Pastors' Families Need Prayer

Pray Today Episode 03
featuring Pastor Rickie Bradshaw

Praying for the family, the wife and children of the pastor and minister is so vital. Please welcome Pastor Rickie Bradshaw, from First Southwest Baptist Church, as he shares what we can pray for our pastor's family.

Podcast Transcript

Pastor Bradshaw: Being a pastor, you’re hoping that your congregation is praying for you.

Mary Ann: Yes – so important

Pastor Bradshaw: I have seen the difference when they’re not.

Mary Ann: Not a good thing.

Pastor Bradshaw: You can tell. Most ministers can tell when people are praying for them. Because things begin to happen. Words come to their minds. Thoughts come to them in their relationship with others that probably wouldn’t have happened if someone hadn’t been praying for them at that time.

Mary Ann: I believe that.

Pastor Bradshaw: Yeah, I believe it too. God is answering prayers as my pastor is speaking, or as my pastor is at home with his wife and somebody’s sick, “will you please be with them, Father?” All of a sudden, they come back. I’ve come back to say to my church, “Thank you for praying for me, I know you were praying for me because this happened and this happened.” 

Pastor Bradshaw: Not on my agenda, my daughter is healed, or we were sick, my wife was not feeling well but she’s in the kitchen getting at it right now. I believe that’s what we ought to be praying for.
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Mary Ann: You see the working power of the Holy Spirit because you’re empowered to do what God has called you to do and only that which God can do.

Pastor Bradshaw: I also think we need to target his family, target his wife in prayer. I would appreciate if our congregations prayed for our wives. We spend so much time with the bride of Christ that we have no idea what she goes through in giving her husband up. By then praying for her, she receives strength to say to him, “Get out of the kitchen and go to work.”

Pastor Bradshaw: Esteeming our leaders highly in love, believe me if you read that in 1 Thessalonians, is to love on his wife through prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13 NKJV). She needs it probably more than he does because he’s getting it probably more than she’s getting it.

Mary Ann: Even as a bride of Christ, He wants us to have that desire to highly esteem the spouse of our pastors and our ministers, to embrace her and highly esteem her. There’s a real blessing in that, and I count it all joy. I love to pray for my pastor’s wife.

Pastor Bradshaw: That’s beautiful.
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Mary Ann: And our minister’s spouses, whether they be male or female, they need prayer too. They really do. I would say to the church today: include the spouse of your minister, of your pastor that you’re praying for because it is the heart of God. It truly is.

Pastor Bradshaw: Lastly, his children, if he has children. Oh my goodness. We are finding out through statistics that many pastor’s children are no longer attending church because they experience the pain of ministry. When they get older, they say,  “I’ll find another way out.” They love the Lord. They love their parents.

Pastor Bradshaw: But it’s the people of God who may have forgotten the children. The children, they are lending both of their parents to ministry. If the congregation would understand that and say, “Let me pray for my pastor’s children that they would love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength.” And pray for my wife that she would love God more than she loves me.

Mary Ann: Right, because seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto them (Matthew 6:33 KJV). I think it’s so vital that we do pray for the children of the pastor. What would we pray for the child of a pastor?

Pastor Bradshaw: I think again that they would love God. I really do, it covers a lot. That they would become arrows of strength for the pastor and also that they would experience the transition of ministry from home in a very healthy way.

Mary Ann: That’s important.

Pastor Bradshaw: That’s important, because sometimes the transition from home to church can be, “Well I got to fake the smile when I don’t want to be here.” That they could transition well from house, home-life. Sometimes daddy and momma might ask them to do some things that they don’t really want to do.

Mary Ann: I think even for the children to honor their father and mother (Exodus 20:12 NKJV). And they would be children that would love the Word of God and they would have a personal relationship with the Lord at such an early age. The Word of God, as you said, it speaks so great, great things, mighty things of God Himself to be imparted into those children because God has a plan for their life as well.

Pastor Bradshaw: That is so true.

Mary Ann: We’re to love them. The bride of Christ is to embrace the children of our pastor and our ministers. We’re to serve them. We’re here to serve, and that’s the mantle that God has put in our hearts from the living and active Word of God that we’re to embrace them in all that they do.

​Mary Ann: And that parents would train up their children in the way that they should go, that they would not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6 NKJV). There’s so much the Word of God is full of to pray for our pastors and to pray for the children. He’s put it on the heart, but He did say in 1 Timothy that we are to pray, Church, we are to pray for all those who are in authority (1 Timothy 1:1-2a). We truly are. Praise God.