Navigating Back to School

This program contains portions from the following episodes:

"Wake Up!"

"A Mighty Army of Moms."

"Parenting in the Real World."

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Dannah Gresh: How do you pray for your daughter when you just can’t find the words? Marlae Gritter suggests you turn to the Word of God.

Marlae Gritter: “Lord, I pray that You will bestow on my daughter a crown of beauty instead of ashes.” She was in the ashes. She needed beauty. “The oil of gladness instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”

Dannah: Today we’ll talk about how to get our children and grandchildren “prayed up” as they head back to school. 

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh.

The smell of freshly sharpened pencils is in the air. You know what that means, don’t you? It’s back to school time. Now, maybe you need prayer because you’re a homeschooling mom who doesn’t have your lesson plans organized yet! I've been there. I've done that.

Today, I’m gonna invite you to put your school preference aside, because I think we need to pray in a special way for our nation today. Let me explain.

As I talk with friends who have school-aged children, anxiety about the first day of school is no joke. I mean, there have always been some tears and separation anxiety to fight through. But today—well, moms are telling me that it’s gotten harder in the decades since I loaded my kids' backpacks with brightly colored notebooks and freshly sharpened pencils to head off to private Christian school. It's gotten harder because we’ve seen tragedy after tragedy take place in our nation's public schools. 

We’re still praying for the people of Uvalde, Texas. (Oh precious Lord, be with them!) And we haven’t forgotten the deadliest shooting in school history. It took place in December of 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary. I still remember my Alma Mater, Cedarville University, sending those students giant three foot snowflakes to hang in the halls for the brave first day back in January. Praying for the kids of our nation means something entirely different these days, doesn’t it? It’s straight up spiritual warfare. 

How does a mom prepare to release her children to private or public school? How can you be poised to minister to those moms? And, of course, as a mom or grandma who loves her own students, how do you prepare your own heart for the new school year? 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth addressed this topic about a month after the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, more than twenty years ago. She was speaking at a conference called Chosen Women in Anaheim, California. With Columbine so fresh in everyone’s minds, God put a special message on Nancy’s heart, based on a passage from the book of Jeremiah. Here's Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Ladies, this is not a time for playing games. It’s not a time for partying. This is a time to wail, to mourn, to grieve over what is happening in our land, in our homes, in our churches. This is not just someone else’s problem. We’ve got to make it our problem.

Hosea tells us that there are two different kinds of weeping, and I think it’s important that we realize that. In Hosea 7:14, God says these people “do not cry out to me from their hearts.” Instead they “wail upon their beds.”

What’s the difference? Those who merely wail upon their beds are remorseful, but they’re unwilling to move or to change; whereas, those who cry out to God from their hearts are genuinely repentant.

Those who wail upon their beds cry out for relief, but they are still defiant. They still insist on having it their way; whereas, those who cry out to God from their heart cry out in surrender.

Those who wail upon their beds focus on their pain, on their woundedness, on their problem. But those who cry out from their hearts take personal responsibility for their own sinfulness. They realize that the core issue of our lives is not ultimately our woundedness but our estrangement from a holy God.

Those who wail upon their beds blame others, but those who cry out from their heart acknowledge their own responsibility.

Those who wail upon their beds are self-centered. Their consideration is, “How does all this affect me?” But those who cry out to God from their hearts are God-centered. They realize that ultimately it doesn’t matter how it affects me, because it’s not about me. It’s about Him. And they grieve over how a holy God has been offended.

Those who wail upon their beds cry out for relief, but those who cry out to God from their hearts cry out for mercy.

What should we weep about? What should we wail about?

Well, not just the consequences of our sin, but our sin itself. We ought to weep about the sin in our nation as it flaunts wickedness and as it calls evil good and good evil.

I don’t know how people can watch the television news today and keep their hearts and minds from becoming defiled. It’s a wicked, dark, corrupt world, and you’re seeing it on the television night after night.

Some of us have heard it so much and for so long that we’re desensitized. We don’t even realize how wicked it all is.

We need to:

• weep over the violence
• weep over the perversion
• weep as the things of God are mocked and scorned in our land
• weep over our families
• weep over the rebellion.

Over and over and over again I’m receiving these prayer cards from Christian women in evangelical churches who are pouring out their hearts for their children or their grandchildren who grew up in the church but have no heart for the things of God.

I spoke recently at a Christian school to some faculty and staff and parents. The spiritual counselor at the school said to me, “We need this message here because the kids in this Christian school”—these are her words—“hate God.”

And it’s true. I’m hearing, “What has happened in our homes, in our Christian homes? We’ve produced not just a few but a whole crop of young people who cannot stand the things of God.”

We need to weep over the rebellion in our homes, the immorality, the culture of divorce. I don’t think we realize what has happened through this whole culture of divorce.

For the first time in recent years, the divorce rate inside the church is higher than the divorce rate out in the secular world. We’ve got to weep and wail over the fact that we have broken covenant with God.

We need to weep over our churches. We’re playing church. We’re so busy trying to be relevant to the world that we’ve become just like the world. And the world is not impressed.

We need to weep and wail over our sin as Christian women. I know this is not politically correct, but we’ve got to get back to the Word of God, what’s biblically correct, and say, “O God, we have sinned against You as Christian women.”

Everywhere I go, when I speak on the subject of forgiveness, I ask women, “How many of you would be honest enough to say, ‘There’s a root of bitterness or unforgiveness in my heart’?”

Invariably 85–95% of the hands of Christian women go up into the air. We must weep and wail over the fact that we are a bitter, unforgiving group of Christian women.

I’m hearing Christian women express their anger. We’re an angry, demanding group of women. We need to confess it and weep over it, to weep over our lack of submission to God’s authority and the authorities He’s placed in our lives.

We’ve grown up in a “rights crazed” generation, and many of us have bought into that bill of goods. We’ve been deceived by the enemy into believing that we can “have it our way,” that we ought to be in control of our lives and our world and the people around us. So we’ve become controllers and manipulators rather than having that meek and quiet spirit that trusts in God, that yields our rights.

Weep over our lack of discretion. Weep over the fact that we’ve been deceived; that we’ve prioritized careers over family, over being wives and mothers; that we’ve not taught our children the ways of God; that we’ve not protected our children from ungodly and unholy influences; that we have broken vows, our marriage covenant and our vows before God.

We need to weep not only over the sins of women in general but over our own sins, over our own hardness of heart. There are women in this place—I don’t know who you are, but God has been speaking to you today—women who are involved right now in a relationship that is immoral and ungodly.

You’re in a burning house, and you ought to weep and wail over what this is doing to you and your children and grandchildren, to future generations and to those around you and to the culture. We are part of this. We’ve got to take responsibility and wail before God.

In Lamentations 2:19, the prophet says,

Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the [night] watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street. (KJV)

Now, I’ll tell you this: We can’t manufacture weeping and wailing. But when we get in the presence of God and then look around, God is going to cause a groaning, a moaning, an intensity, a compulsion in our hearts. We’ll no longer be able to be complacent, and we will move from merriment to mourning.

Dannah: That was Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth sharing, “A Call for the Wailing Women.”

Wow, God truly laid a hard message on Nancy’s heart that day, but it’s one we still need to hear today. Nancy said we are desensitized. Hmmm, do you agree? Could we be closing our eyes to: 

• the violence
• the perversion
• the things of God that are mocked and scorned in our land
• the rebellion in our own hearts

Friend, we need to get our hearts clean before God before we can make some of these decisions for our children.

As a flight attendant will say before the airplane takes off, in the case of an emergency make sure to put your oxygen mask on first. 

So once your own heart is in a proper position to intercede, how do you cry out to the Lord for your own children? What does that look like? 

Nancy sat down with Fern Nichols and Marlae Gritter. Fern is the founder of a ministry called Moms in Prayer—formerly known as Moms in Touch. Marlae was on the leadership team in the early years of that ministry.

Here are Fern and Marlae, discussing with Nancy how important it is for moms to intercede for their kids. This is Fern Nicols.

Fern Williams: My husband and my son were asked to go on a canoe trip. This was in Canada and it was when the flood season was high, but this fellow that was from our church he was the canoe man. I mean he’d been down the Frasier River many, many times and he felt it was ok to go.

As they were stepping in their canoe, a group of men coming back said, “Don’t go out. It’s really not a good scene out there. You’re taking your lives in your hands.”

Orley looked at our friend—and not blaming our friend, but the friend was the expert. They got in their boat. As they were going down, it did capsize and they were all in the water. At that time, I was at home; I think I was dusting.

Nancy: Of course, you didn’t know what they were facing.

Fern: No, I just knew they were on this wonderful little canoe trip.

I just had this strong impression of the Holy Spirit that I needed to stop and just pray for the lives of my child, Troy, and husband and the other father and his son so much so that I put everything down.

If you knew me, when I’m headed somewhere or cleaning something, it’s like it’s getting done. But I dropped everything, got the Word of God, went to the book of Psalms and just starting crying out for their safety that God would deliver them. I had no idea what was going on.

Later that evening, my husband called and told me this story. About the time that the Holy Spirit prompted me to pray was when the canoe capsized. They were just thrown from the canoe. The miracle of all miracles was, as I was praying. I believe because God says He sends ministering angels. I don’t know where. I don’t know how, but it is a spiritual wonderful thing that God says He does when we cry out to Him.

The miracle too is this: In the middle of this Frasier River, there was an elevated piece of land. Their feet just stepped on this piece. The water was over the land. But they were able to get up and out of the water. They were rescued within five minutes.

The salvation of those four was a result of prayer, of release. Not my great prayers. To intervene in that situation the way He wants—His will, His purposes is a beautiful reminder that we never know when we pray for someone, when we intercede on somebody’s behalf how God intervenes Himself or sends an angel or two or three—I don’t know.

Maybe only one—because the one in the Old Testament it was only one who killed 185,000 of the enemy. I don’t know if you need a whole bunch. These are pretty strong angels.

But to be a part of what God’s heart is for earth, even in your own family on a river; He wants to include us. That’s how sovereignly He’s done it. It’s amazing. Yet, it is our privilege and it is our command.

He says, “Call unto me and I will answer you and I will show you great and mighty things” (Jeremiah 33:3, paraphrase). Hallelujah.

Nancy: Marlae, it’s interesting to me, as Fern was prompted to go to prayer, she said she took her Bible and she went to prayer. As I’ve read about Moms In Touchand how the moms pray, and Fern’s wonderful book on Every Child Needs a Praying Mom, the Word of God really needs to be central in our praying. How do you use the Scripture as a mom, in your prayer times and with the Moms In Touch prayer groups?

Marlae: Amen. God’s Word—I love what God’s Word says about it being living and active. We really take that and we really believe it. As moms, there are lots of things we can pray.

But what we do is every week, when we come together and get to the intercession time, we literally open up the Word of God and we have it right in front of us. We focus on a Scripture and we put our child’s name right in that Scripture.

Let me just give an example. I think that’s the easiest. We had a daughter who went through some prodigal years that were very, very tough. The verse of Scripture that I as a mom grabbed onto and in the times when I didn’t know, I didn’t see what God was going to do, was Isaiah 61:3. This is how I prayed with those moms and often prayed also myself.

But I prayed like this: “Lord, I pray that You will bestow on my daughter a crown of beauty instead of ashes.” She was in the ashes. She needed beauty. “The oil of gladness instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”

She was depressed. She was sunk. “I pray, Lord, that some day Michelle will see herself as an oak of righteousness, a planting of You, Lord, for the display of His splendor” (paraphrase).

That’s what praying God’s Word—when we don’t know what to pray, is full of promises. God’s Word is what doesn’t return void. It’s what He says. It’s the truth of His Word. We claim it and claim it and claim it for our children. We just stick their names right in it, and it is the most powerful thing.

Not only for us to pray, but to hear another mom agree with me and say my daughter’s name with that verse and agree that God is doing to do this. In my Bible it says, “9-1-2000 answered” right by that verse because God answered that very prayer and I’m seeing today in front of me those characteristics that I prayed from that verse.

Praying God’s Word has changed my praying. It’s taken it out of “I don’t really know what to pray, Lord. You know what my child needs.” He does know because His Word is full of it.

Dannah: Amen. What could be more powerful than praying God’s Word over our kids? We see an example of a parent praying for his children in the book of Job.

Remember Job? He was considered the greatest man in all the land. He feared God and turned away from evil, so I bet you that he had his heart clean. And here’s what I love about Job: he prayed often for his children. In fact, can I read how he did this? Job 1, verse 5, "Whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would send for his children and purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them. For Job thought, 'Perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed God in their hearts.' This was Job’s regular practice."

Hmmm, do we have this as a regular practice? One thing I’ve learned in my many years of being a momma: pray for those littles. Oh, pray.

After a Revive Our Hearts recording session, a couple of women shared some of their insights based on this passage.

I want us to listen to what they had to say about praying for their children. I think you’ll be encouraged. And if you’re dealing with a child who wants nothing to do with you, listen to Karen.

Karen Watts: Several times today I’ve heard the phrase: “the story that God is writing in our lives.” In my Bible I have a little sticky note with a quote on it. (I don’t know the origin of this quote.) It says, “Disappointment with God is nothing more than a premature conclusion causing you to stop breathing before the end of the story and thus in feeling your ability to pray.”

I was thinking about the prodigal situation. When we first realized that our son’s young adulthood was not going to go the way that we had hoped and envisioned, we were so devastated and confused and disillusioned and hurt and ashamed and everything that goes along with that.

The pain was just unbearable! That’s one of the things that really took me down in the depths of the despair in the mid-90s. But there came a day, later on—much later on, after I had had such a renewal with the Lord—that the pain and disillusionment and shame and feelings of betrayal changed.

I had such a heart for my sons to know the grace and freedom and the joy of walking in forgiveness. Since then, that journey has taken on a whole different perspective. When it first started we thought, Oh a few months of this, and we’ll fast and pray, and things will turn around. It will be good.

I’m always kind of hesitant to share this part for people that might be early on in a journey, but it turned into a year and then two years, then five years, and now thirty years. But this past year, I’m seeing glimpses of hope and restoration in our family. I don’t know exactly how God works all things and how they all fit, but I do know that He has probably changed me more than He will ever need to change anybody else in my family.

And through that and the patience and perseverance and the difference in the way I feel toward my sons and the situations that we’ve had, I can say that now . . .

I used to say, “I’m just so weary of this. I can’t do this anymore!” And now I’m saying, “You know what? I’m doing this ’til my dying breath. I don’t have to see it.” In Hebrews it talks about those who walked in faith didn’t get to see all the promise.

I feel stronger and more determined in these last years than I ever thought possible with that. And now, of course, I’m seeing the glimpses of hope and restoration that is pretty amazing to me right now.

Nancy: Praise God! Yes. Thirty years seems like an eternity to a mother with a needy child, but in the scheme and scope of eternity, it really isn’t. It’s trusting God to write your story in His time and in His way.

I don’t think anything does that any more powerfully in a woman’s life than to have this waiting on a husband or a child to see the light. To pray and exercise faith and to wait on the Lord, saying, “If I don’t ever see the answer to these prayers, I’m going to be faithful in doing my part, crying out to the Lord.” I know that He doesn’t owe us anything, but He hears those cries, those prayers, of those pleading mothers.

God is not silent; He’s not absent. He is at work in ways we cannot see. He is moving; He is working. That’s where the faith springs up in a mom’s heart and the sanctification takes place. And then sometimes God will give the joy!

Some of my friends have seen that joy, some haven’t, as they’re waiting on the Lord to come through on behalf of their children.

Marybeth: Verse 5, “And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them . . . For Job said, ‘It may be that my children [may] have sinned, and cursed God in their heart . . .’ Thus [did] Job . . . continually.”

But verse 4, it talks about the feasts that they had and the fun they had! You mentioned it must be a party and stuff. Well, I really enjoyed being a mom of littles, and in verse 5 it said that day’s coming to an end. And then, I can kind of grieve about that.

I didn’t realize, maybe, maybe I held them too tightly. I didn’t know my identity was wrapped up so tight in being a mom. But your words reminded me of verses 5, 6, and 7: Job continued to pray for their hearts as they went in their adulthood. This is what I’ve prayed for since the day they were little . . .

I have a job to do—to continually to know their hearts. Job did it continually. Some days I’ve felt like a bad mom often, because we’ve lost a lot of lives. I’m the youngest. My aunts and uncles died. Since I’ve been three, I’ve known death. It’s like, “Another one went to Heaven!”

But when we lost my father-in-law and my mother-in-law, and they were my kids’ best friends, I kept on saying, “God will either heal Grandpa here or in Heaven.” I’m always preparing them for the next life!

It encouraged me today. So thank you. You encouraged me that my job’s not done; it just looks different. Job did that for me today. Thanks!

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and a group of women have been reminding us that God hears the cries—the fervent prayers—of pleading mothers. 

Are you familiar with Jeremiah 33:3? God says, "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and incomprehensible things you do not know." Memorize it, write it in lipstick on your mirror if that's what it takes. We need to plead for our children today. Call to Him; He will answer.

So whether you are a homeschooling mom, a mom of adult children, or a mom longing for a prodigal to come home, don’t stop praying. God is at work in ways we cannot see. No matter what this school year brings, You can trust Him. 

One truth that encourages me as a mom, and now a grandmother . . . Oh, I don’t think I told you the happy news, I have a new grandbaby. Stella Skye! Three girls now call me NanaDannah. Isn’t that good? 

Back to the truths that encourage me, remembering that Heaven rules helps me so much. Heaven rules is the theme of True Woman ’22—our three-day conference event that will anchor your heart to God’s Word and remind you that He really is in control. I hope you'll join me and many others in Indianapolis from September 22–24. 

Invite your friends and register by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. 

Have you ever noticed how a lie can derail you and take you down a path of pain? Next week, I will be sharing with you the story of a young lady who believed some big lies and because of that, she lived through a journey of pain. We’ll be talking about lies and the truth that sets us free next time on Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Can I ask you a favor? If you’re listening today via a podcast app or even the Revive Our Hearts app, would you take a moment and leave a review, and even tell us what topic you’d like me to address here on Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I would love to know you better.

Thanks for listening today. Thanks to our team: Phil Krause, C.J. Raymond, Rebekah Krause, Justin Converse, Michelle Hill, Erin Davis, Katie Laitkep, and for Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh

Revive Our Hearts is calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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