Why do I ask God to save my son? Am I praying that the Lord would draw him to himself so I can be comforted? Surely, that comfort is just a side effect—joyful though it would be. Or do I plead with God so my son can be comforted? Certainly, that would be a blessing. But is that all there is to it—my son’s happiness? Or do I pray for his salvation so God’s name would be glorified?

As a teenager, our son “came out” as a “homosexual agnostic” on Facebook. Prior to this, there had been months of rumblings and arguments in our home about what Scripture actually teaches about homosexuality, but on that day, reading his statement in black and white, it felt like a blow to my chest. Weak-kneed, I sat down abruptly.
No! No! No! This can’t be happening! Can it? Our son?
I could vividly picture his 7-year-old self—his big brown eyes turned up to me, while his upper lip did that pointy thing it did when he was trying to articulate something important to him. “Mommy, I want to be a missionary pilot when I grow up. I can help bring Bibles and food to places trains can’t go.” I had drawn him close in a hug then, my heart brimming with joy. And pride.
What went wrong? Was it my pride in his precocious achievements? Was my homeschooling the problem? Was I too strict?
Our son’s coming out had only been the beginning of a slippery slope: he soon became a self-proclaimed “bisexual atheist,” then progressed to a “gender-fluid atheist,” all the while blaming us for brainwashing him as a kid and “force-feeding him a Book that called him an abomination.”
Now our son is an adult, and his Facebook intro reads—in part—“Queer. Non-binary.”
Daily, grief gnaws at my soul. Sometimes it threatens to become all-consuming and I’m tempted to let the darkness engulf me. But God, through a recent sermon, graciously brought to mind these precious words: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4).
Mourning
The pain I feel over the spiritual loss of my son is real. It feels like a death that keeps on dying, and the grief comes in waves. How do I mourn well? In the context of this passage in Matthew, it’s not just those who mourn but also the poor in spirit (v. 3) and the meek (v. 5) who are called blessed. 
So I’m to recognize my spiritual poverty and with a humble heart bring my grief to the Lord. I recognize I wasn’t a perfect mother—far from it. Many a time I disciplined in anger, got puffed up with pride (even though I knew that I owed every aspect of my life to God’s grace), or thought I was in control and acted that way. I’m not saying my sin caused my son’s sin. But my sin is as real as his. So I mourn it and ask my gracious Father to forgive me. Lord, have mercy! I need you.
When I look at the wretchedness that’s in my sinful flesh with mournful repentance, I’m able to look at the sin in my son’s life and mourn it for what it is—
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Truly, our children are an undeserved gift from God. God could have chosen others to become parents of your children. Instead, God chose you to be a parent of your children. Let us then thank and praise God for our children. May we never regard them as a burden but as a blessing from God—from whom all blessings flow. And may God grant us grace, as we train up our children in the way they should go, so that when they are old they will not depart from it (Prov. 22:6). 

I cannot recall how many times I met people who honestly told me that they did not want to have children because children would just interfere with their lives. They viewed children as a burden, rather than a blessing. In fact, a certain woman frankly told me that she was too selfish to have a child. She did not want to have a child, because she knew it would mean an inconvenient life.
Do you know how many babies are aborted per day in the U. S.? The answer is heart breaking—approximately 3,700 babies per day. And 93 % of all abortions happen generally because of inconvenience.  Listen to the following statistics:
1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).
In other words, if you were to ask 100 mothers who aborted their children, “Why did you abort your child?” A large number of them would probably say something like this: “Well, because that baby in my womb would just interfere with my education or career.” Or, “I don’t want to have an inconvenient life.”
What?! You aborted your unborn baby simply because you didn’t want to have an inconvenient life?! Of course, it can be inconvenient to have a baby. You will experience sleepless nights as you nurse your baby in the middle of the night or rock your sick baby to sleep. You will have additional expenses, messes to clean up; and, your days will not always go according to your schedule. Children can indeed “interfere” with some of our plans.
Of course, it is difficult to raise a child. Being a parent comes with great responsibilities (you provide for your children, take care of them, train them in the way they should go, correct and discipline them, and the list goes on and on). Such responsibilities are not always easy to do, especially if a child has a physical or mental disability.
And, of course, it can be stressful to have children. Kids can sometimes be annoying. They can test your patience. Having children requires sacrifice. You need to sacrifice your time, your comfort, and sometimes your dreams. Oh, but the joy of parenting surpasses its stress and sacrifice. The blessing of parenthood outweighs its discomfort.
My wife and I have five children. Yes, I don’t deny the difficulty of parenting.
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Charles Spurgeon drew upon a vast reservoir of language and imagery in the Bible for all his prayers. Spurgeon’s assortment of scriptural quotations, images, and allusions in his pulpit prayers evidenced an understanding that the language of prayer must be infused with the language of Scripture.

Dinsdale Young, who heard Spurgeon preach and later compiled prayers of his, stated that as memorable as it was to hear Spurgeon preach, it was even more so to hear him pray. What he prayed was even more profound and beautiful than what he preached. Likewise, Charles Cook, who knew Spurgeon’s son Thomas and also published a selection of Spurgeon’s prayers, observed that “Spurgeon’s power did not lie wholly in his exceptional preaching gifts. He was a mighty man of prayer.” Little wonder, then, that the greatest impression on the American evangelist D.L. Moody upon his first visit to the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1867 was not Spurgeon’s preaching – it was Spurgeon’s praying!
Spurgeon held a high view of prayer, evidenced not only by his teachings and exhortations on it but also by his practice. He preached numerous sermons on prayer, wrote multiple books about it, and gave advice to his pastoral students in lectures on it. He commended prayer to his congregants for personal and family practice and labored especially public prayer. He called public praying “the end of preaching,” even telling students, “If I may have my choice, I will sooner yield up the sermon than the prayer.” Young observed that for Spurgeon, “prayer was the instinct of his soul, and the atmosphere of his life.” In particular, Young recognized Spurgeon’s knowledge and reach of Scripture:
Mr. Spurgeon lived and moved and had his being in the Word of God. He knew its remoter reaches, its nooks and crannies. Its spirit had entered into his spirit; and when he prayed, the Spirit of God brought all manner of precious oracles to mind.
How were those “oracles,” “nooks and crannies,” and “remoter reaches” of the Word manifested in the pulpit prayers of Spurgeon? And how can we learn to do the same?
(To jump straight to the prayer, click on the link, then click the “View this Resource” button.)
Use Direct Scriptural Quotations in Your Prayers
One obvious way was in the use of direct scriptural quotations. Spurgeon quoted extensively from both testaments of the Bible in his prayers, especially from the Psalms and the Gospels. A favorite psalm of his to quote from was Psalm 67. He frequently included verses 3 and 5 from Psalm 67 in the closings of his prayers as he interceded for the salvation of the unconverted, envisioning more people being added to the company of believers and joining with them in praise to God alone who saves. One example can be found in the prayer, “The Love Without Measure or End,”
Lord, save men, gather out the company of the redeemed people; let those whom the Father gave to Christ be brought out from among the ruins of the fall to be His joy and crown. “Let the people praise You, O God, yea, let all the people praise You.” Let the ends of the earth fear Him who died to save them.
Note how in that intercession for the unsaved Spurgeon employed Ps 67:3, 5 as a doxological response to God’s saving act. We can likewise use Scripture quotations in praise to God for his anticipated acts of salvation or deliverance.
From the Gospels, Spurgeon repeatedly quoted from the Lord’s Prayer, specifically the first two lines of it, using those lines in the openings and closings of his prayers as well as in specific intercessions. One of the best examples of this is the prayer, “On Holy Ground.” Near the middle of that prayer, Spurgeon was again interceding for the lost and prayed this:
Oh! how we pray for this, the salvation of our fellow men, not so much for their sakes as for the sake of the glory of God and the rewarding of Christ for His pain. We do with all our hearts pray, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Lord, help us to do Your will. Take the crippled kingdom of our manhood and reign You over it.
Notice how Spurgeon weaved lines of the Lord’s Prayer into a prayer for the salvation of others, all the while upholding the glory of God himself as the overarching reason for that salvation! Similarly, we can appropriate God’s words to us in our words of prayer back to God and acknowledge his transcendence and pre-eminence as we do.
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