Valentine's Prayers for My Children by Lynn Dove

I believe in the power of what I call "Valentine's Prayers" for each of my children. Praying they would one day find their lifetime Valentine just like I found mine thirty-five years ago!

From the day my children were born, I began praying for their future spouses. Some may call it odd to be praying for two boys and one girl, whom I had never met, nor would likely meet until my two daughters and my son introduced the "love of their life" to me for the first time. The thing is, if I believe that God has mapped out a plan for my three children and if it is His purpose to see them married, I believe He has also chosen a perfect spouse for each of them.

I know that we live in a culture where there seems to be a tension between what God's plan is and our "choices" and I will admit that when my kids started bringing home their friends and I met prospective "dates", I wasn't sure if God's plan and their choice meshed. Still, I prayed that if God was directing their steps, He would also eventually lead them to the "right" one.

By God's design, when my oldest daughter was in university, she started dating a six foot seven young man who had (and still has) the healthiest appetite we had ever seen. He was not a Christian and that concerned me greatly. I questioned God's plan and wondered why my prayer for a Godly spouse for her seemed to go awry. I needn't have feared...

My daughter knew she could not continue a relationship with a non-Christian and urged him to attend Alpha classes with her and weeks later he accepted the Lord. In their ten years of marriage, my tall son-in-law has attended seminary and attained a Bachelor of Christian Ministry and is serving the Lord as a licensed Biblical Counsellor. My daughter and he are Godly parents to my two grandbabies and I praise God for the boy I prayed for when my daughter was only days old.

My son, started attending a Christian school in Grade eight and a few days later I was introduced to his new friend, a sweet girl with a wide smile and a mouth full of braces. Their friendship grew through high school and into university and we praise God that we will be blessed to welcome a new daughter-in-law into our family on August 10th, 2014. She is a girl who loves God with all her heart, mind, soul and strength and who loves my son. She is the answer to my prayers for my son while I rocked him in my arms as a baby.

My youngest daughter has been dating a young man for the past year. He has a warm smile, a hearty laugh and treats our girl with respect. He is showing some interest in learning about God, and I pray one day he will place his full trust and faith in Him. It is, after all, a prayer I have prayed for each of my children from the time they were infants, for all their friends, and for their future spouses. I have no doubt if my daughter is allowing God to direct her steps (Proverbs 16:9), my Valentine's Prayers for her will also be answered!



Readers may connect with Lynn via her Journey Thoughts blog: http://lynndove.com/ or follow her on Twitter: @LynnIDove

God’s Love, God’s Gift – Ramona Heikel

Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite holidays because it spreads the idea of love throughout the nations that celebrate it. The story of St. Valentine is credited with the establishment of the special day, and that introduces an element of sacrifice in the celebration, which is the highest form of love. Even with the assault of red and pink in the stores and the subtle message that “how much you love is how much you spend”, I figure we may as well focus on love as anything else.

One of the biggest understatements in the Bible is “God is love”. It will probably take us all our lives to unpack the full meaning, and I have no doubt that the Lord takes delight is finding ways to show us the depth of his love.

About twenty years ago, something happened that showed me how much God loved me. Through these circumstances, for the first time, I felt His eyes on me, that he knew my name, and that he did this for me not because I needed it, but because he wanted to give me a gift.

My dream was to home school our children but that just didn’t work out. So my next choice was to send them to a Christian school, not just for the spiritual aspects, but also because I believed this was the best school around to give them a strong academic foundation for the rest of their education. We’d put them on the waiting list for grade one when my oldest turned five, and waited to see what would happen.

In the spring of the following year, we got a phone call to say that they had a spot for our son. Yippee! I was elated at this answer to prayer, but wasn’t sure what my husband would say. Since the boys had been born, we had pretty much lived on one salary, and it would be tough to come up with the extra chunk of money to pay for tuition. Transportation was also an issue, surprisingly. Since I was running a day home, I couldn’t drive my children to school, and the cost to bus them was almost as much as the tuition.

On top of that, my financially conservative husband had questioned the need for a Christian education, and was on a “break” in the oil business cycle, so the only income we had was my babysitting income. Yet I believed that God would direct this through his response.

For some reason, he left the decision completely up to me! This completely defied logic. It was a miracle. A first-hand miracle.

So, of course, the first thing I did was feel guilty for taking so much of God’s time praying for this miracle, even when there were people around the world who were far more desperate for God’s life-sustaining power. Then it was as if God said, “This is for you.” Tears came to my eyes then—as now—as I realized how a far-away God was touching my life. Only He knew how much this meant to me.

We registered our son for grade one, even though we had no idea how we’d pay for it. The situation was repeated each spring for the next two years, for both boys, and the result was the same, even when we were both unemployed.

I’m so happy for the benefits of their nine years in the school, but the best thing that happened from this in my own spiritual journey is that God forced me to not only face my fears, but to jump right in without a safety net. And better yet, He taught me repeatedly to turn the well-being of my children over to Him.

Such love!


Posted by Ramona
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