Prayer 04: Wisdom From Ruth Chou Simons Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Emily: Hey there, friends. Emily here. Today, you're going to be jumping into a conversation with my co-host, Laura Wifler, and Ruth Chou Simons. This is just a great conversation with a seasoned mom and her perspective on how she taught her six children to pray. This is part of a larger mini-series that we've been doing all about prayer, so if you've missed some of our other episodes, definitely go back and listen, but we are excited for you to hear from Ruth.
She is a Wall Street Journal bestselling and award-winning author of several books, including GraceLaced, Beholding and Becoming, and Foundations, and she's actually releasing a new Bible study curriculum soon and another book that's kind of a memoir about her life in grace. She also has a new book coming out soon called When Strivings Cease that we're really excited about.
Ruth is actually one of the original Risen Motherhood board members and she has just been so gracious over the years to lend us her wisdom about being faithful in the season that God has us—to be growing in our character, in our godliness, in our work with the Lord—and she's also just invested deeply in Laura and I, so we're really, really grateful for her. It's been fun to watch from afar her and Troy and how they raised their children, and so we think you're going to benefit from hearing from Ruth as well. Alright, let's jump into the conversation.
Laura Wifler: We are here to talk about prayer today, but before we get into that topic, just for the few people that perhaps might not be familiar with your work, can you just introduce yourself and tell us about one or two projects that you're excited about right now?
Ruth Chou Simons: Yes, I'm Ruth Chou Simons. I'm a momma to six boys. My husband and I have been married for almost 23 years. Our oldest is 19 and our youngest is 8, and so we've got all that in between and I have been through various seasons of motherhood. I'm the founder of gracedlaced.com and an author and an artist, gratefully sharing my work through some books that you may know, like GraceLaced and Beholding and Becoming and Foundations—a family discipleship resource for family worship—and a Bible study with LifeWay called TruthFilled on the Book of Colossians, about preaching truth to ourselves. My next book, which is my first trade book, is called When Strivings Cease, and that comes out October of 2021.
Laura: Oh, man, well, that'll be just a couple months from when this releases, so we will all look forward to that. I'm so excited to get that. I'm pre-ordering it, for sure. Very excited about that book.
Ruth: Thank you, friend.
Laura: Yes. Okay. We are in the mini-series; we are deep in talking about prayer and kids and how we can raise up a generation of children that pray. Ruth, why don't you just start us off so that we're all on the same page. Can you just define prayer for us?
Ruth: Prayer is talking with God. It’s communing with him in a communication directed to him—not with anybody else—but directly from our hearts and our lips to our creator God.
Laura: Yes, it's so simple, isn't it?
Ruth: It's so simple.
Laura: I think it can feel like it should be more complicated, or it should have a little bit of a magical flair to it or something, but it's—right—just talking with God. Throughout this mini-series, we are trying to talk a little bit about just why it's so important that we train our kids in this. I know you and Troy are incredibly intentional with your kids. You have the devotional Foundations and a podcast that goes with, and we've just gained so much of your wisdom there, but can you talk with us about how you guys have found—or why it's so valuable that you've taught your kids about how to pray, and then maybe just ways that you've done that?
Ruth: One of the things that we love to say around here is "more is caught than it is taught." It's really easy for us to go around as parents putting things like prayer on the agenda, like, "We will now pray and follow this formula and teach them how to pray." Now, the reality is, I think in every discipline in the spiritual disciplines: there is the learning of those disciplines. No one's going to learn something without actually being taught what the Word says about how to pray. We read in Matthew how the Lord Jesus taught us how to pray.
It's not that there's no method and no wisdom on how to pray, but in a home, when we're living lives day-in and day-out with our kids, they're going to catch more about prayer and understand prayer more by how we model it than by us saying, "Hey, this afternoon and for the next week, we're going to talk about prayer and now you're going to try it yourself." [Laughter]
At our house, a lot of it starts truly with me and Troy recognizing that their understanding of prayer will only be as rich and as robust and as exciting as we model for them out of our own lives. Meaning, if we pray simple "bless this food" prayers and that's the only prayers they ever hear us pray, they'll have an idea that prayer is truly that all-American idea of grace. We just say grace and we're done.
If our idea of prayer is only that we only pray when we've lost a contact, when we can't get to the airport on time, when a crisis happens, then it really becomes that, so like, "Oh my goodness, we only pray when we're at crisis." How is it that we can, in our everyday lives, model the idea that prayer is this constant, continual communion with God? That if he's truly both Lord and helper and friend—if he is the intercessor for us that we have access to at all times—how do we model that?
I love that one time when I talked to Troy about this very topic, he said, "Prayer is just hard work. It's hard work." Sometimes we think that it should be easier than it is, and it is simple, but not easy. It's simple in that it's not complicated. You don't have to have a special prayer closet. You don't have to have ambience, but it's not easy. You have to take time; you have to put energy into it. When it's corporate prayer, when you're praying in front of your children—it takes vulnerability. For us, that looks like, first, certainly praying at meals, but being intentional about praying at meals, and also praying in a lot of in-between times as well.
Laura: That is so good. I love what you shared that Troy shared with you—that prayer is simple, but it's not easy—because as you were talking, I was thinking: I can fall into ruts where I am just praying when I have a need, or I am just praying around meals and prayers almost become very rote, and we're praying the same things over and over.
That's helpful because I do think for my kids to see a well-rounded prayer life, I almost have to be a little more conscious or intentional, and instead of passively going through those natural rhythms of prayer, saying, "Personally, I as mom want to pray all the time—the good things, the bad things, the sad, the hard, all of that—but I have to say it out loud to my children, or let them enter into those things." It does start with us so much, rather than, like you said, "Okay, kids, we're going to talk about prayer," and suddenly, you're going to have this great prayer life. It just doesn't happen that way.
Ruth: Sometimes it's interesting if you pay attention and observe giving your kids opportunities to pray. Like maybe in your house too you'll say, "Hey, who wants to pray tonight for dinner?" There are times when, depending on the age of your children, each of our kids have gone through seasons where they pray like they're sending a wish-you-well card. It's like, "I pray and wish for a good night." [Laughter]
They've all gone through seasons like that, where it's like, "Are you praying, or are you sending out a Hallmark greeting card and making sure everybody's happy today?" "I pray where we all have a good night." There's nothing wrong with that. We're not going to correct that right off and say, "That's not the way we pray." No, we're not going to do that, but when I notice things like that, I realize, "Oh, their prayers are turning into more just their wish list versus a declaration of who God is."
When we look at Jesus' example for prayer, it's ultimately praying, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name." It's about God. It's about who God is. Ultimately, when we pray, we're praying an example of "We've got to declare who God is and what he says about himself." I'm thinking about how many bedtimes we've had where what I really want to pray is just, "Lord, teach these kids to obey. Help us have a better day tomorrow, help us to not get in fights." Yes, we can pray those things, and yes, we want to ask the Lord to intervene and help us, but how much more do we communicate when we repeat the gospel in our prayers? "God, we can come to you at all because—we can come to the throne of grace because of the blood of Christ," and explain that. Explain why it is that we can come to him, why he is trustworthy, why God is sovereign and good. Why, when we pray, we don't need to worry that he doesn't hear us. What are the truths that back that? Well, we can say those things in our prayer, saying it back to God for the benefit of our own hearts and the hearts of our kids to hear and learn while we pray.
Laura: They learn the language of a Christian through our prayers.
Ruth: Yes, absolutely.
Laura: Often, I think of like my six-year-old right now. I'm sure every parent has a kid that's done this and they think their kid's the cutest thing in the world when they do it, because my little six-year-old will look around and, "Thank you Lord for the lamp, thank you for the table," and she's just into this like—I don't want to say it's a meaningless prayer, but she's just looking around and having a blast. Like you said, we don't correct it, but I realize that's kind of what I get into. It's just like, "Oh, I'm just going to pray these top-of-mind prayers and I'm not going to think deeply about what I want to say to the God of the universe."
I'm so thankful because I think God can handle both. He asked for both from us— those quick prayers that are just all that we can think of in the moment, but he also says, "No, I want to have a genuine conversation with you." I wouldn't talk to my husband like that. I want to share my heart with my husband, and I would want him to know truly how I feel, and so I think, again, as parents, as we model that to our kids, they can see, "Oh, these are all of the amazing, beautiful ways that I can talk to God. It doesn't just have to be 'thank you for my toys.' It can be so much more beautiful and robust."
Ruth: I think sometimes as parents, we think our responsibility as parents is to pray what we think our kids need to hear rather than pray what is genuine from our hearts. We're so didactic; we're so on teaching mode all the time. We're like, "Dear God, please help little Johnny realize he's a sinner. Please help him correct—" [Laughter] We're just praying these kinds of things when really—and obviously that's an extreme—but where's the part where they see that we're tender about our own sin, that we're aggrieved, that we are confessing?
We say around here a lot like, "Let's normalize repentance. Let's make it really normal that we would say, 'I messed up and, Lord, I'm so grateful for forgiveness in Christ because I'm coming to you once again today needing forgiveness and I truly messed things up this morning when I was talking to my siblings or my spouse,'" or whatever it is—whoever's praying.
I think that that's been something that's really convicting for me personally in my current season of—well, especially in 2020 being home all the time with my children, because there's just been a lot of opportunities for us to say, "Hey, let's gather, let's pray over what just happened," like, "Oh my goodness, we're under a lot of stress today. Let's pray." But sometimes that prayer seems like mom and dad are going to help reset the kids, when really we need to reset ourselves a lot of times in front of them.
Laura: To transition just a tiny bit here, I want to ask you all of the questions that I don't know the answers to. I'm going to sit in the learner's seat. One of the things that my kids have recently been asking is, "Mom, I can't see God. How do I know that he's really hearing my prayers?" How do you talk to your kids? I'm sure most moms are nodding along that their kids have asked this before. How do you talk about that with your kids and help give them an understanding that God does hear them even if we can't see him?
Ruth: Well, it's certainly difficult and there's all the different illustrations. We talk about—what is it? The one that we always hear from Billy Graham…"that you can't see the wind, but you feel it."
Laura: Yes. [Laughter]
Ruth: There's all those different analogies. There are really great ones, but I think outside of prayer, we spend a lot of time talking about how God is knowable, even when we don't feel it or even when we have a hard time coming to the Word and sensing his presence as we open the Word. Sometimes we're reading a part of Scripture that is not feeling incredibly like, "Wow, I feel really connected to his Spirit today in Deuteronomy," or whatever it is, wherever we're at. And also, for our family—I know I've talked to you about this quite a bit—we spend a lot of time outside observing God's faithfulness and observing his handiwork.
I think when you're turning your kids' hearts to that—not worshiping nature, not being like, "Wow, God who is everywhere." Not necessarily saying it that way, but to say, "Look at how many ways God tries to put his—he shows us his faithfulness day in, day out. The rhythms of our day are in his hands. How is it that God holds all things together? The very fact that we have a God who provides for us as we’re going to the grocery store, and then we come back and then we can make a meal."
When we're constantly talking about those things, then it feels less strange when we pause and speak to a guy that we've been talking about a lot and recognizing how he's active in our lives. There's nearly no perfect way. I don't have an answer for how I can cause my kids to feel really confident that, as they speak words aloud, the God of the universe hears them, because that's something that the Holy Spirit has to do in their lives. I can't enliven that. I can't even make them go, "Do you feel that?" [Laughter]
There's no way for me to make it magical or beautiful. I can't turn the lights down low and light a candle and cause them to feel any of those things. I wouldn't want to, but I can, day-in and day-out, make it very normal for us to say, "God is at work all the time." Whether we feel it or not, we need to start observing it. Let's start talking about all the ways we observe it in his Word—in these pages of his Word—as we walk outside and see the sunset.
What did God say to Abraham about all the stars in the sky? Well, every night we get to go out and see those stars. What we see and observe over and over again—then those prayers that come out of our mouths are to the very God that we've been studying all day long.
Laura: I love that, especially there at the end, of like, we've been studying him, and so now it's a natural springboard into speaking with him. I think one of the things too that we talk about a little bit in our home is just that prayer does change our hearts. Even if we don't really feel like God is hearing our prayers, we can see evidences of it in the ways that we behave and the ways that we act. This also leads me to my next question, because I think, even as an adult, I am still learning this idea that sometimes God's answer is "no" to our prayer request. Sometimes it's "not yet," sometimes it's "yes," but sometimes it's a "no," and that can be really painful.
At the age of kids—we're probably talking about anywhere from 4 to 10 or so is typically what the women in this community—what their kids' ages are. Usually, their prayers aren't the same as what maybe an adult’s are, but there are some just devastating moments I know for kids, whether it's not getting what they want for Christmas or maybe it's a friendship that isn't going well…how do you talk and counsel your sons, or how have you done that in the past?
Ruth: Well, for one thing, I'll say it is so much sweeter as they get older. As I'm now a mom to a 19-year-old, I'm really recognizing what I would say to your young mom audience: "The groundwork that you're laying, the seeds that you're planting, they do show fruit later on." The conversations that I have with my 19-year-old didn't start two years ago. They started when he was six and seven.
Initially, when you're talking about God's ways and his will and his answers to us, they don't always make sense. Yet I think in the same way that the Lord's Prayer models his character, we get to constantly point it back to the character of God. When he says "no," what is that saying? If he says he's a good God and that he will always care for us and that we are really in his hands—if we can look at these big principles, if the Word says that he is faithful to complete the good work in us—then this "no" right now—whether it'd be that you really, really wanted to join the soccer team and you didn't get picked, or you asked for a new friend in this class but nobody's become that friend for you—is it possible that God wants you to learn something about trusting him?
Just like I would say to you, Laura, the reality is—if you and I were having a conversation, I'd say, "Laura, what do you think God's trying to tell you right now in denying you this thing?" How do we say that to kids? I think a lot of times we simply say, "Hey, I have seen this over and over again in my life, that when God has not given momma something that I really, really, really wanted—so many times I recognize that he wanted my heart in the midst of it. He wanted me to trust him. He wanted me to actually lean on him and trust him more than I trusted in the friend or the soccer team or what it is that I wanted."
I think, for us, a lot of times we have to tell our own stories of God's faithfulness to our kids because sometimes that's the best illustration—to say, "Hey—this is an example when the Lord didn't give me what I asked for…how was he faithful in that?" I think it's just a really good opportunity to illustrate God's character and not make it so—I think we get to express it in a way to say, "just because he's saying 'no' right now doesn't mean he's saying 'no' to your heart's desires. He's saying, 'Want what I'm going to give you.'"
For us, sometimes it means that we say, "Hey, write it down. Write down what you're asking for and visit it later. Find out how he answers it later and in a different way." Sometimes it's surprising and exciting for the kids to realize, "Hey, I prayed about this a long time ago and I didn't realize that he had answered it this way and I never even noticed."
Laura: Oh, that's so good. I often think of the story of Amy Carmichael. She had dark eyes and she wanted blue eyes like one of her friends. She prayed that God would change her eye color overnight and she thought he was going to answer it. She woke up the next morning and hopped over to the mirror, all excited, and she still had her dark brown eyes, and she was so disappointed.
We know Amy Carmichael's story—grew up to be a missionary in India, and actually, her dark, brown eyes protected her. She was able then to engage better with the people of India and have a presence there where she assimilated easier. Then, in addition, as they were rounding up missionaries during different times, those protected her as well so that she didn't stand out as an American missionary as much.
I think it's one of those things too that is just—when God says "no" to our kids’ prayer requests, we're able to say, "Well, he has something better for you long-term and God is playing the long game. We may not understand why he didn't answer your prayer with a 'yes' today," but just like you tell your boys to write that stuff down, perhaps they look back in a few years and say, "Oh, I'm actually glad he didn't answer that request because now I see God's better plan that has unfolded for me."
Ruth: For sure.
Laura: Just as we wrap up here, can we talk a little bit about some of your favorite tips for teaching kids to pray? Just any little things that you did with your boys that you found helpful to foster that culture of prayer in your home?
Ruth: Yes. A couple of things that come to mind. None of these tips—do not picture Ruth Simons and the Simons family perfectly doing all these things all the time. I always have to just say that right up front. [Laughter] I think people sometimes think the birds chirp inside our home and we're lighting candles and we're all just singing Amazing Grace and the boys are perfect—no, they're not. Sometimes we go to bed and there's a fuss fest right before bed. All those things happen in our home.
A couple of things that I really love: teaching the boys to not pray with their eyes closed laying in bed, because sometimes it's just a posture of like, "Yes, yes, it's the last thing I do before I go to bed." There's nothing wrong with it—nothing wrong with praying. We've done plenty of that prayer as well, but sometimes just getting out of bed and being on your knees or gathering in a circle, holding hands, and being almost at the edge of discomfort reminds you what you're doing, because what we do when we're laying around half-asleep—just rolling around on the floor and letting the kids roll around—I think it's just hard to remember that this is talking with the God of the universe.
There's a posture that we can model, like, "Hey, don't slouch." We don't come to the throne room and say, "Hey, God." Rather, like, let's pause and give it some time. Sometimes I think we pray long enough that the kids feel just a little bit like, "Oh my goodness, this is a little long." But sometimes that's a good reminder; like, what are we rushing for? One thing I would say is—it is not every night, but I love the times where we—seven men in this house with one momma—hold hands and we actually gather together that way or we get on our knees.
Another thing that I love to do is to normalize praying out loud in the car as we're driving. I don't know about you, but in our neck of the woods, we spend a lot of time in the car. Sometimes it takes us 15 minutes to even get to the grocery store. There's a lot of commuting. There's a lot of time in the car. Rather than turning the radio up real loud or everybody being on their own devices—we just don't make that the norm in the car.
Sometimes it goes from talking about things to, "Well, will somebody just pray about that right now?" When we just pray out loud, not having to be in a perfect room, not having to close our eyes perfectly—Troy and I regularly pray on our way to church and the boys are, like, "But you guys have your eyes open!" and we're like, "That's totally fine. You don't want your dad to drive with his eyes closed"—but just having prayer be modeled in multiple ways—while you're driving in the car or reverently on your knees next to the bed at night like the Norman Rockwell paintings. It can be both and it should be both.
It can be continual. It can be as soon as there's an ache in the heart and the child comes over and he's crying and sitting on your lap. Sometimes we think of praying only in disciplinary situations, but what about just praying when the heart's tender and they're having a bad day, and it's not discipline? It's, "I'm just going to pray for you right now. Let's just pray and ask the Lord to give us joy."
I love mixing it up, because the more we mix it up, the more we don't make it a formula and the more they realize it's like a relationship. Laura, you and I don't always talk to one another in the same way—we Vox sometimes, we email sometimes, hopefully we see each other sometimes and give real hugs and have lunch together like we did recently. A real friendship is going to be modeled in multiple ways and always comes alive in different scenarios, and so we can model that for our kids with our relationship with God as well.
Laura: I love that. That's really encouraging, Ruth. I'll share with you just one quick story. The other day, I had noticed for several evenings in a row my kids were really willing to pray and I would say, "Okay, who wants to pray tonight before bed?" "I do, I do!" It was just a little bit unusual for both of them—my oldest two—to want to. I finally said, "Kiddos, why do you want to pray much?" My middle—she goes, "Because, mom, your prayers are so long."
[Laughter]
Ruth: That's awesome.
Laura: I know. As you were talking about just the different lengths of prayer and things—oh, it was funny to me because I'd never thought that I prayed that long, but apparently, they were like, "Oh, we will," to avoid the really long prayers. It was pretty funny.
Ruth: I love it. It's so funny.
Laura: Oh, man. Well, Ruth, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom about prayer and just raising a generation that loves to pray, that loves the Lord and communes with him regularly. We so appreciate your time on the Risen Motherhood podcast today.
Ruth: Thanks so much for having me, Laura.
