The Power Of Praying Parents – Part 2 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Only God can count the tears of parents whose kids have gone to the far country. Like the prodigal son in the Bible, their kids chose a path destined for failure. But there is great power in persistent prayer, and our God is a God who answers prayer.

Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, as you teach today on the power of praying parents, can you give us a word of hope?

Yes, Dave, I think I can. To everyone out there who is persistent in prayer, remember this, never interpret the silence of God as the indifference of God. He is hearing.

He is caring. Be persistent. We believe that these messages are so critical. Of course, the series is entitled Fighting for Your Family, and we've prepared a book, and this is one of the last days we are making it available. It includes the transcripts of these messages, also a study guide for some reflective questions, and in addition to that, a link so that you can listen to these messages again and again. Here's what you do.

Go to rtwoffer.com, or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now, because this series is so critical, and I believe in it so deeply, I'm going to be giving you this contact info again at the end of the message, but always remember, God answers prayer. Parents, what you need to do is to say to God, is there anything that we need to ask forgiveness for that has been part of the reason why our child is rebelling? Now, oftentimes, there is nothing. As I mentioned, excellent parents, you have four children in a family, one rebels, the other three follow God. How are you going to explain that?

It's not the fault of the parents, but sometimes the parents contribute to it. Years ago, I told you the story of a man who was sitting in the back row of a church. I always try to keep my eye on those of you at the back row and try to figure out, now, why are you sitting so far away? But I don't mind that as long as you can still hear me. Can you hear me back there?

I hope so. He was sitting in the back of a church, and 200 men were on their knees praying, and in anger, he said, God, you'll never get me. You'll never humble me. Well, later on, he told the story that God humbled him. God got him, to use his phrase. He had to go to five sons and to confess to every one of them his anger, his inconsistent discipline, the bad witness that he was to them. And as a result of that, new relationships were opened up, and pretty soon, the children began to warm up to him and warm up to God.

The first thing that you have to do is to say, Lord, change me. You see, when you look at the story here of the Canaanite woman, it's very clear that Jesus just didn't want to do a work in her child of deliverance from a demonic spirit. Jesus wanted to do a work in her too. He wanted to solicit from her the kind of brokenness, the worship falling before him, the kind of faith that he could commend. Jesus wanted that also in her life. So there are two people that God wants to change in a family. I remember a couple that confessed that the real reason why they were so angry with their child's rebellion is because of their pride. You know, here we have this nice family in church.

Everybody comes, everybody arrives at the same time, and we all go home, and now suddenly this nice family, this nice family has a girl like that. You've disgraced us. Parents, repent of that. The real issue is not whether or not your child disgraces you.

The real issue is whether your child has disgraced God and the gospel. And what we must do is to humble ourselves. So the first thing to pray is, God, change me. The second thing to pray is, Lord, he's yours.

He's yours. You know, I got a text the other day from a couple that's dealing with a 16-year-old that got into pornography and that whole mess, and they're trying to navigate their way through. Well, when you're 16 years old, you still take guidance from your parents and all, and I understand that, though it's becoming more and more difficult. But, you know, there comes a time in the life of a child where you have to relinquish.

That's the word that came to me yesterday afternoon. You have to relinquish that child and say, this child belongs to God. And there comes a time when you just simply say, you don't have to preach at him one more time about what he's doing is wrong. He's heard it a thousand times. He's rejected it a thousand times.

He knows, he knows, he knows, but he's decided to go in the opposite direction. Parents, God can do what you and I can't. He can do what you and I can't.

So you have to be willing to pray, Lord, he is yours. I think of this woman again in utter desperation. God, there's nothing that I can do to this child. There's nothing that I can say to the child or say to the demon, God, come, give me a crumb, say the word.

Give me a little bit of the overflow of your tremendous power. That's all that I'm asking for. And Jesus said, oh woman, great is your faith.

May it be to you as you've asked. All right, the second thing you pray is, Lord, he's yours. Third, Lord, change his heart.

Change his heart. Oftentimes what happens when we have a prodigal is this. You'll find that parents will say, now look at it.

If you sleep together, look at all of the implications or stop getting drunk on the weekends. Don't you see that you're going to get into trouble, yada, yada, yada. Doesn't work, does it? Don't you ever wish that you could compel the obedience of your child? Wouldn't it be great if we parents could make decisions for them so at last they'd get it right? I heard a few murmurs coming back from the congregation.

I assume you're still out there, are you? You know why you and I can't compel obedience is because we can't compel the human heart. In the immortal words of Woody Allen, the heart wants what the heart wants. And you can't shut down that want. So what you really need to do is to say, oh, God, change his heart. And that's something that only God can do.

You can't. How we wish we could, but we can't. If your child has never been converted, the Bible says that conversion is like causing the blind to see. Can you do that miracle? Can you cause a blind man to see? It's like causing the deaf to hear.

Can you cause the deaf to hear? It is like raising the dead. Can you cause the dead to rise?

I can't, and I've proved it. I told you years ago that I used to take young preachers to a cemetery and have them preach to the dead. Seriously, I wanted them to get the feel of what it was like to be a pastor. It came out a little differently than I intended, but you got the point.

I mean, I'm serious. I would go to the cemetery. I asked them, choose a tombstone. Preach to the dead.

See if you can get them to rise. The color drained from their face. I would do it then, and then they'd say, how do you feel?

They said, pretty stupid. I said, yeah, that's the way I feel too. And that's the way you feel when you preach the gospel, except for the fact God may cause a resurrection. If he doesn't, it's a lost cause. So if the prodigal is unconverted, you're praying for a miracle.

Change his heart. If he is converted, then he can prove it because once you're converted, you mourn more over your sin than the unconverted do. The unconverted don't mourn over their sin.

They're very comfortable with their sin. So what you pray is, Lord, change his heart. Number four, Lord, let sin run its course. Let sin run its course. Now, once a child is out of the home and old enough and on his way, you have to let sin run its course. One of the things you should never do is to help somebody in the far country enjoy the far country. The father of the prodigal didn't go out and say, you know, I just hate to see my kid eating with the pigs. I should go alongside and at least buy him a good meal. You know what brought the prodigal son home?

It was the smell of pigs and the bland diet that he shared with them. And he finally came to his senses and said, enough already. I'm going to return to my father. I wish he'd have had better motivation to come back to dad, but that was the motivation.

Now, once he got there, he was glad he did. Yesterday morning, I read a story about a widow who spent $200,000 including the mortgaging of her house to help her wayward son stay out of jail and to buy him out of all the trouble he got himself into all the time saying, well, mom, you know, if you do this one more time, I'll pay you back. I'll pay you back. Yada, yada, yada, $200,000.

According to the story, he's paid back about 1500. And now I suppose he's hitting on somebody else to bail him out. Sometimes sin has to run its course.

And people have to learn by experience that the way of the transgressor is hard. Next, what you have to say is, Lord, I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait to welcome him home.

And I mean both of those words. I'm going to wait and it may take years. And when he's ready to come home, I will be here to welcome him because I love him and I intercede for him. And I'll always be there for that child. Never when he comes home will he find the door closed in his face because he's humiliated us.

No, you're always welcome back and I'll wait for you to return. Now I can't speak and preach on the power of praying parents without making a reference to my own parents. One day when Rebecca and I had just been married a few years, she said, I want you to sit down. I have some news for you. And she said, I just got a phone call from Canada that your dad has cancer.

All right. So dad has cancer. So he's not going to probably live until their 50th anniversary. So the kids get together and they have a 45th anniversary because dad ain't going to live to number 50. Well, what happened was he went to church. The elders anointed him with oil and somehow for some strange reason, this tumor disappeared.

The doctor said, I don't know, it's not here, but come back every year to have it checked out. Now, so after having a 45th, we had a 50th and then for 55 we just took them out for dinner, but we had a big 60th and then we had a 65th and then we pulled out all the stops for a 70th and they lived seven years beyond that. My father did 77 years.

They lived together, but here's the deal at their 70th I'm sitting beside my mother. Everybody's there. They've come from all parts of the country. And I said, mother, do you know the names of all of your great grandchildren?

I didn't know who in the world all these kids belong to. And really, I'll never forget her response. She went like this with her hand.

Oh yeah. She said, I have a prayer list and I mentioned them to our heavenly father every day. When mother died at the age of 103, a day after her death, we found her prayer list. We took the prayer list and we photocopied it and we sent it to all of the children and the grandchildren and the great grandchildren.

She had on her list, 121 people. Also missionaries were on that list because we wanted the grandchildren to see that when they were born in her own handwriting, she added it to the list. We wanted to see, see you are on grandma's prayer list. I believe that my own life and ministry today is largely a result of praying parents. Now I have to say since then, Rebecca, my dear wife, has become a great prayer warrior, of course. And I also have to confess in all honesty that she prays more earnestly in intercession for our grandchildren than I do, though I do pray for our grandchildren every week, cycling them through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. But what is it that mother used to pray?

She spoke English, but she used to pray in German and I still hear her prayers. I know exactly what she prayed because she would pray this and I suppose I've heard something like this a hundred times. She would say, oh Lord, give my children, and then she often named them, a hunger and thirst, but not after bread and water. May they thirst for you and may they thirst for righteousness, she used to pour out her heart praying.

Hunger and thirst for righteousness. And then she'd always include this, which we as kids, oh, she'd say, may they flee from sin like one might flee from a serpent, she used to pray. And so my dear mother went to her grave praying for 121 people, perhaps not every day in her final closing months and years, but there it is, praying parents have tremendous power. Now, I have to say, we weren't the perfect family that everybody thought we were.

We had people fooled just like you have some people fooled too, right? But maybe that's why both of my sisters were missionaries, one in Africa, the other in Mexico each 30 years, brothers who walk with God, praying parents. I'm going to encourage you today by a story that comes 1600 years ago. There was a woman by the name of Monica. Monica was in an arranged marriage. She was a fervent Christian, but she married an unbeliever. She had three sons, three children, two walked with God, one didn't.

One ran off, lived immorally with a mistress and loved the sinful lifestyle of sexuality. Monica used to pray for her wayward son. She used to weep for her wayward son. One day she went to her bishop and her bishop said this, very famous words in church history.

Don't you wish you'd say something that people would still be quoting 1600 years from now? The bishop said, it is not possible that a son of so many tears would perish. Your son will be saved. A few years before she died, her son was saved. Apparently her husband was also before he died.

What she didn't know, and I always like this, what we die when we die, but we don't know. She didn't know that she had a son who would be so famous in church history that actually he would have more impact on Christianity than any man who ever lived apart from Jesus and Paul, maybe John the apostle. His name was Augustine, sometimes pronounced Augustine. I could talk about him and his impact, some of it good, some of it we would say wasn't good, but his influence, huge, huge as an apologist for the Christian faith.

And what happened was you probably heard me tell the story. He was in a garden and he overheard some kids playing and one said, one seemed to be saying, take up and read, take up and read. So Augustine turns to this passage. I hadn't planned to read it, but since I have a Bible here, I can.

It says, let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. And here he was deeply into desires and sexuality. He was so smitten with conviction. He was converted because it was not possible that a son of so many tears would perish.

Later on, when Augustine wrote his famous book, The Confessions, which everyone should read, he talked about his struggle with sin, but in it, he said, my mother watered the earth with her tears. The power of a praying parent, whether it's a Canaanite woman of 2000 years ago, Monica, 1600 years ago, or your life and my life, God is waiting for faith to put a stake in the ground saying, Satan, you will not have my child. I insist upon this and I will not stop praying and seeking. I will not be discounted and discouraged. And Jesus will say, oh woman, great is thy faith. Let it be to thee as you will.

And if you will, let us pray. Father, I stand here today giving gratitude to you for my own parents that prayed so fervently for us. And then I think of the many who perhaps don't have parents like that, but they can be moms and dads and grandparents who do intercede for their children. Lord, as the months and years go by, may we never be discouraged, but may we continue to intercede and say, Lord, we insist our child is yours.

Bring them back home. Meanwhile, Lord, there are many prodigals listening to this message right now. I pray that they may turn to Christ.

I pray that they might come to Father and home and to say, oh God, we have rebelled. And now before I close this prayer, could we have a moment and you talk to God? Would you pray for your prodigal? Would you pray for a prodigal? If you don't have one, would you pray, people?

I'm speaking to you. And if you've never received Christ or you're a prodigal, tell God what he's spoken to you about today. Father, we pray today that people may get alone with you in a bedroom outside somewhere and spill out their hearts for their families, for their children, for their relatives, for this church, for all of us. And may we, to the point of tears, seek your face that we might hear. Oh, let it be to you as you desire. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. From my heart to yours, for all who pray, who pray for their children, who pray for families, who pray for others, let us be encouraged and remember that God does honor persistence. We here at Running to Win are deeply committed to help you as you navigate the Christian life, especially as we are thinking about the family. The series of these messages is entitled Fighting for Your Family, and we have prepared a special resource, and this is one of the last days we are offering it. Here's what it includes, transcripts of all of these messages, in addition to that, a study guide with reflective questions and a link so that you can listen to these messages again and again.

And speaking about these messages, it includes sermons such as Dads in Charge, What Marriage Is and What It Isn't Till Debt Do Us Part, Children God's Gift, The Enemy in Your Home – that has to do with technology, also The Healing Power of God Regarding Abuse, The Kind of Issues That Many Families Are Facing. Now for a gift of any amount, you can receive this resource. Hope that you have a pencil in your hand, because I'm going to give you the info that you need to connect with us. Here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com for a gift of any amount.

These resources can be yours, or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. For all those of you who pray for this ministry, oftentimes I have the opportunity to speak outside of the city of Chicago.

People come up and they assure me of their persistent prayer. I thank you very, very deeply. And thank you for those who support this ministry. And thank you for those who help us get the message to thousands upon thousands of people.

Right now, go to RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. If the family is the bedrock of society, stable marriages are the bedrock of the family. That's why divorce is so damaging. In divorce, there are no winners. Next time on Running to Win, why marriage must be viewed as a lifetime proposition. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.