My prayer life, like everything in my walk of faith, continues to grow and change. Prayer is so intertwined with my faith and relationship with God that it is like a mirror, reflecting my connection with Him. When I’ve been busy, distracted, and my relationship with Him is in second place, my prayer life reflects that. It’s dry and becomes rote. When my passion and love for Him is strong, when I’ve been feasting on His Word, and drinking from the well of grace, my prayer life is active and amazing.
My children continue to grow in their prayer life as well. My goal is to faithfully encourage them to pray, give them opportunities to pray, and model prayer for them. If you’ve read my other posts on this topic, you know that I’ve done crafts, read books with them on prayer, as well as other activities to reinforce what I’ve taught them.
I noticed recently that my oldest was struggling with prayer. He was saying the same things each time he prayed. I could tell it wasn’t from his heart. During our devotional time, he’s been memorizing the Lord’s prayer and the corresponding catechism questions that teach about the prayer. In homeschool, he and I have been going through Lord, Teach Me to Pray for Kids (Discover 4 Yourself® Inductive Bible Studies for Kids)
. During school one morning, we read various prayers from Scripture, including those of Daniel, Jeremiah, and Hezekiah. I pointed out to my son various aspects to the prayers and asked if he saw anything different between how he usually prays and their prayers.
“Yes, I pray the same things over and over. I just don’t know what to say.” He admitted that he struggled with praying and knew that he had been praying repetitively rather than from the heart. We decided to create a prayer log. He’s started with the letter “A” in the ACTS prayer model. He began by listing reasons for praising and worshiping God.
“Mom, when I can’t think of something to pray, I can look at this log. I know, let’s also add some of the names of God that we learned last year.”
Later that night, as I listened to him pray, I could hear a change in his voice and his prayer was more authentic and from the heart. He’s decided that he wants to continue adding ideas of things to pray about to his prayer log.
Prayer is an expression of a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father. I can’t force prayer on my children. And I wouldn’t want to. I want them to go to the Father in prayer because they want to.
And that has become my own prayer, not only for my kids, but for myself as well.
Do you have any “teach me Jesus” moments to share this week? Tell us about them in the comments or include a link in your comment to your own “teach me Jesus” post.
This is so good. There I times that I can relate to your son
I love what you encouraged him to write down-that’s an excellent idea. You’re such a great mom and example!
You are kind. It’s been a long journey for me in my own prayer life. It is my prayer that my kids would grow to love praying. Thanks for visiting!
my heart jumps happy when I read of not only the regular schooling you do – but the spiritual schooling you do for your children. I know I’ve said it before – but your babies are very lucky to have a mama like you. And later – much later – when you’re as old as me – I think you’re going to have quite a reward for all of your spiritual teaching. I can see it now - they’ll make you really happy - and you’ll know it’s because of what you did - they may even tell you - or you’ll see them doing for their kids what you did for them. I smiled as I read this – I’m smiling now – God bless and keep you and each and every one of yours, Christina!
You are always so sweet! I appreciate your kind words and can only pray that God will produce a harvest in their hearts. Blessings to you!
I LOVE how you’re helping your kids to connect with the Lord- not just in rote ways, but in vibrant relationship. Your son’s notebook makes me smile… my girls would delight in an “A” page. They have so many prayer journals I can’t keep track of them, but it seems they start strong and then fall off the course when it comes to the journal thing. I’m thinking we need a “family A” page- maybe a poster in the kitchen- so we can launch ourselves into prayer around the table and not fall into a rut. I agree with the last comment. Your babes are LUCKY to have you as their mommy. Keep planting those seeds of faith! God WILL grow them. Always a treat to be here!
Ooh, I like the poster idea:) Thanks for your sweet words!
Oh my heart. I can hardly stand it. . .
I, too, had a teachable moment this week I’ve been trying to blog about, but apparently, I’m still learning the lesson. : )
It all started with my 4 year old’s prayer the other day: “Lord, can You help me not fall down so much? I just want to show You I can ride my new bike and not fall down.” . . . I’m still processing all God whispered in my ear during that lunch hour.
I can’t wait to read about it:) Blessings!
Gotta love connecting the honest heart of a young person to developing a prayer life. Some of our best moments are in hearing their prayers. The ones they’ve said a hundred times, or the ones that come and go in a moment.
Thanks for sharing!
The prayers of our children are a joy to listen to. Thanks for stopping by!
Once when I was homeschooling many, many moons ago
We did a prayer where one started, then the next added and so forth. We went around several times and I wrote it down and we went. The kids really enjoyed it and I think it made them stretch… I told them it was like a group prayer/conversation with their heavenly father.
Have a great day!
I love that idea! Thanks, Kathleen!
Hi
I’m a new visitor, new blogger…one thing I realized when reading your work was how much I lacked TALKING about my praying as a youngster. This is wonderful you are doing this young. Have you ever used the 5 finger prayer? I have it coming in one of my upcoming posts…planning out a session on Christian prayer maybe for next week…although mine is thinking from the perspective of having a toddler…
I tried to find you on facebook….are you there?
God bless!
I am so proud of you! God bless you!
Mom Fox
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