For those of you who are new to reading my blog, you should know I haven't always been an active Christian. I've always believed in God, but I was never taught the basics of how to live a life of faith.
It wasn't until recent years (and suffering through many trials) that I started pursuing a more deeply connected walk with the Lord.
One area of weakness I struggled with as I began my transformation to the Christian lifestyle was prayer. A few years ago when I first started blogging, during lent I put myself on my own 40 day prayer challenge and blogged about my efforts. I desperately wanted to improve my prayer life.
I learned so much during that time and was very intentional in carrying the practice of prayer over to my children.
Here are some of the ways I pray with my children. Hopefully they'll be helpful ideas for you in your Christian parenting journey too.
I started by teaching them ACTS.
Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. While we don't get it right every time we pray together, my daughters are challenged with speaking words of adoration toward God, confessing their sins from the day, thanking God for the great things that happened, and bringing anything heavy on their heart to him in prayer.
My husband and I agreed we would start praying before meals.
Our mealtime prayer is typically the exact same words spoken each time, which I initially cringed about. It has proven to be a very good method for teaching simple prayer to our little girls though. There's absolutely nothing wrong with repetition when little ears are listening.
Now that they know the mealtime prayer well, every once in a while, I will challenge one of them to say the blessing for us and they do it so well, often adding their own special touch to it which is always fun to hear what they pray. We also hold hands as a family during the mealtime prayers which I personally love.
I began praying out loud for my daughters at bedtime.
Praying out loud is something I get extremely flustered over, so in public places I won't speak up in prayer unless I'm specifically asked to. And oh how my heart races when that happens!
During my prayer challenge I decided to force myself to gain a comfort level with praying for an audience by starting with my own little girls. At first they would giggle a bit and tell me my prayers were really long. Then it became a special tradition, and it's one they will not go to sleep at night without having done. They even pulled my husband in on it and have him praying for them too.
So here's how bedtime prayers go down in our house. My husband and I both put our girls to bed. We alternate children each night so they both get some one on one time with each of us. First, the child being put to bed says her prayers. Then the parent in the room with her prays for her out loud so she can hear the things we discuss with God about how much we love her, our desire for Him to protect her, and anything else that comes to our heart.
Then we say goodnight and head into the other daughter's room to repeat the parent praying process for her. Before I pray, I like to ask each of them if there's somebody or something they specifically want me to pray about. It's been very interesting to hear their responses over the past few years. This tradition has also been somewhat of a bonding experience for our family.
I model personal prayer time in my own walk with the Lord.
Every morning I'm up before the family spending quiet time with God, reading His word, praying, and doing some journal writing. Lately my seven year old has been getting ready for school before I'm finished with my prayer time.
She comes bouncing happily down the stairs to say good morning to me and always finds me silent in prayer. She knows that's my time with God, so when she sees me she usually gives me a kiss and sometimes will crawl into my lap to snuggle quietly or will walk into another room until I finish.
It's my hope that by her witnessing me making God a priority she will come to understand the value of it and one day when the time is right for her, have her own special time with God each day.
...
It's our job as parents to teach prayer to our children. One thing I've given myself a goal of this year is to work closely with my daughters on scripture memorization.
It's good for all of us to have God's word stamped on our hearts but it's also important to practice ourselves and teach our children how to pray God's word back to him.
I'll be publishing a future post sharing which verses I've picked out for us to memorize as a family and some simple ways we can convert those into prayers. This will be more age-appropriate for my seven year old than the little one.
We bought a Preschool Bible devotion {click image above to get your copy on Amazon} for my four year old and after each devotion there is a very simple one or two sentence prayer for the child to speak God's word back to Him. Since she's just learning how to read, I read the pray to her and she repeats it after me.
How do you pray with your child? I'd love for you to share any ideas, tips, or tricks you have that work well during prayer time in your home!
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Rosann Cunningham
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This is a wonderful article! It has inspired me to be more diligent in teaching my kids to pray and in praying myself! Thank you so much for this inspiration... I needed it so much!
April, your words encourage me! Thank you for stopping to read and for your sweet comment.
We, too, are relatively new believers, having been saved 4years ago. We pray much the same way you do. My little guys love to have me pray for them before bed and I am frequently convicted to ask for forgiveness myself for impatience with them during the day. It is a precious time for us.
I think our greatest teaching comes through our example. What better example to set than of prayer?!
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Sarah, how wonderful that you and your family are new believers! It's always comforting to me when I hear I'm not the only one. My faith walk has really been the last 13 years but I still often feel like a "baby Christian." It's not until someone questions me about a Bible verse or I'm reviewing what I'm going to be teaching during VBS at our church that I realize I know more than I think. I'm growing, but it's a process and God is controlling every detail of it.
Thank you so much for stopping to visit and comment. I really appreciate you!
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Oh yes! God has done amazing things for my family. My husband and I were saved at the same time and our marriage is so much improved as a result.
I think when someone new comes to a church, they assume that everyone else has "always" been there, even though this isn't the case. I think the Holy Spirit can be very powerfully at work in new believers (and "old" ones too LOL) giving us this knowledge like you mentioned.
You are so encouraging! Thank you!
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