3 WAYS TO PRAY FOR MOTHERS AROUND THE WORLD

Through bleary eyes and a foggy consciousness, I pressed the snooze button on my phone’s 5:35 a.m. alarm—again. For the past few years I had desperately wanted to wake up before my early rising boys to have time to pray more. But each attempt was thwarted. Multiple wakings at night despite being well past the baby years. Getting to bed far too late. Or like this particular morning, my boys started waking up earlier because somehow they had heard my alarm go off or their own internal clocks sensed mommy was attempting to rise before them.

Sometimes I would hit a stride of a few weeks of early morning wake-ups before it all would come crashing down.

And yet I have a desire to grow in my prayer life. I want to carve out more time to intercede on the behalf of unbelievers. Since the Bible is clear God wants all people to know him (1 Tim. 2:4) and we should lift up those outside of Christ (Rom. 10:1), I want to pray for the Holy Spirit to work in the lives of those who didn’t know Jesus yet.

After years of failed attempts, I had to admit that my plan to rise for prayer before my boys was only piling on guilt and actually hindering me from praying more. I needed to pivot. To ascertain how I could carve out more time to pray, but the plan—for me at this point—couldn’t involve getting up earlier.

FINDING TIME TO PRAY

The season of motherhood, especially with young children, can be demanding. Finding extended times to pray may feel as elusive as winning free coffee for life from your favorite shop. But rather than deciding that’s something we just can’t do right now, we may need to reframe our own perception.

Rather than lamenting the season of life we find ourselves in, we must acknowledge our limitations and figure out how to be faithful within them. This doesn’t mean sleeping less or piling on unrealistic goals. But it means letting go of our idea of what focused prayer time should be and ascertaining what we can actually fit into our lives as busy mothers.

If we keep holding out for some ideal circumstance, it may never come. While we may have dreamed of a solid hour of prayer time before the kids wake up in the morning, the reality may be that we pray while making sandwiches for lunch or stopped at a red light. When we decide to dedicate specific slices of time to pray—even those less than a minute— we train our hearts to turn to God in prayer.

WHO WE CAN PRAY FOR

If we want to utilize pockets of time throughout our day, we must have a clear sense of who we want to intercede for. Otherwise we won’t use our prayer moments wisely. I would encourage you to pray for unbelievers you don’t know—perhaps mothers around the world—as a starting point. This will spur us beyond the walls of our own home toward the greater work God is doing around the globe while keeping us grounded in the common denominator we share: motherhood.

Read the rest of my article on Momma Theologians.