A Prayer for Mothers

Dear God in Heaven

Thank you for mothers and how you have expressed yourself through them. You are love (1 John 4:8), and you have made women to be like love by making them into mothers. They carry us inside of them for nine months knowing the whole time that we will cause pain as we leave their bodies, yet they still love us – even before we loved them (1 John 4:19). They raise us for 18 years (and sometimes many more) as we cause them pain with our bad decisions, our selfishness, our ignorance, and sometimes our arrogance. And they love us still (Romans 5:8).

Dear Lord, you have made them nurturing and caring and committed to our growth. It may be our fathers who lay out the law with words, and who model those words for us to see, but it is our mothers who patiently teach us how to follow those words and models while our fathers protect and provide.

Lord, I ask that you give each young mother who knows you the courage, strength, knowledge and wisdom to model for their sons how a woman should be, so that when those sons choose a woman for themselves, they’ll have a good template in their minds from which to pick a good mother to nurture the next generation. Lord, I ask that you give each young mother who knows you the courage, strength, knowledge and wisdom to model for their daughters how a woman should be, so that when those daughters choose a man for themselves, they will pick one that values you, because such a man will by necessity also value them, and by extension their children and their communities.

Lord, I ask that you give each older mother who knows you the courage, strength, knowledge and wisdom to train those mothers who are coming behind them in the ways of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control so that the gospel can nurture future generations.

Lord, I ask that you bless all mothers who know you. I ask that you lift them up in your presence, and make it evident to all how they are expressions and examples of your love. I ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.