Christian Parenting.

Christian Parenting.

Hey friends, welcome back to Pardon the Mess. I'm your host, Courtney Defeo, and I really have tried to record this intro three times because I'm like, do I be on? I'm honest? Should I be honest? But y'all, that was rough. I'm not going to lie. Sending your first kid off to college or your second or third and also sending them through rush and the SEC is not for the faint of heart. I have had so many tears, but y'all, she's doing great. She's happy. It all works out,

but it is really, it's like an out-of-body experience. I think that's why when our kids are little

and you watch somebody else send their kid off, you start crying, just even thinking about it,

which is natural. Y'all, we birth these humans. We raise them. They've been in our home for 18 years.

So to watch them drive away and start their lives outside of your home is emotional. And so don't feel bad about

that, but also be happy and be excited. I had to rally several times and pull it together just so

she didn't feel bad. I found her starting to feel bad that I was sad and needed me just to be

supportive and happy. And so it's a blend

of all those. But what I know is that God is good and I've already seen his faithfulness and just

who friends he brought around her early on, some disappointments that happened that turned out to be

the best thing for her. And so it's just like God is good and he actually cares for our kids. Imagine that. So we're going to talk all about prayer today. And we've got the perfect guest is Jody Burnt. And she's a friend of mine. Y'all have probably read some of her books. She's got an entire series that is so incredible. They're called praying the scriptures for your dot, dot, dot. It started with kids, praying the scriptures for your kids. Now she has marriage, praying the scriptures for your dot, dot, dot, dot. It started with kids, praying the scriptures for your kids.

Now she has marriage, praying the scriptures for your marriage and teens and adult kids.

And your life, there's just been so many versions of it.

Because basically, it's pretty simple.

She's taking scripture and merging that with prayer.

I'm like, duh, why aren't we all doing this? Just taking God's word

and submitting that as a prayer. And if you're like, what do you mean by that? You will hear her in today's

episode talk about the cutest practical ideas about not just pray every week like we're going to do

on here on Pardon the Mess, but could you pray an annual prayer? She traces the hands of her kids

and now her grandkids and prays about Lord, what scripture would be best for them for this year? What do you want for them? What do you want to do in their lives? And then she traces their hand, writes the little verse in their name, and puts it in her Bible. And so you'll see that in the episode today if you want to go on over to YouTube. But I wanted to start off the school year by just reminding us that this is one of the things we can control is how often and when and how we are praying for our kids. And it just got me so fired up for the school year. If you're new here on Mondays at Part of the Mess, we pray together. And this is what that means. There's a journal written by the team here at Christian Parenting that is called a Great Cloud of Witnesses, and it's all about how we're going to carry on a legacy of faith, and there's different characters from the Bible and what we know about Jesus through their stories, and we're going to pray extraordinary things for ordinary people like me and you and my kids. And so you take the journal, you order it at cpgiv.org,

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