number of times we were able to identify what it is that turned those children off to God so that they walked away. So sometimes it is not necessary all the time to only pray for the child. We have to pray for the parents, and maybe there has to be restoration and forgiveness, because that's all part of the whole scenario. So a parent who has a prodigal son or daughter who's now grown and married and has a child, there might be a place for the grandparent to go to their child and apologize perhaps for their part in what brought them to where they are. Does that fit in with what you're saying?

Absolutely. I give the illustration, a true one of course, of a man who was sitting in the back of an auditorium, and 200 men were on their knees confessing their sins. And he took his fist and put it in his hand and said, God, you'll never get me.

Now why would a Christian say that? Well, he had five sons and a very hot temper. And he had disciplined the children, over-corrected them, no doubt, oftentimes inconsistently, and all the rest. And he knew that if God got him, he was going to have to go to every child individually and ask their forgiveness. And the reason that we know God got him is because he gave a testimony. And in the presence of his children, he humbled himself, asked their forgiveness, and that became a bridge then into their lives, whereby he could have some input again, and where he was able to direct them—I'm not sure exactly long-term how it all turned out—but it gave a new beginning in terms of their relationship, and also therefore opened up a brand new relationship for the children to have with God. So oftentimes what parents have to do is to look within and say, Lord, change your life.

Lord, change me. What is my contribution to my child's rebellion? And I think that's often the case. Let's take another scenario. Here is a parent whose spouse is not a believer in Christ. And now they're reading this book, the spouse is, and they're reading the book, their spouse is not reading the book.

What do you say to them in terms of praying for their children and perhaps their spouse as well? Well, again, what it has to be is you have to recognize—and this is so critical for parents, it's so critical for wives whose husbands may be unbelievers or maybe the other way around—you have to get over the idea that you can change their hearts. You know, the heart of man cannot be persuaded easily.

It was Churchill who said the desire to believe something is much greater than rational argument. So you can argue with them, you can explain to them, you can warn them about all the consequences, and the simple fact is the heart does what the heart wants to do. So always you have to recognize that God is the great heart changer. You can't change them, but God can. And there's no use trying to preach little sermons, you know, little reminders of this and that that sometimes just irritates the unbeliever. The fact is you live the Christian life and you keep committing them to God and praying that their hearts will be changed. No matter what passage of Scripture you use, it always boils down to a change of desires. So that parent, though they don't have the support of their spouse, can certainly still utilize everything you're saying in this book in praying for their children, even though their spouse is not joining them in those prayers.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. What I do is in this book I talk about prodigals quite extensively. I even talk about, you know, the woman, the Canaanite woman who had a child that was demonized. My desire is that all of us might learn to pray and to pray in a way that honors God. Now this also is in the book. It's just a couple of paragraphs, but when I get out of bed in the morning, before I do, I pray a prayer. I did this morning, O God, glorify yourself in my life today at my expense. And now I've added a verse, and I mention this in the book.

Isaiah 60 verse 1, Arise, shine, for thy light has come, and the glory of the Lord is upon thee. So what we want to do is to develop really people who worship God, who trust God, who pray very naturally, but who understand that there are some things we can do and there are some things that only God can do. And at some point, Gary, you might be asking me about another thing that I think is so important to pray, especially if you have a wayward child, is let sin run its course, may sin become bitter until grace becomes sweet. And I talk about how the prodigal son came to himself in the pigsty, and how important it is for people to recognize that sometimes being jailed, I could tell you stories about that, how that as children are in sin, in difficulty, that is the wake-up call that they have to turn to the Lord.

So you have to leave it to God as to how he wants to do it, but at the end of the day, it always has to do with praying for their heart change, recognizing that you can't change it, only God can. Another topic you discuss in the book, Dr. Lutzer, is the whole matter of praying for our country, and we're hearing a lot of talk about that today. I mean, everybody's saying, like, pray for our country, pray for our country.

I think we all sense that we need to be praying for our country, but what suggestions do you have in terms of praying for our country? Well, you know, in this book, I refer to the prayer of Daniel, so let me talk about that for just a moment. I think when it comes to praying for our country, it is so critical that we understand that God's message to us is one of repentance, and Daniel did that. He repented for his own sins. He even repented for the sins of his fathers. He goes on to talk about the fact that we have sinned collectively.

That did not negate the fact that he had sinned individually as well, but what we need to do is to pray for us spiritually and not just physically. You know, it's interesting, as a result of the COVID crisis, I've been involved now in many prayer meetings, virtual prayer meetings, with Zoom and so forth, and that's all wonderful. But isn't it interesting that spiritually the church can be weak, there can be leaven among us, there can be all kinds of worldliness and worldly values, and for some reason we're not desperate to pray? But let God touch our bodies. Let the possibility of COVID loom in our minds, and suddenly everybody is saying, oh, what we need to do is to pray. We need to pray. We need to pray for protection. We need to pray for this and that, and all those things are good to pray.

I don't want to be misunderstood. But at the end of the day, it is always the spiritual issues in our lives that God is most concerned about. But these are ways that God is getting our attention. He's getting our attention through COVID, through all kinds of issues regarding riots in our country, and we should be calling on God not just to clean things up, but to clean us up.

It is always His people that stand in great need. So a personal prayer I'm hearing you say probably ought to begin with, Lord, what needs to be changed in my life? Where do I need to confess wrong?

What do I need to be doing and thinking differently? And if we start there, then God leads us to intercede on the behalf of others. Absolutely. I think that, you know, there's nothing that is as important in our relationship to God than a clean heart. We come before God being cleansed, and then we enter into His presence for the benefit of others, for the benefit of ourselves. And we always recognize that we stand in need, and this keeps us humble. We stand in need. Because of that, others stand in need, and we stand in for them. And in the book there's a section on, you have to determine that Satan will not have your child.

And I use the Canaanite woman as an illustration of a woman who overcame all kinds of obstacles, but would not let go until she experienced the healing from Jesus that she sought. Dr. Lutzer, in the book you talk a bit about fasting as well, which is a question I think that many Christians have concern about. You know, is there something we should do, shouldn't do, how do you do it, what is the importance of fasting?

Why don't you just speak a few words about that too. What do you say, the importance of it, why is it important, and do we do it so there's a regular thing, or do we do it only when there's a real, we're in a crisis, or what do you say about fasting? Well first of all, to answer the last part of your question first, I think to some extent it's a matter of conscience, and it's a matter of disposition.

In other words, I would like to say that I don't know that there's a one formula that fits all. I know many people who fast, say, every Monday. That's wonderful, I don't do that. I do fast several times during the year, but I don't fast every Monday, so there has to be some leeway here. But we need to understand that fasting is a full-body response to God.

I think it has many dangers. You know, in the Old Testament, God was very upset with their fasting because they used fasting as kind of an excuse to cover their sin. Oh, I can do this over here, I can rob the widows from their rightful inheritance, but I'm fasting and thinking that somehow there was merit in the fact that they were fasting.

Well, there isn't. But there are times of desperation. There are times—and certainly we see this in Old Testament many, many times—where people said, I'm so desperate before God that I am willing to forgo food. Now, fasting has many wonderful physical benefits, but in the Scriptures, it always has spiritual benefit, where they say, I'm so desperate before God, I am going to fast, and I'm going to hold on to God through my fasting, so to speak, and I'm going to insist that He answer. Now, I don't think that we can always insist that God answers prayers.

In fact, there are many children that are prayed for, and perhaps those prayers aren't answered. But at the same time, fasting is a time of desperation, and our desire for God should even be a greater desire than our desire to eat. Here at the Moody Church, where I was pastor for many years, we would have a day of prayer and fasting, I think about three times a year. And what we would do is to help people to understand what fasting is, why we do it, and then we'd have a big prayer meeting on Wednesday evening when we all gathered together. And there was a wonderful response on the part of people, and we also told them that if you can't come to the church, you can fast on your own.

But what we need to do at times is, just as fasting cleanses the body, there are times when we have to have our soul cleansed, and so I think that fasting is appropriate if it's done for the right reasons. Yeah, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding, but I think what you're saying is that it really is a revelation of our own heart and where we are in our relationship with God. Let's move to this whole area of spiritual warfare. You discuss this in the book and how Satan desires to destroy our families. So define spiritual warfare, and why is this so important to understand? Well, when the Apostle Paul mentioned that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and against spiritual forces, he actually meant it. So oftentimes what we do is we think in terms of the individual. You know, my son is into drugs, or my son is doing this or he's doing that. We look at that and we feel so hopeless.

What we need to do is to recognize a couple of things. First of all, there's no doubt that demonic spirits are involved. As a matter of fact, Ananias and Sapphira lied, and lo and behold, they were struck down by God. And you remember Peter says, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? So what does the devil want to do? He wants to put thoughts into our minds, which we think are our own, so that we don't fear those thoughts. You know, when Ananias and Sapphira were there and having breakfast together and deciding that they were going to be somewhat deceptive, saying that they sold the land for a certain amount and implying that they were giving the entire amount to the church when they weren't, they didn't know that Satan had put these ideas into their minds. You know, if Satan were to come to us in all of his fury and say, I'm here to put these ideas into your minds to lie and to cheat and to commit adultery, we'd be terrified.

But it happens so surreptitiously that we don't even know what's happening, and we think those thoughts are ours. So when we pray, we really do have to pray against Satan. And, you know, the Apostle Paul, of course, talked about the fact that we need to pray that the eyes of the heart be enlightened and so forth. He talks in 2 Corinthians about the fact that the God of this world has blinded the minds of those who believe not.

So we have to minister and pray in light of spiritual warfare. Now, Gary, as you know in the book, the best illustration of all this, I think, is the woman of Cana. She knows that Jesus is coming, so she goes out of the house.

Now, this is in Tyre and Sidon. This is not in Israel, per se. She's a Gentile. She goes out, and lo and behold, Jesus is there, and she says, My child, my daughter, has a demon. And she went through various barriers to insist that Jesus heal her child.

This is an amazing story. I mean, for one thing, she broke the cultural barrier. Women didn't go out to see a group of 13 men, 13 Jewish men, coming. She broke a religious barrier. She was brought up in close to Baalbek, where I've been, in Lebanon, where they had the worship of Baal. That was her religion.

She didn't let that deter her. Was she a single mother? We don't know where the father was. Maybe he was dead.

Maybe he was out in the field. But the point is, oh, Gary, this is so important for all the single mothers who are listening. The point is this. She was doing what really her husband should have been doing, namely interceding on the basis of her child, taking that responsibility. She was doing that.

And there are single mothers out there who have to take the responsibility of the father. She did. The disciples said, Shut her up, because she's irritating us. Jesus was silent. Now, wait a moment. I'm going to ask all those who are listening this question. Does the silence of God discourage you from prayer? She recognized that the silence of Jesus didn't necessarily mean the indifference of Jesus. And then Jesus throws her this curve ball. In fact, there are liberals who say that Jesus was a racist. It is not good to take the food that is meant for the children and to throw it to the dogs.

Wow! The average person would have given up on that point and said, Look, if that's the way you feel, I'm out of here. Now, was Jesus a racist?

No. For one thing, he uses the word dog, puppy, instead of the word dog, which was used for scavenger dogs. But secondly, there's no doubt that Jesus went there and made that trip especially for her.

He was plotting mercy. And then she says this, and this touches my heart very deeply. She says, in effect, Don't take anything that belongs to the children, the Jews. Make sure that they are totally fed.

Just give me some crumbs that they won't miss. Well, what are you going to do with a woman like that? Jesus said, Oh, woman, great is your faith. Be it to you as you wish. And the Bible says she went back and her child was healed.

Here's a woman who simply would not take no for an answer. And today she shouts to us 2000 years later, Don't let Satan have your child. Don't give up even in the face of all the barriers that you have in your prayer life. Dr. Lotzer, you talk in the book about people who maybe have not read the Scriptures very much. Maybe they're young believers, or maybe they've just been, you know, lackadaisical in their relationship with God. And so we're talking about, and this book is talking about them reading Scripture and praying Scripture for their children, and for others as well, of course. But they don't know how to get started.

Where do I start? You know, what would you say to them just in terms of a suggestion? Where do you start if you'd really like to engage yourself in sincere prayer for your children? Well, if you're not used to praying Scripture, how about beginning with Psalm 23? And praying it and saying, Lord, I thank you that you are my shepherd.

I thank you that you lead me besides still waters. You lead me in the path of righteousness. And so what I'm doing is I'm praying this back to you, but I'm accepting this Psalm for myself, and I'm praying it back to you. And then what you can do, and you know, Gary, you asked me to be very basic here, so that's what I'm trying to do, is begin to pray Psalm 23 for your children. You know, I pray that Lord that they would be your sheep, that you would be able to guide them, grant them the faith to believe that when they walk through their deep valleys that you'll be with them.

So it's not difficult. This is not something that you need to go to seminary or Bible school to do. What you do is you take even the most familiar passages of Scripture and you turn them into praise and you turn them into prayer. And in this way you can begin a prayer life. And then as you begin to read the Bible, you come across passages and they are just there for you, and you begin to say, okay, now I understand that I can pray this prayer back to God. And so it becomes a relationship with God that is scriptural-based. It's not as if you don't ask God for other requests.

You know, that, of course, also happens. But the basic prayer is one that you have derived from the Scripture. And so I say to the person out there who feels a little bit intimidated, saying, how will I do this?

It can be done very simply. And after Psalm 23, you choose another passage. You know, I think it's very interesting that once you begin this journey of praying the Scriptures, it becomes easier and easier. But the subjects are changing and you're not doing what you suggested earlier in the program, just saying the same things to God every day, every day, every day. But the Scriptures are leading you to important things to really be praying for.

Exactly. And in the book, as you know, Gary, I actually give prayers. I have seven or eight prayers, one prayer for every day of the week, and then I give another prayer.

But here's the point. These prayers are examples. And parents can begin to pray those prayers that are basically written out for them based on Scripture. And it is not as if they pray the same prayer all the time.

Every Monday I pray this, every Tuesday I pray the same prayer. But what it does is it gives them a basis upon which they understand as to how it's done so then they can go off on their own. And in the book I also give some very, two at least, very powerful illustrations of how God answered the prayers of parents who continue to pray whose children were totally rebellious, on drugs, immoral, and how God brought them back. And I would say to the person out there who's discouraged, very important, look beyond your child to God. If all that you look at is your child and you have all this discouragement because of the way in which they're acting or doing, look beyond them to God, that's your focus. It's God's promises. And so you aren't discouraged.

Well, of course, you are discouraged, but your discouragement does not deter you from continuing to press toward the Lord, and you just keep believing Him even in the face of those kinds of discouragements. Yes. Dr. Lutz, as we get near the end of our time together, is there anything else you'd like to just say to parents or grandparents about praying for their children and the importance of that? You know, I want to use my own mother to answer that question. At their 70th anniversary, now my parents lived and had 77 years together, but at their 70th I was sitting beside my mother and I said, Mother, do you know the names of all of your grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all these kids were running around? And she waved her hand and she said, Oh yes, I have a prayer list and I mentioned them to God every day. When she died, we discovered her prayer list, dozens of people, every child, every grandchild, every great-grandchild, and some missionaries. And you know, I attribute my ministry today to the prayers of my mother and father. And when my father was a hundred years old, at Rebecca's suggestion, I knelt before him and got a blessing. He put his hand on my head and prayed an awesome prayer.

And I want to say to the parent out there that's discouraged. God may take a lot of time to answer your prayer, it might not be answered as quickly as you would like, but keep praying. When we prayed for prodigals here at Moody Church, we didn't see a lot of answers immediately, but months and even years later people told me about how God answered our prayers. So keep praying and don't be discouraged.

That's a good word. As we close the program, Dr. Lutzer, would you just pray for the parents who are listening today to this, that God would work in their heart and use this as an encouraging time for them? Our Father, we want to pray for ourselves as parents and grandparents, and we ask that you will birth in us such a desire for you that we might begin to pray. And help us to have the confidence to pray your word on behalf of others, for we read in your word that the effective prayer of a righteous man does avail much, a righteous man or woman. And we don't understand all the interaction between your sovereignty and answered prayer, but we will come before you persistently with faith, even with doubt, but we will come and we will intercede for our children and our grandchildren. O God, grant us the faith to not look at them, but to look at you and persist until the end for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Dr. Lutzer, thanks for being with us today, and thanks for taking the time to put this book together. I think it's going to be helpful to any parent or grandparent who has an interest in having this ministry in the life of their child or their grandchild. So thanks for being with us today. Thank you. You know, with all the important things that Dr. Lutzer has written about through the years, the weighty issues, this may be the most important thing that he has ever done. And a real help to you if you've been encouraged by the conversation, go to the website 5lovelanguages.com. You'll find a featured resource, a practical guide for praying parents.

Again, it's at 5lovelanguages.com. And next week, if your husband is addicted to pornography, don't miss our conversation. You'll hear how to fight for love and take your marriage back from porn. An important discussion in one week. A big thank you today to our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Todd. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in Chicago, in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.