Praying With Children

Recently, a parent asked me some advice about praying with her children. I thought you may be interested in seeing what I said. Bless ya!

Pastor Randy

---Response---

You, as parents have the great opportunity to create an environment where your kids will desire more of God in their lives. I often think of the verse, "Taste and see the Lord is good." We want to give kids a good taste of what God has for them. And we want that taste to be something that makes them yearn and hunger for more of God. There's a big difference between force feeding kids a plateful of food though, and giving them a taste. I also recognize that "in the natural" a child usually has an attention span of about 1 minute per year of age...if they are interested in what they are doing. (That's why a 4 year old teacher cannot tell a 10 minute story.)

I believe that prayertimes can be a part of that "tasting" process when children are exposed to the goodness of God. These prayertimes should fit a child's perspectives and appear directly applicable to their lives. We do want them to think that prayer is relevant and life-giving. If they are bored and turned off by the prayertimes, they will assume, in time, that prayer is boring and irrelevant.

Something I did, when my kids were younger, is this:
There were times where I would go to my bedroom to pray. I'd tell the kids that's what I was going to do, and if they wanted to join me for prayer, they were welcome. (No guilt. No heavy-handedness. Just an invitation.)

Often, one or two of them would come in and spend 5 or 10 minutes with me kneeling by the bed. I would always pray outloud.

I would invite them to join me in "conversational prayer." Which means we would:
1. first of all list things that we should pray about.
2. Then I would pray first about that thing (for a few sentences or a paragraph)
3. Then they would pray about that same thing outloud.
4. Then we would move on to the second thing on the list...maybe they would pray first this time...
5. We alternated praying together until we got through our list.
6. Then I would always pray a prayer of blessing on them, and allow them to go if they wanted too.
These were precious times.

I also think of scripture that talks about "pray constantly." (1 Thess. 5:17) So, throughout the day, when driving the car, etc., I'd just say a short outloud prayer, yes to God, but so my kids would also hear me. I want them to understand that prayer is a normal, often repeated, part of life, and not just a scheduled event.

Through the years I have also taught this acrostic for prayer:
P- praise (thank God for who He is and what he has done)
R - Repent (things to be sorry for...and things in me that need to change)
A - Ask (ask God for help. Prayer for others too)
Y - Yeild (Saying "not my will but yours be done." and also allowing God to speak to me...)

I've taught kids that if you spend just even a minute on each of these, you will pray about five minutes a day. It's easy for that time to stretch longer once started.

There's a few thoughts. Hopefully they are helpful!

Bless you as you disciple those wonderful girls!

Pastor Randy