What to Pray for your Students

If you're a Christian teacher, and especially if you work at a Christian school, you probably take time now and then to pray for your students. Personally, I do this quite often (they need it!). But do you ever get stuck on certain students, or feel like you don't know what you should be praying? Here are a handful of things from my own prayers that I find come up over and over again, and often apply to many students.

Pray for Purity

There are a shocking number of parents, even at Christian schools, who let their children have completely unrestricted access to a smart phone. This isn't healthy for anyone, but it's especially destructive to boys, many of whom quickly discover and become addicted to pornography. Pray for an awakened conscience, purity of heart and mind, and discernment for any such boy in your classes. (Discernment for their parents wouldn't hurt either!)

Pray for Wise Friendships

This is one I find myself praying more for the girls. Everyone knows the old saying, "bad company corrupts good character." The problem is, most of us don't actually learn that until we've been in some bad company! It takes a lot of courage to break off a friendship or exit a group, even if we know the relationship isn't good for us. It's easier to just go with the flow, but pray against that. Pray for students to recognize when a friend group is one they shouldn't be a part of, and go elsewhere.

Pray for Real Faith

In a Christian school, kids often act Christian or say Christian things just because it's expected of them. To some extent that's normal. After all, who wants to be an outcast? But everyone needs to know Jesus for themselves, not through their family, church or school. A faith borrowed from one of these sources is really no faith at all. So pray that students would come to know their Heavenly Father and his Son Jesus Christ for themselves, with real faith. They won't always have a Christian environment to help them achieve this, so time is precious.