Prayer for Blended Families

If you’re married without children you may think that marriage issues and parenting issues are completely unrelated. However, if you are married and parents of children, including those who are not biologically your own, then you understand that marriage and parenting issues usually become  intertwined.
Stepparenting or being parents of a blended family can be quite a challenge. Issues between stepchildren and their parents usually affect the marriage, especially if there is an issue of disrespect or a disagreement on how the stepparent is to discipline the children. I know because my family is blended and consists of me, my husband (who is not the biological father of my 15 year old daughter), 6 month old daughter, 3 year old son, and twin 8 year old sons. We could not operate as a family without God! And what I am learning is that blood makes people related, but it is love that makes people family. God is love, and we are His children. We can ask for His help and look to His example because, ultimately, both our marriages and parenting have a built in design to point us all to Christ.
Father God, I pray on behalf of every family that’s blended, including my own. Thank You for sending Your perfect Son to die for us so that we can be Your children and have eternal life. You adopted us by sacrificing Your Son. Give us revelations on how stepparents can sacrifice their pride and fleshy beliefs–lay them down– so they can raise up a banner of love, Jehovah Nissi. Help us learn to support our spouses and agree on loving, disciplining, and training up both our biological children and stepchildren as a family unit.
Lord, help us to see difficulties as opportunities for You to show us how to knit our families tightly together in love. Give us the strength and patience to train our children up in You, even when it looks like they are not taking in our instruction. Lord, for the children who act out in rebellion, help us not to grow weary. Help us to separate their misbehavior from their need to be loved so we can love them as You love us–unconditionally.
Guide us in being just and merciful, as You are, when You chasten us. Lord, remind us to never allow our children to come between us and our spouses. Show us how to remain in agreement even under stress or times of testing. A divided house cannot stand, and we pray for discernment to recognize when the enemy is trying to use our children to rise up against us to cause division. I pray for the families who are struggling and need understanding in how to bridge emotional disconnect with their stepchildren. I pray for supernatural insight into all of our children and what inclines their hearts, which, in turn, fuels their conduct.
Lord, teach us how to point our children to You and to address intuitively the love and training they need. Give us wisdom so we do not exasperate our children by wielding our authority and either overlooking or refusing to build a relationship with them (Eph.6:4). Father, help our families heal from bitter wounds we sustained from clashing with the children and noncustodial parent and any issues that have arisen as we have pressed forward to operate as a seamless family unit that’s bursting and possibly falling apart due to anger, sadness, and misunderstanding.
Help us remove pride and “…put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Col.
3:14). Lord, bind us up in Your love so tightly that we no longer see any difference in the children who don’t share our blood and the ones who do. Give us eyes to see only that they are now entrusted to us and part of our family.
Thank You in advance for giving our children the desire to obey us (Eph. 6:1-3). Thank You that wives are lining our hearts up with Your Word and learning to model admiration and respect of our husbands to our children and stepchildren, alike. Thank You that husbands are lining their hearts up with Your Word and learning to love their wives like Christ loved His bride, as spiritual leaders of their households by washing them with the Word and loving them–all of them, including the children they have from prior relationships– in a sacrificial manner that puts their wives’ needs first. Thank You, Lord, for being the thread that knits our families together with love. Help us survey and identify the losses as the stepchildren have lost their ideal home situations when one of the parents moved on. Help us love them in ways that redeem them from their perceived losses to realize they gained a bonus parent. Help us understand we gained another child to love us. Blend our families In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ephesians 1:3-5
” Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realmswith every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with
his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”
©Cassandra Salamone. All rights reserved.