Public School Parent Prayer Nights

Say that 10 times fast!! Seriously, though, this is something that has been on my heart for about two years...really ever since Ethan started Kindergarten. I actually made mention about starting a group like this over a year ago on this blog, but admitted that my own prayer life wasn’t where it should be, and nothing came of it. I have to say that, although I have been a born-again Christian for more than 25 years, I have never been a “prayer warrior”. I’ve lacked the intimacy and expectation it takes to pray with any sort of power until recently. I’m in the process of learning to allow the power of the Spirit to strengthen my walk, to pray in faith and open my eyes to the Lord’s answers, and be open to His call on my life. I believe that God has used the past year and a half to bring me to the place where I should be in order to do this with success and for His glory.

It has been an absolute struggle for us (mostly me) to send our kids to public school. My husband and I are both teachers, and before we had kids, we felt strongly convicted that our kids would attend public schools because we see them as mission fields. If all Christians pull their children out, who will be the light? (Don’t take that wrong…I definitely believe God creates some families for homeschooling, some for private school, and some for public). Kids often have so much more opportunity to witness than Christian teachers do. When it came down to actually putting our kids in the schools, though, I wondered if they were really equipped and if we were doing all that we could to ensure their spiritual, mental, and emotional safety. We want to do all that we can to protect them, so we pray individually as parents, but I also believe there is power in corporately covering our children as a community.

I have recently re-read Power of a Praying Parent, and it has reaffirmed the necessity of praying specifically for each of our children and using prayer to protect them from the Enemy that is lurking the halls of those schools. I feel like as a community of believers we have the ability to be much more effective in protecting our kids and breaking Satan's strongholds in the school if we join together in the effort.

At first I was thinking that this group would just be moms...and I was going to stick to those that lived in my neighborhood because that would be so much more comfortable for me, and we could just meet in each others homes, etc. I really feel like God has asked me step out of that area of comfort, though, and include any parent who wants to pray for their children attending our local schools. After the Life Action Summit at our church and the emphasis on the leadership of husbands and far reaching impact of revival, I don't think it should just be moms or just my neighborhood.


If you know me well, you know that initiating this group is truly the result of the tugging of the Spirit. I am a good assistant, not a leader (probably one of the reasons I keep saying I’m initiating and not leading this group). I rarely pray out loud around people, especially those I don’t know. I don’t even really like big groups of people, and I somewhat despise speaking in front of them. I was nauseous in the days leading up to emailing some friends about the possibility of this starting and had to force myself to hit the send button once I wrote the email. I was shaking yesterday when I called the Superintendant's office to get the okay from him. After each of these steps, though, I have had relief and peace knowing that God will take this out of my hands and make it what He wants it to be.

My prayer is that God is in the process of empowering us to bind Satan and his strongholds in our schools and empower our children in their witness and ability to stand firm in their faith.