A New Year’s Prayer for Moms
(Reposted from January 1, 2013)
Father God,
You are holy, awesome, and loving.
You are wise, kind, and good.
Your ways are perfect, and Your judgments are just.
We begin the new year by bowing before You in praise,
Offering You all of ourselves—
Our bodies, souls, and spirits,
Our desires, thoughts, and actions,
Our very lives.
We need you, Lord.
We need Your love, mercy, and faithfulness.
We need Your wisdom and instruction.
We need You, for You are Life Itself.
Teach us to know You, to love You, and to seek You,
Until doing so becomes as natural for us
As breathing.
May we breathe You into our spirit,
Allowing You fill our lives,
And then breathe You out to our precious children.
We want them to see You in us,
To know You through us,
And then to love You with us.
Lord, we confess that as we shepherd Your littlest sheep,
We desperately need Your help every day.
Every moment.
We deeply desire to love them as You would—
With infinite patience, creativity, and kindness.
But we don’t have the wisdom to rightly love our children.
Apart from You, we don’t have the generosity or unselfishness.
Often, we lack the energy.
We need You to strengthen and encourage us.
We need You to teach us.
We need You to forgive us when we fail.
We need You to make us the moms You desire us to be—
The moms our children deserve.
We want to do what is right for Your lambs.
And we know that You want that even more,
Because You love our children
Even more than we do.
You created them, You love them,
And You’ve given us the privilege of shepherding them
For awhile.
We humbly and gratefully acknowledge the gift of our children,
And we ask You to make us worthy of that gift,
This year and every year.
May everything we do as a mom
Be for their benefit
And for Your glory.
This we ask in the name of Your precious Son, Jesus,
Who once needed a mother’s love too.
Amen.
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