TEACHING OUR KIDS TO PRAY
Click on the title to go to a link with some excellent teaching suggestions.
Some Ideas for Teaching Your Children to Pray
"You can depend on God." We have about 10 years to teach this to our children. If we fail network television and peer culture will convert them to…sex drugs and violence none of which is healthy. Loving a child means teaching him to pray, to trust that God IS there for him or her. The following activities and coloring pages are …a place to begin!!
VERY YOUNG CHILDREN will love a prayer shawl. Any cloth will work. Get a shawl for yourself and one for the child. Cover up and then pray a one sentence prayer. The child does the same. The point is that the child or grandchild is not praying to please you or anyone else. Under the shawl he is alone with God… separated from the world. This is the deepest essence of any prayer…being alone with God. Allow the child only a single one sentence prayer per day. It will help him concentrate and make each prayer more special. Prayers should be very special.
CHILDREN AGE 6-10 will need a prayer jar. You will want one for yourself, plastic jars are best. Label each jar on one side: "FROM ME TO JESUS" on the other side: "FROM JESUS TO ME." Instead of saying your one sentence prayers out loud as above write them down on small slips of paper, just one per day and put them in the jar. At the end of the week remove the prayers and write the answer on the back. Sometimes the answer will be clear. When it is not put the prayer back in the jar and repray it daily. If the child has not received an answer by the end of the week involve as many people as it takes until the child has truly heard or seen God’s answer. (Not necessarily the one he is expecting.) NEVER discard a prayer that has not been answered. Help your child stick with his prayers until the end and his faith will grow strong and true. Only answered prayers will stick in his mind and soul.
NIGHTTIME PRAYERS teach most if parent and child continue to pray together those informal one sentence prayers. It is also a great time to get out the crayons and work on this book. On nights the child will sleep elsewhere try sending along a prayer brick or rock. Cover the brick of soap or rock with cloth and tie it off. The child puts it on his pillow each morning and then at night it clunks him in the head reminding him or her to pray. In the morning when he gets up he will stub his toe reminding him a second time that prayer is important. The prayer rock is perfect for children who live in two homes. It is one thing that both homes will have in common. Never throw a prayer rock away. Save it and when your child is headed out on his own send it to him. Prayer rocks can be a great help to divided families.
CHILDREN TEN OR OLDER should know this next lesson by heart. No other lesson makes God so real. A very inexpensive magnet can be obtained at Radio Shack. Rub a nail against the magnet repeatedly in the same direction and the nail itself becomes magnetized. This teaches a child the reality of UNSEEN POWER. When we spend time in prayer we become partakers of the Divine nature just exactly as the nature of the magnet is conveyed to the nail. You can pick up pins with the magnetized nail which shows its changed nature. The power of prayer is not that it changes God but that it changes us. To make the most of the lesson get a book on magnetism from the library and try all the experiments then go back thru the book imagining Jesus is the magnet drawing us to him and the Holy Spirit is the magnetism. Ask your Pastor or Sunday School teacher how the Holy Spirit helps in prayer.
MEN CAN TEACH PRAYER TOO. Tape the child’s prayer to a football. The adult’s job is to stop him from getting the ball (prayer) to heaven (the goal of your choice). No mere man could stop a prayer so make yourself a nametag from the following list: Sin, Unforgiveness, Ignorance, Selfishness, Pre-occupation or even Satan. Few if any children will be able to get a prayer past one or more active adults with such ugly name tags. The point is that prayer can be hard work and that there is an opposing team. Play prayer football one on one or with teams. Some players the child might choose are: Christ’s blood for Sin, Prayer Partners for strength, love to neutralize selfishness and unforgiveness, perseverance to prevent laziness. Etc. You can’t see prayer but it is just as real as football or basketball and much more important. Real men pray and pray hard. Play one on one or try it at the church picnic.
TEAM PRAYERS mean a child is growing up, that he has concerns reaching beyond himself. A prayer team is in fact the best gift any parent could give a child. No other suport group can come close. Prayer connects us. It connects us to God and it connects us to church. Help your child fill in the names of 5 people for his power team (perhaps three adults and two children). To start the habit of praying with others have him phone each of them once a week for at least one month.
1._______________________________
2._______________________________
3._______________________________
4._______________________________
5._______________________________