Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Teaching Our Children To Pray

Prayer it is such an important part of our relationship with God. Some of us may have learned to pray as a small child, or maybe you didn't begin your prayer life until you were an adult, either way if you have seen the effects and the power of prayer in your life, surely you want to teach your child how to know and use that same power that comes with whispering a prayer to God.

Prayer is to be easy, not difficult. We can teach our children to pray by simply helping them to understand that prayer is merely “talking to God”. We must help them to realize that though they cannot see or touch God that He is real, He is there and He wants to hear from them. That all they have to do is talk to Him like they would talk to us or a friend and they can learn to pray.

You may have learned little prayers in your childhood, such as “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” or “God is Great, God is Good”. While it is perfectly fine to teach your child these prayers and most likely they can memorize them and prayer them over and over it is also good to teach them to create their own prayers to ask God's blessing on different family members or to thank God for specific things he has done for them.

We never want our children to think that prayer is just reciting something that they learned but we do want them to know that they can say anything to God and that they can talk to Him whenever they want. When they are afraid, when they happy, when they are sad, starting a conversation with God has no limits and we want to make them as comfortable as possible with the idea of prayer.

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