Prayer for a daughter on her birthday

As I write this, it is my daughter’s birthday. I was awake in the wee hours and so decided to pray for her in more than a cursory way. The book of Acts occurred to me, the Apostle Paul’s conversation with the philosophical types milling about in the Areopagus:

“And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27).

How amazing is God that He should place every human being He creates in exactly the allotted period they should be in! We have a good example in a certain ancient Israeli queen in Persia, whose cousin Mordecai suggests to her in a moment of great decision:

“… And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)

What a marvelous thing that in allotting the periods and “boundaries” of men’s “dwelling place,” the Lord’s purpose is that they should “seek God” and “feel their way toward him—and find him.” God wants to be found, and He deliberately places us in localities and in situations best suited to enhance each personality’s tendency to seek after Him. We know that His heart is for each man’s salvation:

“… God our Savior … desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4).

He stacks the deck, as it were, for us. He places things favorably for our seeking. He is forever putting us where we will trip over His evidences. He makes the heavens themselves to fairly scream with His power and deity (Romans 1:20).

And so I prayed along these lines for my daughter this morning. It went something like this:

“Father in heaven, you who formed my daughter in the womb and put her in this family, and in this town, and in this state, and in this country, and in this century of all centuries in history, be gracious to her and use all things to cause her to seek you and feel her way toward you—and find you. Use her love of poetry, use her sense of humor, use her teachers, use music, use weather, use beauty. Use her past and her present and her future. Use health and sickness—if sickness must be). Use happiness and trials—I know it must be. And move upon her heart with gentle firmness or firm gentleness to cause her to be disillusioned with worldliness and to love godliness. And thank you that your Word emboldens me to pray thus for this one I love. Always in Jesus’ name. Amen.”