The Power of Prayer in Your Daughter's Life

Often, I have found is that when our girls are learning how to be strong in the strength of the Lord, which is what we pray for them, is that God will take them through hard times.

He will allow hardships and suffering and trials. And as a mama, I got to tell you, I don't like those. I mean, if it was up to me, I'd say, no more. She's had too much. This is too much for her. But time and time again in our lives when our girls have learned to be strong in the Lord and have real strength that lasts and looks like the strength of Jesus, it's been the hard times that have prepared them better for the world that we're living in that is obviously coming against them on every level. Well, that's Stacey Thacker, and she's joining us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. She's going to help you better understand the power of prayer in the life of your teen daughter.

I'm John Fuller. John, I'm the dad of two boys, so I'm not quite sure what I'm getting into here, but it sounds like daughters need prayer. You know, we have three girls and my prayers for the girls tended to be, and still do, a little more intentional, a little more consistent. I don't know why that is.

That's interesting. It feels like we care about our daughters in a different way than our sons. Our sons are more like, stop that. Don't do that. Slow down.

Don't run. And daughters are more like, I'm praying for your heart, sweetheart. There's just more emotional connection. That's part of it. I think, too, daughters are just, there's a sense of vulnerability that I just need to cover them a little bit more in prayer. You know, you think about that in the context of social media and those things. I would think not having a daughter, but I would imagine having daughters, that that's a big scare. It's scare for boys, too, obviously, but just you hear so much about the bullying that occurs, especially with girls on social media.

And it just feels like a weight that's hard to carry. So I'm looking forward to today's program. I mean, FOCUS is here to help you as a parent to help do the best job you can do as a mom and dad in raising that daughter and son, too. We have plenty of resources if you're raising the boys. But today we're going to concentrate on raising healthy, emotional girls.

And we've got a great guest who's going to talk to us about this. Yes, Stacey Thacker is serving currently as the director of women's ministry at First Orlando. She's a wife and mother of four girls, ranging in age from 15 to 25, and is a very popular speaker. She's written a number of books. And today we're talking about praying for teen girls.

Partner with God for the heart of your daughter. And you can learn more about our guest in this excellent book. Just follow the links in the show notes. Stacey, welcome to FOCUS on the Family. Well thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here.

It's good to be here. I've been to your church two or three times to speak. And David, your pastor there at First Orlando. I heard you speak at our church the last time you were there.

So it was great. Thank you for coming and sharing with our church and being part of that. It's a powerful, dynamic church in the Orlando area. It's always fun to see churches that are having great impact.

And anyway, that's fun. Listen, that title of partnering with God, I think I want to start with that idea. What does God want of our daughters?

Oh wow. Well, I think he wants their hearts. I think he wants them to know him personally and experience him to the full in their everyday life. And I think what he wants from them is to love them as his daughters.

I often think with my girls, if they just grasp how much he loves them and how he chases after their heart, if they understand that at a deep level, it would change everything about their lives. Now on the other end of that equation, being the head of women's ministry at your church, you must hear from a lot of young women and women in general, obviously, about the challenges that they're having. What do they ask you to pray for for them? Well women come to me frequently to ask me to pray for their kids and pray for their relationships with their daughters or their sons. They ask me to pray for their marriages, for their work situations. But really, I think most women that come, they just want to have a safe place to know God and be known in community.

And so I think they're looking for those things and we're trying to create those spaces and places at our church to do those things for women. When you think of women, I often think of connection. I mean, Jean seems really well connected. I'm grateful that she has really good girlfriends.

And you know, we've had that chat before. I can't be your girlfriend. And of course, she doesn't expect that. I don't want to make it sound like she was, hey, be my girlfriend. But that's typical in marriage. Husbands cannot be women's girlfriends very well. We're just not wired for it. Is it important for women to have those kinds of relationships where they can get fed and feed others in that kind of intimacy?

I 100% believe so. I think being deeply connected helps you be deeply rooted in the body of Christ. I mean, God set up our community, I would say the church community for our good. He wants us to walk in community. God is three in one. And so I think that's such a demonstration. He set man and woman together in the garden. And there's always been this lean towards community.

And I think we walk with him best in community. It's true for women. It's true for men. And it's also true for our teenagers, whether they're boys or girls, they need each other.

When you're looking at the trouble that girls are in, I mean, we've heard a lot in the culture about boys being in trouble. They're not finishing school at the same rates that they used to. They're not going to college at the same rates they used to.

They're not doing grad school, etc. So we've heard a lot about that. We kind of as a culture lost where the girls are. You've got some of those stats.

Tell us about it. Well, they are startling. To be honest, when I was doing a little bit of research on this, I was taken aback by some of the statistics. But according to the CDC that girls are facing mental health crisis, that is putting them at risk to be more vulnerable, even compared to teenage boys. And at their same age, the suicide rate is up. There are so many issues with anxiety for girls these days.

I'm just seeing that in the culture. Now, if you were to look at a teenager's Instagram, for example, you might not get that impression because they're living their best lives, or so they want you to think. But if you know anybody that's raising a teen girl today, they will tell you a very different story. They will tell you that girls are anxious, that they're fearful of their future, that they're trying to fit in, that they're struggling with their worth and who they are.

And so these are things no mother, no dad, no grandmother wants to hear. But it's the true story of what's really happening in the undercurrent of their lives. One of those data points that I read was 57%. I think this was a research from 2021 that 57% of girls felt persistently sad or hopeless. 57%. It's a big number. Yeah, it's interesting. When I shared these statistics with my girls and my two youngest who are both teenagers, I said, Do you think girls today feel strong?

And both of them, I mean, their response was so quick, was absolutely not. I think girls today feel the opposite of strong. I think they feel very weak. And so it's a scary statistic. It doesn't have to be where we land, you know, eternally or every day in our everyday life. But it is a statistic that I think we need to be aware of and know that that's really what they're dealing with on a daily basis. Talk about the power of prayer with a mom and her daughters. I mean, I'm sure that's true.

Dad's and their daughters. But the power of prayer for that teen daughter, let's say, it can be a little dicey to engage in that. But hopefully you've created an environment where it's normal. And you can say, hun, let's pray about that. But talk about first doing that, creating an atmosphere of prayer with your daughter and then actually praying with her.

Well, I think first of all, modeling it is one of the things that is very important. If your daughter sees you praying and going to the Lord. Some of my best prayer times have been in the car when we're going somewhere as a family or just the two of us. I really think my best discipleship happens while we're driving and we drive a lot in Orlando.

So I have a lot of opportunity to do that. There's something about both facing the same direction and willing to talk to mom and kind of share some things on their hearts. But I feel like for my girls, them seeing me pray. And I asked my girls just recently, I said, you know, what does it mean to have a mom who prays for you?

Like, what does that mean to you? And one of my girls said, you know, just knowing that I am safe and secure and you care enough to pray and to have my best interest at heart and to ask God on my behalf for the things that I need in my life. She said, that makes me feel so special. And my other daughter said, you know, it's been the best way you've imparted your faith to us is for us to see you in prayer in the word every day and knowing that you're praying for us.

It just makes everything feel a little bit better on a daily basis. And so I think for my girls praying with them, asking them, one of the things I'll do is I'll say, hey, well, how can I pray for you? Is there something coming up? Is there a test?

Is there an issue with friends? Now, honestly, if I just listen to them chatter, I can usually pick up on the things that they need to be prayed for just by them going back and forth with each other or with their friends as being a good listener. Being a good listener is so important. So that's good. You use an acronym just to make it simple.

That's the only purpose you would do that. But it's SOFT. What does SOFT stand for in the prayer for your daughter acronym?

Well, I will tell you that I love a good acronym and it helps me remember the acronym and, you know, that being said, sometimes we even forget those. But the S is that she would see others. So the idea of being soft is it's one of the prayers that I pray for my girls is that they would be kind and compassionate, that they would be empathetic, that they would move towards people who are hurting.

You know, this is a part of who Jesus is that I want to see in and through their lives woven in their lives. We want our girls to be strong for sure. But I think with that, we also want them to exhibit a softness in their life. So the S is that they would see others and they would move towards hurting people. The O is that they would offer an appropriate response. You know, we look at girls and we think, oh, they're emotional.

They, you know, gossip or whatever. And some of that emotionality is true, but that they would take a deep breath, that they would offer appropriate responses, not only to mom and dad, but also to their friends and whatever is going on in their lives. Just kind of a, just to kind of step back and assess a situation. The F is that they would understand that their feelings are not bad or evil, that God gave us feelings, they're indicators, not dictators. And so that they would experience their feelings in a healthy way. And sometimes they have big feelings and you need to give them the space to just feel the feelings and then maybe come back a little bit later and have a conversation when we're not feeling the feelings quite so big. Maybe go journal about your feelings or write through what you're thinking and feeling right now.

And the T is to take time to recover and rest. You know, our girls are so busy. I mean, if you have met a teenage girl lately, her calendar is busy. She's got school, she's got classes, she might be in college, she's probably serving in some way because this generation loves to serve.

I know my girls do. And they've got friends they're keeping up with, they've got social activities. They are busy.

They might have sports, dance, whatever they do. And they're tired. And so we need to give them that space to have time to recover.

I like that. The other aspect of prayer, and certainly for us as Christians, the spiritual dimension, there are, you know, forces that work against us, the evil one, right, the enemy of our soul. And when you get into this arena of praying for your daughter, you're probably going to encounter some things or she will too.

How does a praying mom manage that and talk about it with her daughter? Well, you know, that's something we talk about a lot at our house is that we don't, we're not afraid of the enemy. We know how to be equipped to handle that. But when you start praying, you can be sure that the enemy will try to keep you busy. He'll distract you.

He might even start messing a little bit with your family with little things or big things. And that's not something to be afraid of. It's something to be aware of and to know if we look at Ephesians 6, and we put that armor on every day, that we think through those things, understanding that the battle that we're facing is not flesh and blood. You know, enemy likes to stir things up.

That's what I would say. And we need to be prepared and understanding beforehand that it could come against us. It doesn't mean you don't pray, obviously. It means that you maybe double up on your prayer and pray very intentionally for you.

You know, an application of that could be, and I love Galatians 5, you get both fruits, the fruit of our Lord, you know, love, joy, peace, goodness, those things, and the fruit of the enemy, which is division, disunity, lying, all those things. I can only imagine, as you mentioned a moment ago about a daughter and friendships, sometimes those go wrong. Did your daughter, your daughter's had an experience like that, I'm sure.

Every single one of my girls have had a friendship blow up or go sideways. This is normal, right? Of course, you know, there was a time when one of my girls was, I could hear her from the other room crying, and I thought, what in the world is going on?

I followed the sound of her voice, and she was in the bathroom with the door locked. And, you know, you sit there as a mom, and you're like, oh, am I going to make this better? Am I going to make this worse?

Like, how do I approach this? Lord, give me the words, give me wisdom, help me know what to say, let me move towards her in kindness and compassion, and just, you know, give me strength in this moment, Lord. And so I, you know, knocked on the door and I said, you know, do you want to talk about it?

She didn't say anything, but she opened the door crack and just handed me her phone. And so the emotion and the blow up in her life came in the form of a text from a group of friends, and it was tragic and hard, and I mean, even as an adult to have friendships that are, you struggle in friendships, this is hard, but when it's your child, it's even harder because, you know, I'm going to say maybe my mama bear kind of rose up a little bit and wanted to defend her or to go call the other mom or fix the problem, as you said, but I have found if I take a step back and I offer a prayer, I pray with her, and we're able to find a solution in some way that we can move forward through the situation, and what's just really interesting is to watch them grow through that process. It's a beautiful thing, and it's something that even sometimes adults don't know how to do, and I think it's important for us to model that for them, but at the same time, we can learn alongside them as they're going through those things.

We don't have to have all the answers. God is so gracious. I mean, so many times, you mentioned my pastor, he calls it crisis grace, that you get in those moments and you think, I don't know what I'm going to say or do, but the Lord just, he just drops that deposit of grace into your life right at that moment so that you can actually know how to parent through that and what to say, and there's so many times I've gone in those situations and thought, I have no idea what to do here, Lord, and I hear myself saying something, and I go, okay, that's the Lord. That's that crisis grace that he's told me about.

God always meets you in those moments. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and we're talking obviously about prayer and about teen girls and really needing our prayers and how to model that and pray with them. Our guest is Stacey Thacker, and she's written a terrific book praying for teen girls. It's all about partnering with God, and we want to get a copy of this book into your hands.

The details for getting that book are in the show notes. What's the problem with the world's definition of empowerment? That's a little redundant, but today I just read a story where the headline was, Fewer Women Interested in Finding Husbands. You think about the just the drip, drip, drip against what the Bible talks about, you know, that the two shall become one flesh, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and just the way the culture is trying to undo all of that. I think it's going to be, you know, significantly detrimental, but even now for couples who would normally seek each other out, get married, have children, that's becoming an uphill battle for people to do. So what about that influence on young women today, girls about the future prospect of marriage and babies? I mean, fewer young girls are wanting to have children. Yeah, I think if we look at just from a cultural, if we take a cultural snapshot of what is happening today, I think we can get the idea that our girls need to be powerful within themselves and they need to, you know, own it and go after and have big goals and all those sorts of things. I think that is, the culture wants us to think that that's all there is, right? And so as we look at our girls and that kind of power that comes from achievements or goals or, you know, lots of education or whatever, it's thin in the sense that it doesn't last forever. At some point, that is going to run out.

Even your skill set is going to run out, right? But I think scripturally, if we look at the Word and what God wants us to be powered within from the Holy Spirit, it's a different kind of power. And often I have found is that when our girls are learning how to be strong in the strength of the Lord, which is what we pray for them, is that God will take them through hard times.

He will allow hardships and suffering and trials. And as a mama, I got to tell you, I don't like those. I mean, if it was up to me, I'd say, no more. She's had too much.

This is too much for her. But time and time again in our lives, when our girls have learned to be strong in the Lord and have real strength that lasts and looks like the strength of Jesus, it's been the hard times that have prepared them better for the world that we're living in that is obviously coming against them on every level. You mentioned in the book a difficult time of prayer that you had and you described that.

Tell us that story. Yeah, our family went through several different trials within about the timeframe of about three years. And we lost my dad 11 years ago. He battled cancer for years and then died suddenly. And so that was a hard grieving year. And so my girls were very close to my dad. And so losing grandpa was tough. It was tough. It was tough on me losing my dad at a fairly young age at the time. And about a year after that, right on the heels of kind of feeling like I'd grieved heavily, one of my girls and at the time she was only eight was diagnosed with a chronic illness that is still hard today. And it's been, you know, went from losing my dad to trusting God with my past. And here I'm looking at my baby girl in a hospital bed thinking, I got to trust him with my future.

Now this her future. And so as I watched her struggle through those things, and we marked out a path of a couple years to kind of get in front of that chronic illness, we were just kind of feeling like we might be gaining some traction. And my husband suffered a sudden cardiac arrest about within that third year timeframe.

And it was totally unexpected. He ended up being in the hospital for a month, he was in a coma for eight days. And those three things right there succession of trials watching my girls at such a young age work through some of the hardest things that I've gone through as an adult or in my entire life, and walking through that with them and having hard conversations about whether their dad was going to make it or not. We're very, very blessed and grateful that God chose to spare him. But the last several years have been hard because we've had to watch with two major medical traumas in our family's life, the domino effect of that and how that hits a family in every way. Have your daughters seen prayer work in that situation? Well they've seen the power of prayer and miracles.

I mean, we've experienced unbelievable miracles for sure. And in many of those situations, just from a daily perspective, the things that we needed, God provided, people would show up with gifts, financial gifts, they would show up with, you know, groceries, different things, just providing different things for us. And in the years, the lean years or the years in the wilderness, I would normally call those years, is that they watched us on our knees praying and God showing up consistently and answering not just miraculously, but through the people, through our church, through friends, people that carried us along when really we couldn't do it. I would just say also as well, in that season, God showed me that I didn't have to figure it out, that I didn't have to be the one to hold my family together. I think as moms, sometimes we feel that. And I have been reminded in those hardest days when I was on the bathroom floor, literally, as low as I could go, that God was reminding me that he's the one that holds us and he holds all things together.

And I can trust that with him and with my girls, my family. You know what you're leaning into there, I think is something I call the curse of Eve. And we can all be prone to this. I don't mean to disparage anybody, but I think my experience has been control is an issue for moms and for wives. And it's just part of that makeup and your, you know, I think your God-given desire and willingness to be there and be present and be in it. But it can spill over to control and control is good to a point and then control can be bad.

As a mom, have you experienced that? I mean, you're kind of alluding to that. The Lord's kind of pulling that away from you. Did you have another aha moment when you learned, okay, Lord, yeah, I don't have this.

You've got to take it. Well, that series of trials pretty much did that for me. But I would say control is based in fear. And I think for, at least for me, I'll speak personally, fear has dominated many areas of my life. And so for me to look and go, okay, I can't fix this problem.

I'm going to trust you and to shift from fear to trust. And that's what happens in prayer is we come to the Lord and we say, look, I don't have the answers here. And I may be hanging by a thread and finding myself just like the thread is pulling out of my hand. And God is saying, I got this, trust me. And it's that, you know, that idea of the trust fall when you fall back and someone catches you is that God always catches us and he's always in control. We just think in our minds that we have it all together. And it's usually for me rooted in that fear that something's going to happen and then I'm going to have to pick up the pieces. But I can tell you, having the pieces completely fallen apart is that God is so faithful.

He is so faithful every single day. Was your daughter's mission trip that she took at 17 rooted in some of this? Well, the idea of her going was rooted in fear. And I remember when she came up and she said, I'm thinking about doing this.

I want to go. You know, you play that game of what if, what if she goes? And what if the plane crashes? And what if something happens while she's in another country? Like those fears, the what if games are real.

And I mean, I can play those all day long. But I think at the end of the day, and this is where I've come to again and again with my girls, is that God loves them more than I do. And he is the father in heaven.

And if he has called her to go on a mission trip, then I want her to go. I mean, I went in college. I went overseas. I did those things. And my parents said yes.

And it changed my life. And I want those for my girls. I want them to live in that place of dependence and trust in the Lord. And so if God wants to call them to that, I want to be the kind of mom says, I support you. I'll pray for you. I'll miss you. And I'll be here when you get home.

Yeah, which is so good. Stacey, right at the end here, I'm sure many moms are listening. You know, either watching us on YouTube or listening to a program. The mom that struggles with this, it just hasn't been natural. You know, for whatever reason, maybe she's more introverted. It could be that simple. And she just hasn't thought about praying with her daughter.

How does she get that movement? How does she say, honey, you know, I know you're 13. And I just want to change something in our relationship. I'd like to be praying for you. What are some things I could pray for?

How do you get that going and keep it going to where it's meaningful and makes a difference? Well, there's a couple different ways you could do that. You could literally get a journal and you could write back and forth, say, here's a prayer that I'm praying for you. I think also you could text.

I mean, they're on their phones. You could text them. You could say, hey, I know you have a test today. How can I pray for you? Just ask. I think even if she pulls back and doesn't answer, at least she knows you care. At least she knows that you're willing to go to the Lord and ask for favor on her behalf.

So I think you ask. I think also there's a verse in Psalms that I love. And I think as moms, it's such a picture of God's heart for us. It's Psalms 116 2. And it says, because he bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath. And I look at our Father's heart towards us that he's leaning down to listen to us, just waiting for us to share our hearts, to pour out our hearts, to put our requests before him because he's that kind of father.

That's the kind of mom I want to be. I want to be open and available. And my girls may not respond. They may not have time for me. They may miss the fact that I've asked them to pray. But then I can come up with some things that I know are good for them, to pray for them, even if they don't respond. And then I think if you're bold enough, I'm telling you, praying in the car, it's a beautiful thing. Just say, hey, let's just pray about that and just do it naturally.

It doesn't have to be eloquent. You don't have to sound like your pastor. You just have to sound like mom, just taking those requests.

And as you get in the habit of doing that as a mom, it'll become much more natural to that with your daughter. Stacey, thanks for being with us. I mean, this flew by and it's such a great reminder of how to create an atmosphere of prayer in your home and your relationship with your daughters, but sons too.

I mean, same thing counts. And I just want to remind our listeners and our viewers that focus on the family is here for you. You might be dealing with some more serious parenting issues.

You know, I think our data in the last 12 months, we were able to help 160,000 parents in a crisis. Be one of them. Let us stand with you and pray with you and give you guidance if you need it. And it will be biblically based. I can assure you of that.

And just know you're not going to embarrass yourself. We're here for you and call us if you need us. And there's additional resources. Of course, there's a great book by Stacey, praying for teen girls. And we would love to get that into your hands. If you can make a gift of any amount, if you could do something monthly, that's great. Let's do ministry together.

One-time gift is fine. If you need this book, you can't afford it. We'll get it to you and trust others.

We'll cover the cost of that. Just contact us. And you'll find contact information and ways to donate and connect with us all in the show notes. And if your summer vacation happens to bring you through Colorado, please consider visiting our campus here at Focus on the Family. You can take a tour, visit our welcome center and bookstore, and maybe even catch a recording of a program like this one.

Be sure to stop by and say hello. And coming up next time, Becky Harling will offer some tips on ways to combat loneliness. You have to learn how to have that eye-to-eye conversation where we're making the other person feel heard.

Because if they don't feel heard, they're not going to feel loved. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. If the fights with your spouse have become unbearable, if you feel like you can't take it anymore, there's still hope. Hope-restored marriage intensives have helped thousands of couples like yours. Our biblically-based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face them together. Call us at 1-866-875-2915. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. That's 1-866-875-2915.