by Pastor Jim Koerber, ACBC Fellow
Parents of Warfighters: Pray!
It seems like yesterday we dropped our son off at MEPS and watched him board that bus to begin his journey to Parris Island, South Carolina. We shouldn’t have been surprised when he told us he wanted to serve in the military. His bedroom had been filled with toy guns and swords from his earliest days—a sure sign of a warrior in the making!
When we first learned of his desire to join the military, our thoughts were diverse. As parents, we felt great pride in his desire to serve our nation. However, neither of us had military experience personally, so we had many questions and concerns. We found that we experienced both excitement for what adventures and travels lay before him and equal concern about what dangers lay ahead.
Our story is not an unusual one, though—it’s repeated daily throughout our nation. It may be your story as well. Or perhaps it may soon be your story. As parents of a Marine, we made many friends with other parents of Marines and loved to hear and share our experiences and ways the Lord was working. Promotions, successes, awards—all reasons for great joy! The stories, of course, were not all rosy. The stresses, while different in each case, can be quite extreme. The limited contact during training or deployment to dangerous places, disappointments and failures, hard decisions, injuries related to combat or in normal life, and friends making the ultimate sacrifice—just to name a few.
Parents, these joyful moments and times of great stress should lead us to pray! Pastor John Piper once said, "We cannot know what prayer is for until we know that life is war." That’s a fitting way to consider prayer, as our children who serve are not engaged in merely an earthly battle but a spiritual battle as well—as we all are.
As we pray for our enlisted or commissioned children, let’s consider the quality and the content of our prayers. While not exhaustive, the following suggestions should give you a good start as you consider how to pray and what to pray about. We’ll consider two qualities that should permeate our prayers and three things that may be relevant as you pray.
Quality #1: Our prayers should be rooted in God’s character.
As it relates to our children in the military, we should particularly offer prayers saturated with God’s sovereignty in mind. Whenever we lift our voices in prayer to the Lord, we need to remember that God is sovereign. As we consider the circumstances of our children in the military, it is a great comfort to say with Solomon, "The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will" (Proverbs 21:1 ESV). Knowing that nothing happens apart from God’s sovereign design should fill our minds with eternal hope. Whether it’s the movement of the smallest cell, the advance of an invading army, or life-changing decisions by commanders, even the Commander in Chief, nothing exists outside God’s sovereign design for his glory and the good of his people.
A great example of praying this way is found in Acts 4:23–31:
When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, "Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,
"‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’—
for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus." And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. (ESV)
"Sovereign Lord," indeed! Parent, you can rest assured that you are praying to the same sovereign Lord today who placed Herod, Pilate, and the Gentiles in their particular space and time to accomplish his will. He remains sovereign over that sergeant causing grief in the life of your child as well as despotic rulers threatening and executing violence in the world.
Quality #2: Our prayers should reflect the priorities of God found in Scripture.
While we are grateful for our nation, we must recognize that as believers we are citizens of a far greater kingdom. Paul writes to the Philippians of this greater citizenship: "Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ" (Philippians 3:20 ESV). Notably, he is writing to people living in a community where their Roman citizenship was a matter of pride. In fact, Philippi was at one time a retirement community of sorts for Roman military leaders.
Our Lord gave us as heavenly citizens instructions on how to pray reflecting the priorities of our King and his kingdom in Matthew 6:9–13 (a very kingdom-oriented prayer!).
"Pray then like this: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."" (ESV)
The priorities from this passage are not ambiguous! Of top priority is God’s glory. The God to whom we pray is in relationship with us (he is our father), and his desire is that we, his children, would pray for, participate in, and point to the glory of him as King. "Hallowed" has the sense of being not merely treated as holy but honored as such. As we pray for our children in the military, we do so as members of a kingdom far greater than the United States. At the same time, our children’s service to the United States and her security ultimately serve the purposes of God’s greater kingdom. So we rightly pray for God to be glorified in our children’s service to this lesser kingdom knowing that Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords.
This passages reveals another priority of our prayers: praying for God’s will. We’ve already noted that God is sovereign. His will is always accomplished. Yet he instructs us here to pray for his will to be done. This priority in prayer reflects the disposition of our Lord before he went to the cross. Three times he said to his Father in prayer, "Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done." As hard as it may be at times, this is always a safe way to pray. It is the only safe way to pray for our children serving—even those in harm’s way or facing the difficult times often found in daily military life—knowing that his will is always good and right and brings him glory.
More could be said about the priorities revealed in this prayer. Our dependence on him and forgiveness are important priorities as well. For the purpose of this article, we’ll stick to the first two. God’s glory and God’s will should permeate our prayers for our children. This is not mere duty. It is a delight for us to do so. David’s words in Psalm 37:4 remind us of this when he says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart" (ESV). Delighting in him refocuses our desires for his glory and his will.
Thankfulness
One time after I preached from Psalm 103 and related it to our prayer life, a sweet older lady came up to me and declared that sometimes her prayers sound like "gimme, gimme, gimme." We can all relate to how she was convicted by this passage about blessing the Lord. David Powlison once said during a lecture at Westminster Seminary, "Our prayers often sound like the shift change at the local hospital!" We quickly ask for his blessing but often neglect to say "thank you."
The apostle Paul sets the example for thankfulness in prayer. Whether writing to the praiseworthy Thessalonians or the cringeworthy Corinthians, he always found a way to be thankful. His thankfulness did not depend on the recipients of his letters or those for whom he prayed. His thankfulness was found in Christ and the gospel and its work in the lives of these people. He gratefully recognized the Lord at work in their circumstances and in the lives of people. He was often thankful for their confession of faith backed up by love for the beloved. We should express that same gratitude as we pray. Saying "thank you" to our Lord for our children, the circumstances he has brought their way, and how we see him at work in their lives all serve to direct our prayers away from "gimme, gimme, gimme" to blessing the Lord from the depths of our soul (Psalm 103:1–2).
Trust and Dependence on God
Since God is sovereign over all the affairs of his creation, it would follow that our trust and dependence would not fall on our own shoulders in life. This is especially true as we consider the physical safety of our children in the military. There is a firearms store with a shooting range near our home called "22Three." If you are familiar with shooting sports, your immediate conclusion may be that this is a clever reference to the popular caliber .223. You would be correct in this assessment (I’ve sent more than a few rounds of this caliber down their shooting range), but that isn’t the whole story. The owners are followers of Christ and recognize a very important truth—our ultimate safety and protection do not rest in our abilities or resources but in the Lord. The name "22Three" refers to 2 Samuel 22:3: "My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my savior; you save me from violence" (ESV, my emphasis).
As we pray, we need to remember that child who now serves will ultimately find his or her protection in the Lord. He is the one who gives them their next breath as they steady their aim. We dare not forget this as the people of Israel often did! Instead, we should pray with David, the warrior king, "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God" (Psalm 20:7).
David wasn’t shy about praying that the Lord would grant him victory in the day of battle. We shouldn’t be shy about praying this way either.
Of David. "Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; he is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me." (Psalm 144:1–2 ESV)
It is often challenging to consider the conflicts in which our nation finds itself expending resources and our warriors’ blood. Having several more libertarian-oriented friends, I frequently find myself in disagreements with them regarding our role as a nation in the world. Have you found yourself being challenged in this way too? Our children are called to take orders and accomplish the missions assigned to them, all within the bounds of the rules of war. They are often not fighting for a particular political agenda but for the person in the foxhole next to them. Judgment calls by their commanders and wrong decisions by our political leaders should not deter us from praying for the Lord to keep them safe and to grant them victory over our enemies.
The ultimate battle has taken place. Christ is the victor. Paul writes about this victory in I Corinthians 15:54–57:
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (ESV, my emphasis)
This is the victory we desire for all of our children, whether or not they are in the military!
Their Faith in Christ and His Gospel
While our son was at boot camp, we heard this: "The first battalion makes men, the second battalion makes Marines, and the third battalion makes machines!" This of course reflected the good natured and competitive banter among the battalions as they trained these men for service. It does serve to illustrate the shaping influence of all the military branches on our young men and women. But this shaping isn’t ultimate. No doubt the experiences, the training, and the mindset that the military instills in our warfighters has an impact—a significant one. This impact, however, does not take place in a vacuum. Our children will respond not from a position of neutrality but from the overflow of their hearts (Proverbs 4:23). Their response to these experiences and hardships will reflect genuine faith, genuine but weak faith, or sadly, in some cases, the absence of faith.
For many of our children, their military service will be their first significant life-changing experiences outside the safety of redemptive follow-up conversations around the dinner table with dad and mom. Discussions about their experiences will now take place with colleagues from a variety of religious and cultural backgrounds. How they interpret these experiences and interact with others will be a great challenge for most. We must pray diligently. One particular way we can be praying is that the Lord would send godly influencers into their lives.
Don’t be quick to judge as ultimate or final any wrong responses from them that seem to reflect weak or seemingly no faith. I’ve talked to many who have served who, in their parents’ eyes, seemed to have abandoned the faith, only to be brought low and now walk faithfully with the Lord. So pray, forbear, express love, and pray again.
Finally, pray for one another. First as spouses. Moms will think differently than dads about their child’s service. Be sure to listen well and pray for each other. Second, pray for other parents. Some, perhaps reading this article, are Gold Star parents who have experienced the overwhelming pain of the death of a son or daughter. Others are expending great effort in the care of a wounded son or daughter. Others may be experiencing a never-anticipated distance in their relationship with their child. The list could go on. But in all these things, remember that our Lord is sovereign over all the circumstances we and our children face. When received in faith, these trials will lead to our sanctification and his glory.
For further study on prayer in general, D.A. Carson’s book Praying with Paul: A Call to Spiritual Reformation should be high on your list. In addition, numerous articles and Truth in Love podcasts can be found by searching with the key word prayer at the ACBC website, biblicalcounseling.com. You can also find helpful articles at The Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship (IBCD.org).
If you find yourself struggling spiritually as a parent, a member of the armed forces, or a first responder, Fallen Soldiers Ministries is here to help. We bring biblical answers to problems that people in the military and first responder communities face. Secular counseling, while well intended, falls far short of the depth and breadth and eternal hope that come only through the sufficient help found in God’s Word. Please reach out without delay.
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