This post was written by Nick Pridemore, College Pastor --Bloomington, Indiana. You can also find him at WerdGuys blogging on all things Faith and Fatherhood.
How can we teach our children to pray and how does that look over the course of their childhood, babies to school age?
Part 1
Teaching your child to pray is something that should happen naturally and organically, yet also requires a great deal of intentionality. By that I mean it should be something you are purposefully teaching them through discussions and looking at scripture, but it should also be something that you do often enough on your own that your kid would learn a great deal without you meaning for them to. Joshua sat outside Moses’ tent and listened to him talk to the Lord (Exodus 33:11). Samuel learned to interact with God through the explicit instructions of Eli (1 Samuel 3:1-10). Both are important, instruction and example.
The most poignant scripture on learning to pray is in Luke 11 when Jesus taught his disciples with The Lord’s Prayer. However, what is often overlooked is the fact that Jesus had been praying on his own, which prompted the disciples to ask how they also should pray (11:1). So step number one is for you to prioritize prayer in and for yourself. I touched on this last Sunday in discussing how to lead your children to the cross. Really, it’s a leadership principal that isn’t limited to spiritual matters. You cannot lead someone somewhere you have not gone yourself. My children may understand what I tell them about prayer, but they will practice what they see me doing with prayer.
Another key is to start early. When my wife was pregnant with each of our kids I loved to get close to her basketball-belly and talk to my kid. The idea that my son or daughter would be born already knowing the sound of my voice was incredibly meaningful to me. So I would often lean in close and pray for them. Also, pray as you spend time with them as infants. Obviously, they will have no real idea to whom you are talking or what is being said for many months, but pray with them anyway. I love to hold one of my kids, walk around the house and just talk to God. When the concept of prayer starts to make sense to them I would much rather their thought be, “Oh, so that’s what Daddy is always doing” than “Oh, that sounds weird”.
The next step of learning to pray in our home is nightly family prayer time. My wife and I take turns saying the first prayer. We always start by telling God we love him and how thankful we are for different things. Then we pray for each of our kids individually, and then for the three of them together. A very abbreviated example would be “Jesus, we love you. Thank you for loving us first and saving us. Thanks for great weather today. I pray for Calvin. Help him to do well on his spelling test. I pray for Adi. Help her ouchy foot to feel better. And I pray for Amelia. Help her to learn to obey and not throw fits. Help all of my kids to know you and love you. I pray that they would bring you glory and point other people to you. Amen.” Again, that’s very abbreviated.
After the grown up prays each of the kids pray. It’s amazing how much of their personalities come through in their prayers. Calvin is the king of memorization, so his prayers usually sound very similar and always follow the same format. Adi, our artistic princess, can pray for a VERY long time. Her prayers usually meander around in a freestyle conversational tone in which she is sincerely conversing with Jesus. Something like, “…and help all the birds to have homes and food. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow so please let all the animals in the woods find a dry place. And help Rashel (a boy we support in Bangledesh) to have food and water and toys. I hope he has lots of apple juice. Well, that is if he likes apple juice. Maybe he doesn’t. So maybe you could get him lemonade…” Yeah, it’s pretty sweet. And our youngest is only 2, so we still help her pray in a repeat-after-me fashion. There are other things that we consistently pray for as a family (friends and family, missionaries, local and world events/tragedies, etc), but that gives you a rough idea of what family prayers look like in our house. The point is, they hear us pray and then they get to pray.
No comments:
Post a Comment