This post originally appeared as an email from Jon’s ministry, Primal Path. Reposted with permission.
"If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this will lead us to prayer: Intercession is a way of loving others."
Richard J. Foster
"When you pray, say, Our Father."
Jesus
I was reminded again this week of the power of a father's prayer.
Fathers often feel overwhelmed by the complexities of parenting in the modern age.
When do we have all the crucial conversations?
How do we stay relationally connected?
How do we disciple our kids without driving them away?
With sports schedules, homework, new friends, dating, and a ton of extracurricular activities accelerating at a blistering pace, how can we know we have done enough?
Many of you know parts of my story, but one of the key aspects that doesn’t get enough attention is the role my father played in my conversion.
As a teenager, both my parents were busy and had a ton of responsibilities in making life work. Around the age of 14, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd in high school, and it went downhill from there. My parents did what they could to appeal to my heart and motivate me to change, but it didn’t seem to work. As a father myself, I can now understand the pain and anxiety my parents must have felt, and the grief and heartache they experienced. It’s a part of my own story that I deeply regret.
However, despite my parents' noble efforts, including discipline and boundaries, things only got worse. They were losing my heart; they were losing me.
At the end of his rope, and from a motivation of love and pain, my father got desperate. He made a decision that changed my life forever. He resolved to…
"Do in prayer what he couldn’t do in person."
If I wouldn’t listen to him or follow his direction, he would simply bring me before God with fasting and prayer.
My father’s prayers were not small prayers— the kind that feel good but do nothing. These were prayers of desperation and destiny, covenant and call.
He would pray in my room.
He would pray over my schedule.
He would pray when I left the house.
He pleaded from a place of heartache and prayed with all his might.
Then, God laid a promise on his heart for me from Isaiah 59:21.
"As for me, this is my covenant with them," says the LORD. "My Spirit, who is on you, will not depart from you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will always be on your lips, on the lips of your children, and on the lips of their descendants—from this time on and forever," says the LORD."
He cried to God that I would leave my life of sin, turn towards God, get new friends, and serve the Lord.
I didn’t know it at the time, but something began to change in my heart. Within a year, my life was unrecognizable. I stumbled into a church and was radically converted. I sensed a call to ministry and rebuilt my entire life around the kingdom of God. The Spirit did not depart from me; the word of the Lord was on my lips.
My life has been defined by his prayers.
I now get to pastor in New York, write, speak, and mentor other leaders, but the fruit of all that has happened in my life came from the prayers of a desperate dad.
Why not resolve to fast one meal/day a week for your children and give that time to God in prayer? There is destiny-shaping power when a father resolves in prayer.
Do in prayer what you cannot do in person.
My father did in prayer what he couldn’t do in person, and you can, too. Instead of nagging, demanding, punishing, or yelling, why not bring your kids to God? He alone has the power to change their hearts, and He can do it when there is distance and discouragement in your relationships with your kids.
Prayer is the fulcrum a father can lean on to shape his family.
Why not take a moment, even right now, to lean on God for your kids?
Prayer can reach prodigals in faraway lands and older brothers in the field. It can open hearts, eyes, and doors of destiny.
History is shaped through prayer; your family can be, too.
Do in prayer what you cannot do in person.
That will be enough.
Jon Tyson is a pastor and church planter in New York City. Originally from Adelaide, Australia, Jon moved to the United States over two decades ago with a passion to seek and cultivate renewal in the Western Church. He serves as the lead pastor of Church of the City New York.