I recently stayed at a hotel with my husband. He had to go away on a business trip, and I decided to tag along to have a nice quiet week to myself to get some book writing done.

The first night when we checked in and got to the door of our room, we heard little kids in the room right next to us. The next morning at breakfast we discovered it was a family of seven in that room. (I know exactly what that is like, having raised five children.)

I went to the front desk to let someone know, even though the room next to us has five very well-behaved children, I might be asking to change rooms since I was there specifically for a quiet atmosphere to get some writing done.

As soon as my husband left for his business meetings that first morning, a crane pulled up to my third floor hotel window. True story! It was loud, and the diesel fumes were getting to me. A few minutes later there was some terrible banging and slamming on the roof, directly above my head, sounding like the workers were going to come right through the ceiling! So not only did I have a family with five kids next to me, I now had a noisy crane outside my window and this horrendous banging noise directly above me!

I found myself thinking, “It would be a real hassle and cut into my morning to have to pack myself and Dave up and move us to another room. Do I just hope this isn’t going to last very long? Do I hope the kids next door are gone most of the day, and if they are not gone that they are basically quiet? What do I do?”

I asked the Lord for wisdom, and felt led to go and talk to someone at the front desk. The woman there was very apologetic and said she would find me a different room right away. So I packed us up and moved us to the middle floor on the other side of the building, where it was nice and quiet and I could focus totally on my work. Ahhhhh…..

How often does something like this happen to us? Not just as an external situation, but often as an internal dilemma. We find ourselves in a situation we didn’t plan to be in. Do we make some changes to get back on track? Or do we stay put, hoping the situation changes? Most of the time it is much easier not to be inconvenienced, and hope for things to change.

I could have stayed in that room and continued hoping (for who knows how long) that things would quiet down, so I could do what I specifically went there to do. Even though I was inconvenienced for about an hour by going down to the desk, packing up the room, moving all of our stuff over, and unpacking it all again, from that point on I was back on track. It was worth the inconvenience of making the change.

How about you? Is there something going on in your life, that if you just made an inconvenient adjustment, things would get back on track? God wants you to push through. James 1:4 says, “Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything”(NIV). God wants you and me to have perseverance, which is a sign of spiritual maturity. Sometimes that perseverance means to stick it out where we are, and sometimes it means we need to inconvenience ourselves to shift our position.  And when we pray, asking for His wisdom, He promises to give it to us. (James 1:5)

I was so thankful God gave me the prompting He did when I asked Him what to do, and that I followed through with it.  I got a lot done those few days, things that will bear eternal fruit.  I pray you will also make the adjustments God reveals to you to make; adjustments that will bear eternal fruit as well.

What area in your life are you seeking wisdom from God that might need a repositioning? Share it with me in the comment section below.

As much as we might want to, we can’t make our adult child bow to the King and live in the fullness of His Kingdom.

In Part 1 and Part 2, I gave the first five of the seven ways we can help our adult children when we find ourselves in this situation.  If you missed them, you will want to go back and read them both before reading the final blog of this series.

I have sometimes pictured my children standing on the edge of a cliff. They are very close to jumping off, trying to decide if they want to be totally separated from my beliefs concerning God and church.  So I know what I do, or don’t do, is very critical.

Let’s take just a minute to look at this, especially the issue of going to church. Like it or not, it does not say anywhere in the Bible you must go to church to be saved.  I know it says we are not to forsake the fellowship, and I know we need to be in fellowship with other believers.  But the Western culture church is not a Biblical mandate: going to a specific building at a set time each week, worshiping God being led from a platform of musicians, sitting for another 30-60 minutes facing that same platform while someone preaches a message at us, and then dismissing and going home or out to lunch.   Send me an email when you see that formula in the Bible, much less attaching the label of “church” on it in the scriptures.

God Himself is what needs to be relevant to our lives, more than the modern day “church” is.  And I believe that is where some of the problem lies in the young adults across our nation.  They spent up to 4 years in a youth group with lots of great bands and pizza parties, which had almost nothing to do with how God is relevant in their lives, or how He would be when they were sent out into life on their own.

They are part of a reality generation.  They don’t want to watch things happen; they want to be right in the middle of what is happening.  They are tired of going to a building, being told that is church.  They want to go out into the world and BE the church.

The scary part is our children were not taught how to BE the church while being raised in the church.  So when they go out into the world, they are easily swayed by the ways of the world, and we have the painful view of watching them flounder.

With all that being said, let’s look at the last two of the seven ways we can help them from the distance many of us are forced to be in.

With all that being said, let’s look at the last two of the seven ways we can help them from the distance many of us are forced to be in.

6. Claim the promises in the scriptures over them

• I have a much worn book that helped me do this effectively over the years as my children grew up called The Power of a Praying Parent by Stormie Omartian. I have recently purchased her book The Power of Praying for Your Adult Children. I highly recommend getting yourself a copy!

• My most recent event of having my “baby” move out from home and in with a group of friends who don’t have a relationship with the Lord has me working through all seven of these things, so I am writing this to myself just as much as anyone else. A scripture God has me praying over him is one of his own favorites growing up. “Greater is Jesus in him, than the one who is in the world trying to entice and deceive him!” (1 John 4:4).

• Another thing I have done with all of my kids is to take the meaning of their first and middle name, and ask the Holy Spirit to lead me to a scripture that encompasses the meaning of those names. I pray each of my children’s scripture over them frequently. (Several years ago I even made each one of them a plaque with their first and middle names, the meanings of those names, and their scripture which hangs under their yearly school picture – now all of their senior pictures – in our family room.)

7. Take yourself off the hook!

Many years ago I was walking around my subdivision, feeling sorry for myself at being one of the world’s worst moms. God interrupted my pity party with, “Did your parents make any mistakes with you?” I had to say yes to that. “And didn’t I use those things to make you strong and be an overcomer?” Well, yes, I suppose that was true. “Don’t you think I can and will use your mistakes for something good in the lives of your kids in the same way I did for you?” I had to repent for my lack of faith in who God is in their lives, and for putting so much pressure on myself to be a perfect parent, and blaming myself when my kids make bad choices.

In case you haven’t thought of this before: The only “parent” Adam and Eve had was a Perfect Father, and they disobeyed (Eve from deception and Adam from choosing to bend under peer pressure). They went their own way, messing up their lives from the plan God had for them. So if a Perfect Father has children who make bad choices, I don’t need to be burdened under false guilt for their choices, no matter how much I have prayed and modeled how awesome walking in God’s destiny is.

Here is one of the times I will be totally transparent and say, even though I say those things, it is still something I struggle with way more than I want to admit. And guess who my greatest encouragers seem to be? My own kids! Here is part of a text I received from one of them, just within the last month.

“Mom I love you, and you are far from a failure, you have one beautiful daughter who has finished the race and gone to heaven (that’s 1 for 1 so far) and the rest are still running and in their process. To be a failure there has to be a definitive end. The rest of us are still going and learning, far from the end. So, you’re undefeated and still going in my mind. I know it’s hard, but try to stop putting so much pressure on yourself. You show us the way to God’s heart, and there have been things you can’t control so continue with your heart after God and working on you. We do see it, and God’s doing the rest. I love you my triumphant victorious mother!”

Needless to say, that text is locked in so I can’t accidently delete it!

God is faithful, not only to us, but to our children!  He has an even deeper love for them than we do, and He has a perfect plan, including things we can’t see.  Let’s be determined to REST in the love He has for them, and thank Him that the same grace and mercy He extends to us, is the same grace and mercy He extends to our children.  God is a victorious King, yesterday, today, and forever!

In the Crown of Glory Ministries library you can find 31 Scriptural promises written out for you to claim and pray over your adult children. (One for each day of the month.)

I would love to hear from you.  Leave the first name of a child you would like lifted up in prayer.  I will come into agreement with you, and hold each and every one up to the King on the Throne in prayer.