March 17, 2024

When was the last time you talked to Jesus about your family—but not in a complaining kind of way? I mean, we often come to Jesus asking Him to fix our spouse, straighten out our kids, and to please make our annoying in-laws just stop. But when is the last time we came broken-hearted to Jesus about them and truly prayed with passion and empathy?
I wonder what would happen if we asked God to help us see our family members as He does. Maybe we wouldn’t focus as much on some of the irritating behaviors, and we would see some of the underlying wounds. Perhaps if we saw our kids as Jesus does, we’d see the confusion they’re going through trying to filter and understand the million mixed messages they’re bombarded with every day. Maybe we’d remember what it was like dealing with the raging hormones, the relentless peer pressure, and all those feelings of insecurity and awkwardness. It’s HARD growing up in today’s world. Sometimes we forget that.
And what if we prayed for our spouse that way? What if we were able to stop asking God to change them into who we want them to be and we started asking God to help us understand them as they are? Maybe God would reveal to us some insights we’ve never known or perhaps have forgotten. Maybe we would remember that though they’re older, they still carry the scars of the deep wounds of their past. Maybe we’d remember the failures they’re still haunted by, the losses they’re still grieving, or the fears that weigh heavy on their hearts.
What hit me when I read the passage today was that when Peter and Andrew went to Jesus about Peter’s mother-in-law, it wasn’t to complain about how irritable she was, or how lazy she’d been, or how they wished she’d help more around the house. They asked Jesus to meet her at HER point of need, not theirs. And He did. I want to challenge us to think carefully about how we pray for those closest to us. Maybe if we asked Jesus to help us see our family as He sees them, hear our family as He hears them, and to understand our family as He understands them, maybe we’d see God really begin to make some changes in our families. Hopefully those changes would start with US. That’s God’s Word for you today.