156 - Speak Scripture Over Your Children
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Show Notes:
This is the first episode of May is for Mamas, which is one of my favorite things I do on the podcast every May. Each episode this month will be made for the mamas listening and I hope it will be a mix of uplifting, helpful, encouraging, and maybe even a little lighthearted cause we all need that right now. This first episode is all about speaking scripture over your children and how powerful that can be for your kids and for you.
Today is also the day I'm launching my Patreon page, which I'm so excited about. You can head to patreon.com/workandplay to get access to a community of like-minded friends who are Work and Play listeners like you and for as little as $1 a month, you can help keep the Work and Play podcast going. I'll occasionally have discussion threads or polls or exclusive episodes just for those of you who decide to become patrons.
But even if none of that exclusive content or community interests you and you just like the Work and Play podcast as is, and you want to support it and help me bring it to you, Patreon is the way to do that. So head here, and know I am so genuinely grateful for your support.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.
Happy May, the sun is shining the breeze is blowing and May marks a couple of really sweet things for us. Obviously Mother's Day, it's our oldest daughter's birthday—Milly's birthday, she's going to be seven this year, which is so crazy. It's the beginning of the end, you know what I mean? Like the end of the school year is happening and for us, May holds the last day of school and the official start of summer and it just feels exciting when you get to close a chapter.
And because of the school that Milly is in, I homeschool her three days a week and she goes two days a week and it is like a finish line for me, not just for them, but I get to celebrate—I did it. So it's really, really sweet. I am so excited about today's topic, it's something I'm really passionate about and I hope that you are going to leave this episode so encouraged. So encouraged with some practical things that you can take to start speaking scripture over your children on a regular basis.
Now I want to start with two important scriptures. The first says that “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.” that's Proverbs 18:21. And “The word of God never returns void.” Isaiah 55:11.
He says, when my word goes out, it never returns void. So I want to start just by saying there is power in what we say, there's power in our words, but there's a special anointing and power when we use our words to speak scripture because they don't return void, they change and shift things in the spiritual realm. They're packed with power.
The enemy hates them and I think it's an underutilized weapon that we have as mothers to speak life and truth in scripture and the power of God into the hearts and lives and spirits of our precious children as they grow. So I'm going to give you some tools that you can try to incorporate speaking scripture over your children more regularly and also some verses that you can start with too, if you're not sure where to start.
Feel free to take one or two of these tools and try them and see how they work. Don't feel like you have to do all of them, but just want to share some that you can immediately start trying this week.
So the first tool is the note card.
It's so simple. It's just a note card with a Bible verse written on it and you can tape it up on your bathroom mirror, you can tape it over your child's crib. If you have a baby, you can tape it on the door of their room. You can just keep it in your purse and pull it out and memorize it and look at it. But it's the simple act of having something written down that's in front of your eyes all the time, so that you start to remember it and you can then speak it over your children at different times.
So it's like a Bible verse memorization tool, but also it's an easy way to put it in their room or maybe on their bathroom mirror or somewhere where you can see it and you can pray it over them as well.
The second tool is using music.
Using songs that are full of scripture. You know, one of the most popular songs that have come out in the last few years is The Lord Bless You and Keep You, it's just that beautiful song that Elevation Worship came out with and I think Carrie Jo wrote it with them. We all know it, it's great, but just singing that song over them is still speaking scripture over them.
I also love Seeds Family Worship, which you can find on Spotify, but all it is is scripture set to music and it's for kids, but it's also not so cheesy that I can't stand it sometimes, sometimes kid’s songs just really get on my nerves. These are really sweet, they're still kids music, but they're sweet, they're full of scripture.
Slugs and Bugs is another musician/artist that we follow and love. He does some silly songs that my kids love, but also he has albums that are just dedicated to singing scripture and we love those as well. So using music through to sing scripture over your children is really powerful and it helps you just remember it so easily.
The third tool is just focusing on one word from scripture.
One word from scripture or a Bible verse that you can speak over your children and you might just want to camp out on that one word for like a week, or you can just think of one or two or three words that you always kind of have in your back pocket that you can just speak over them. I'll give you a couple of examples.
Like the word Shalom. It's such a beautiful word, a lot of people think it just means peace and it does have that meaning, it does mean peace, but it's, it's more than just that. It's a Hebrew word, meaning peace, harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, welfare and tranquility.
And so sometimes I'll just put my hands on my babies and as they're sleeping I would just say, I pray Shalom—peace, harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, welfare, and tranquility over your mind and soul and body and spirit. Every part of you from the top of your head to the tip of your feet, Shalom.
Another word, His keeper, the Lord is your keeper. Just that phrase, it comes from the Bible verse that says the Lord is your keeper, the Lord is your shade on your right hand. So just kind of choosing a word, I also think of, I think someone wrote it recently. I'm trying to remember where I read it, their child was sick and they were driving them to the emergency room and she just kept saying that over and over, the Lord is your keeper, the Lord is his keeper, He is keeping my child. He is, He is his keeper.
And when you just repeat that over and over again, it like gets into your heart, you know? I also think about sometimes when my kids are sick and they're asleep in their beds and maybe they're, you know, I can hear them coughing or sniffling and it's time for me to leave them and go to my bed, sometimes I just have to say that and say, Lord, you're their keeper, even while they asleep and even while I sleep, you are watching over them, so just focusing on one word at a time.
The fourth tool is to pray scripture over them while they're sleeping.
If your kids aren't light sleepers, thankfully mine sleep pretty heavy. You can lay hands on them and pray scripture out loud over them, you can grab that note card, you can get your Bible, you can do whatever you need to. You can read it over them, but just laying hands on them and praying scripture over them while they're sleeping is a gift because they don't interrupt you or look at you weird.
And they're not like, mom, what are you doing? What are you saying? What does that word mean? It's a way for you to do it while they're not interacting with you. So you can say all that you want to say and pray all that you want to pray while they're sleeping, which is really precious. I love praying over my kids while they sleep.
The fifth tool is for you to just get out your journal and write your child's name at the top of a page.
And whenever you read or hear a scripture that you want to pray over that child, you just fill out that page in your journal and you write out Bible verses for that child and then you can turn back to that page in your journal and pray it over them out loud in person. Or, you know, if you're up having a quiet time or they're taking a nap or they're at a friend's house, you can still speak scripture over them and pray that over their lives when they're not there with you and you have several to choose from, or you can just pray through all of them.
And then the sixth and final tool is a book called The Power of a Praying parent by stormie Omartian.
She has a lot of great prayer books, but she includes a lot of scripture at the end of every chapter behind her prayers. So she writes out these amazing prayers and a lot of them have scripture in them, but she also includes scripture to pray over your children at the end of every chapter. It is well worth your investment to buy that book. I will add it to the Work and Play Cornerstore and it will be in the links to the show notes today as well.
Okay, so those are the six tools that I wanted to encourage you to try. Here are some of my favorite verses to pray over my children. You know, sometimes when you want to pray for your kids, you don't know what to say, you don't know what to pray. Well, these are my go-to verses for them.
Numbers 6: 24-26 says “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
Psalm 1 19: 1 0 5 says “The Lord is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” And I'll just pray that over my kids. I'll say “The Lord is a lamp unto your feet, He is a light unto your path, He will order your steps and He will make a way for you.
Psalm 139:5 says “You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.” And you can take that verse and fill in your child's name; you hem Milly in behind and before, you lay your hand upon her. You, hem Benji in behind and before, you lay your hand upon him. You can just substitute in your child's name. You hem, Lyndon, you hem Beaufort. And I just love speaking my kids' names in that verse.
Psalm 139:14, Psalm 1 39 is a great chapter, “I praise you for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made, wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well.” And I'll just again, say that for my kids, I praise you, my kids are fearfully and wonderfully made, wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. And I pray that their soul, that their souls would know that very well too.
Psalm 1 21:5, “The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand.”
And then all of Psalm 91 is an incredible chapter to memorize and speak over your family and your children. “He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will abide in the shadow of the almighty.” It goes on and on to talk about God's protection over His beloved, over His children. What's so sweet about this, speaking scripture over your children is not only how it blesses them, but how it blesses me as a mom. I am comforted by these verses, I am calmed, I am secure.
The book Parenting by Paul David Tripp, I did a podcast episode on it, I'll leave a link to that in the show notes too. He often talks about how we're so much more like our children than we are different from them. And this applies here too, I need scripture spoken over me in a lot of ways as a mama, I need to know that the Father is parenting me and He is leading me and He is guiding me.
I'm reminded my children are the Lord’s, my spirit is built up and encouraged as I'm speaking over their little spirits and their little souls, their little bodies I'm reminded the spiritual care of my kids is the most important kind of care I can give to them.
It anchors me, it grounds me and it reminds me like in Colossians 3:2 “To fix my eyes on things above and not on earthly things.”
So try this, take one tool and one Bible verse this week and speak it over your children and pray it over your children and watch and see how it encourages you.
Thanks for listening to episode 1 56, don't forget today I launched my Patreon page, head to patreon.com/workandplay to help keep the podcast going and gain access to a community and some fun exclusive content every now and then. I'm so grateful for you and your support.
I'm going to close with words from Elizabeth Elliott and her book, The Shaping of a Christian Family. She said:
“The process of shaping the child shapes also the mother herself. Reverence for her sacred burden calls her to all that is pure and good that she may teach primarily by her own humble daily example.”
Here's the falling more in love with God's word today and here's to speaking it over our children faithfully.
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
