Latest / Homeschool Insights - Biblical Home Education Inspiration in Under 10 Minutes! / How to Teach Your Kids to PRAY (Even When They Don't Know What to Say) - Kim Sorgius Jones
Transcript
- speaker-0: If you've ever noticed, you know, your child will say, Dear Jesus, thank you for this day. Thank you, you know, help us have a good day tomorrow. You know, thank you for this food. Amen. You know, right? Like they don't know what to say. Right. Why? Well, it's not because they're not spiritual, it's not because they don't love Jesus or anything like that. It's just because they don't have the experience and and they need they need to learn. speaker-1: Talk for a minute about prayer. You you talked about the importance of praying and and ⁓ you know, that obviously goes along with Bible study. Talk about prayer and how do we, how do we teach our kids how to pray in a way that is effective? And by effective, I don't mean he's gonna answer all of our prayers exactly the way that we want him to. You've learned that that's not always the case. I've learned that's not always the case. But how can we pray in a way that's effective? speaker-0: Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things ⁓ that we need to consider when it comes to kids in prayer. One of them is ⁓ they don't remember and we don't either actually. So ⁓ it's really good to keep some kind of record. And ⁓ you know, we we're really quick to keep records of wrongs and you know, we can remember all of those, but when good things happen, we don't remember them. And so if you have I mean, it can be just a straight up notebook. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. You know, whatever you have, if you have a way that you can record, you know, just the things that you're praying for and the praises, right? Comes because we forget those. We're like, We've prayed for so and so. He was in the hospital so long and he's out, he's healed. Right. And and your kids don't even have to know so and so to actually benefit from from seeing that. They're like, This is a guy, our church that I've never met, but we've been praying for him because he has cancer. And look at that now, you know, he's in remission. Right. And we've seen God answer this prayer. And it's you gotta write that down. That way you can recount those things. ⁓ that's what Isaiah tells us to do. Just recount all the good deeds, all of the things that he's done. And so if we can get that down, that's that should be a part of of our prayer together as a family. Again, it's messy. Don't make it like if we don't get this down every single day, we might as well throw it away. Like it's not gonna be like that. Just have have something. where you can record these things. ⁓ well actually when my kids were little, what we did goes along, we actually recommend it in the Free Family Bible study, ⁓ was we kept stones because ⁓ the Family Bible study covers Joshua 4. It talks about setting up stones ⁓ to remember so that their kids, kids would know that they got ⁓ past the Jordan, over across the Jordan, you know, dry land and all the things that the Lord had done. Right. And They were people who forgot constantly. We are too. And so we why I wanted that for my kids. So we started collecting. We had just a a giant vase and there were stones. And every time the Lord would provide, you know, a meal, every time the Lord, which back then was was hard, you know, we were eating out of food banks. We were eating out with food stamps and stuff. So like, you know, it was it was a an amazing blessing for us at that time to see it. But then You get past that and you get to the place to where now the Lord is providing you, forget, ⁓ wait, remember when he literally gave us food when we didn't have anything? Yeah. And so having those stones with a little writing on them was just very valuable for us, you know, in those ⁓ years as we were recounting. So it doesn't have to be stones. It can be a notebook, but do something like that. And the other thing that I'll say about prayer when it comes to kids is they don't have ideas. So if you've ever noticed, you know, Your child will say, Dear Jesus, thank you for this day. Thank you. You know, help us have a good day tomorrow. You know, thank you for this food. Amen. You know, right? Like they don't know what to say. Right. Why? Well, it's not because they're not spiritual. It's not because they don't love Jesus or anything like that. It's just because they don't have the experience and and they need it. They need to learn. So ⁓ we actually have a product that I didn't pull over here, but ⁓ that goes through and and gives you ideas of things to pray for. ⁓ you don't have to buy a product. You can make a list, whatever would you know, whatever works for you. Make a list of the kinds of things that your kids can pray for. From, you know, missionaries to the president to the election to ⁓ you know, ⁓ people like right now we would be praying for people in, you know, ⁓ that have been affected by the storms. You know, all of those kinds of things that we should be praying for. If we keep some kind of a list of, you know, those open generic. kinds of things. Yeah. ⁓ then our kids have ideas. And then their prayers get much deeper and they aren't just rote. They aren't just, you know, fake. I mean they're not fake. I don't think our kids are ever praying in a fake way. It's just that they don't know right what to say. They don't have extra things to say. So it feels so rote that it feels fake. And so I think those those two tools, those two particular things will go a long way and really helping train your kids. you know, to ⁓ really experience the benefit of of talking to the Lord. speaker-1: This episode of Homeschool Insights is brought to you by BJU Press Homeschool, CTC Math, and the Explorer Bible for Kids. Visit the show notes to learn more about these excellent resources. And for more encouragement, listen to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast at Schoolhouserokt.com.