Praying Scripture as a Special Needs Parent
Both of my sons have multiple diagnoses, and I prayed fervently for God to miraculously heal my children. It didn’t happen, and I wondered if I didn’t have enough faith, or if God was truly a mountain moving God. My new crisis of faith scared me, and I stumbled upon Beth Moore’s book Praying God’s Word that changed a lot of things for me. Inspired by that book, I determined to pray Scripture for my boys.
My younger son has a speech delay, my older son a neurological-based speech disorder called apraxia that requires frequent and intensive speech therapy to learn to speak. He didn’t say his first words until he was almost four. Devastated by the lack of conversations I had with my children, I decided I would first find Scriptures to pray for their speech.
Before long, I found two verses relating to words and speech that jumped out at me.
- “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Psalm 119:10
- “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” Proverbs 25:11
When my children finally said their first word and then slowly added to their vocabularies, I viewed each of those words as something sweet, something special to treasure, like an apple of gold in settings of silver.
I then combined the words I loved from both of these verses to form my new prayer for my children. I prayed for new “sweet apples of gold” every morning and on the way to speech therapy and I thanked God for the new “sweet apples of gold” after my children said a new word or phrase. I honestly love this phrase to refer to my childrens’ speech and love how it has become a part of my prayers, praying God’s own words to thank Him for the new ones my children could now say.
After that, I became passionate about praying Scripture and looking for verses to pray relating to topics that mattered to me and that I wanted to see God move in.
Praying Scripture For Your Special Needs Children
As a special needs parent we learn to advocate for our children–with insurance companies, with doctors and specialists, with schools, with churches, and within the community. But one of the best ways to advocate for your child is on your knees before the throne of God.
But it’s also easy to pray for the things we want. We might pray for God to move mightily for our children in ways that are not in His will or timing, and then we grow discouraged by prayer, and begin to question God’s love and care for us and our children. I have found that praying scripture is one of the best ways to combat this discouragement, because we are aligning our prayers and desires with God’s own Word and His desires.
Here is a list of 15 Scriptures to pray for your child with special needs to help you get started.
Praying Scripture For Your Own Special Needs Parenting Journey
The special needs parenting journey can be lonely. It can be overwhelming. It can lead to a deep grief, depression, and/or an overwhelming anxiety you’ve never experienced before. You may be struggling in your faith and believing that God is good and cares for you and your child(ren).
I desperately prayed for relief and God felt so silent and so far away until I began turning to Scripture and praying Scripture for my own spiritual and physical wellbeing. By turning to and praying God’s Word, I was able to begin processing my thoughts and emotions in a godly, rather than worldly way and could hear the love He had for me and my children in His Word.
Here are 20 Scriptures to pray as a special needs parent. These Scriptures really helped me to let go of my own expectations and desires and trust God’s plan and purpose for me and my children. They restored hope and peace in my life and I pray they do the same in yours.
Praying Scripture For Your Marriage as Special Needs Parents
Marriage can be challenging enough, but add in the extra stresses and challenges of special needs parenting, and we need to be praying for our marriages more than ever. It’s important to be united teammates, journeying together in life and in parenting and praying Scriptures over your marriage can help remind you of God’s heart for your marriage.
Here are 15 Scriptures special needs parents can pray for their marriage.