By: Percival

Parents, Keep Your Children In Prayer Daily
There are over 600 cases of prayers for all occasions in Holy Scripture. Some of those prayers are prayers for the fertilization of the womb; as that Abraham’s prayed for a woman in Abimelech and she became pregnant, (see Gen. 20:17-18); and Hannah’s prayers for the Lord to make her fertile; and as a result, she gave birth to a son (see 1 Sam. 1:19—end).
Manoah, Samson’s father prayed to God that the angel that notified him and his wife that they would have a son, be returned to instruct them as to the steps they were to follow when training the promised child. This is what the Scripture says, “Then Manoah prayed to the Lord: ‘Pardon your servant, Lord, I beg you to let the man of God you sent to us to come again to teach us how to bring up the boy who is to be born’” (Judges13:8).
Raising children is indeed a challenging task for any parent or parents; and in these days that task is even tougher. This makes it more of a reason for anyone who has the task of training a child or children to seek God’s divine intervention on this daily trajectory. Samson’s mon and dad were unable to procreate and in old age they seemed to have given up hope. God intervened and sent an angel to Manoah’s wife to deliver the good news of God’s plan to use them as parents of a son who will be part of His divine plan to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines. The child who was born was Samson who became one of the great characters in the Old Testament. God again answered their prayer and sent back the man of God with the specific instruction they required. Manoah and his wife were so elated that they entertained the angel. It was at that juncture that this husband and wife acknowledged that their experience was a mysterious one from their Lord.
Was Manoah and his wife wrong to ask for the return of the angel to instruct them on the rubrics of such an awesome task? Far from it. They were being true to themselves and the wellbeing of their son. They recognized their inability for raising a child with values, principles, and responsibilities for his successful future. The writer of Proverbs agrees with them when he said, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it (Prov. 6:22). Hannah, recognizing her limitation as a parent, went and left Samuel in the Temple under the tutelage of Eli the High Priest. Note that Hannah did not abrogate her duty as a mother; rather she brought the High Priest of God’s fatherhood to assist her to raise Samuel spiritually, physically, and socially. When it was necessary, she visited and reassured the lad of her maternal love.
The writer of Deuteronomy instruct parents this, “You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. ‘You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise (Deut. 11;19). Christ expects godly fathers and mothers to duplicate the examples of the parents in the scriptures, to be effective and influential parents. To seek help from qualified and experienced persons is not a sign of shirking or failure. It is complementary for the parents who have their child or children’s welfare at heart. It is at this point that those whose vocation is the teaching ministry are fostered and nurtured. They have the wherewithal to expend on our children for their educational and moral welfare. Therefore, cooperation, support and encouragement for our teachers is vital for them to exert the energy necessary for the future wholeness of our girls and boys.
In their song “Teach Your Children Well” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, they penned these lyrics in their second verse, “Teach your children well. Their father’s hell did slowly go by. And feed them on your dreams. The one they pick, the one you’ll know by”.