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Ways to Engage Our Children in Prayer · 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids.

• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of Five Minute Parenting.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Today I have a special guest, Karen Whiting.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Karen writes to help families thrive.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: She's a mom of five, including two rocket scientists, and a grandmother.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: She's an international speaker, former television host, and an award-winning author of more than 30 books for women, children, and families.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Her new books include Growing a Joyful Heart and 52 Weeks Weekly Devotions for Family Prayer.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: In the show notes, I will put Karen's website and you be sure to visit that so you can check out her books.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: And today she's going to be sharing on ways to engage children in prayer.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Karen.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: So glad to have you here.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just thank you for having me on.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I do want to talk about praying with your children.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I love praying with my children and the international IFS, um, forget what it's all called, but they realized with all the studies they have done that the one key ingredient, the one common denominator for children of any faith to stay in their faith as they grow up is to pray together as a family.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really important, but lots of times we don't know how to do it or what to do.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Or we may think our child's too active or something.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a book in which there's a different way to pray together every week.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: 52 weekly devotions for family prayer.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk about some of those types of praying together.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So for those active children, the ADHD child or just the child who fidgets a lot, I talk about doing ball prayers where you just take a little ball, you can toss up, roll, you can pass it around in a circle, whatever you want to do.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: But every time you do a different motion, you can pause then and use that to pray.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So what you want to do is throw it high up in the air and catch it and use that to say, praise God, because when we look up to catch the ball, we're looking up and thinking about God is what we can do at the same time as we are looking up.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can bounce it and think about how it hits the bottom but bounces back up.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happens to us when God forgives us.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: That we want to think about how we may do something wrong and hit bottom because we did something that God didn't like that our parents probably didn't like.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: But with forgiveness, we can bounce right back up.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there are other ways to do it, like rolling the ball to another person and just thanking God for rolling along with us in life.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: There are more, but those are just a few of the ones with the ball prayer.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: But you can think about an emotion.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: How can you use that to pray to God?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then children uh may want to talk about that forgiveness, and they may have a hard time saying, I'm sorry.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know how they say that, and they don't really mean it.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I have these four little objects that you can keep in a little forgiveness bowl or keep in a baggie for them to remind them that forgiveness gives us four gifts from God when we forgive someone.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them is a cotton ball to remind you that forgiveness softens your heart as it removes anger, pain, and stress, that there's a small yield sign you can put in, that your sins are forgiven when you forgive others.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've sinned, you're forgiven, as well as if you forgive someone that you didn't want to forgive.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it releases you, it's yielding your heart so God can fill it with something better.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: A soap or sponge, because forgiveness cleanses you and keeps the connection to God open.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: You wonder sometimes why he doesn't answer prayer.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes sin is in that way.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And a small weight, forgiveness lifts weight off of you and gives your problems to God.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you can sit around and look at those things and thank God for each of those as you pick up each object, but also then have that where a child can pick up those objects and remember when they need to forgive someone or when they've been forgiven, how we get those gifts from God with it.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And how that's part of our prayer is God, soften my heart because I don't feel like forgiving someone.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: That type of thing we can incorporate as we pray.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Another way, and this was my family's favorite way to pray.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: But when you try 52 different ways, by the end of the year, you'll see what ends up being a favorite type of prayer for your family, or you might try again in a few years to rethink which ones do we want to do now?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're at different ages and stages with our children.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: So this is called the family powwow, and that's an acrostic.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Pray over the worry, worship over the wonders.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So each person gets one turn at a time, so that one person starts it in a circle or across from each other, but a circle works out nice.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that person says, one worry they have, something they need prayer for, and one wonder, what was a joyful blessing they received that they want to thank God for?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they state those two things.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: The person next to them says two one-sentence prayers.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: They say a sentence to thank God for that wonder, to worship God.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: God, you're awesome.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I thank you that my brother learned to ride a bicycle, that type of thing.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And one sentence prayer for the worry to ask God to help them with it.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: In our family, we found when children started praying for one another and praying for parents and parents for children in this type of atmosphere, they bonded better.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't have as much sibling fights or anything because they were focused on the other child.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: They might say, How did you do on that test?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I prayed for you.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then they'll go, Wow, your worry turned to a wonder, that type of thing.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it was really a great uh way to pray for our family.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I want families to find what works for them.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Another way is just a family prayer chart.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it with little pictures for the little ones or put words in it.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I made four columns.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: One was the name for God, one a name for you.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like you may be called child, a grateful kid, a little lamb of God, um, action, praise, need, worries, sorry, forgive, and an object of what the prayer is for.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then the child points to each of those.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: If they're old enough, they take each word and form it into a prayer.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: So they might say, Dear Daddy, God, I am a grateful kid, but I need help today to get along with my friends.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they can just turn that into a prayer.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a simple way to help them learn how do I make up my own prayer?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they can add more rows of more words that they can use, but they just choose one from each four.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can even put them in dishes where they pull one out and they don't know what they're going to pull out as they get used to this, so that they can learn to pray.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Another one is to honor God with praise.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this is to help them learn God's names and what they mean and how we can think about God in each way.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you put down again rows of the name of God.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Similar words we might know better, and a Bible reference they can look up.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So Yahweh, the Lord God will provide.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Similar word is provider, or God cares for me.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then a reference.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 22, 8 is one in there.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And they can take one of those in a circle.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can each take one of the names and say, you know, Adoni, you are master of all, you are my Lord, and I thank you for being with me.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just a way to praise God for who he is and understand a little more about who he is.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the overflowing cup of thanks.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: My children and my grandkids love this.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: That I had a bowl in the center of the table with a clear canning jar in the middle of that.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that jar was empty.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: So was the bowl when we started.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Then I had two jars on the outside, one with red water, one with blue water.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we had little measuring cups or coffee scoops.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And each person got to take a turn and scoop up one of the colors of water and pour it into the jar.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, say, Thank God, and name a blessing you're thanking God for.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: For my family, for my toy airport that my youngest son would always talk about and thank God for every day for two years.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: That type of thing.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: You keep going around, and when that jar fills up, you keep going again for another couple of rounds and watch that water spill over and flow into the bowl before.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can mention a couple of things.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: One is that God blesses us so much that we overflow, our heart should overflow with the thankfulness of those blessings.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when people see that joy in us because of that thankfulness, they start wondering about our faith because they see something they want.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is the red and blue, when you put it together in the middle, it turns purple.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that reminds us that the red of the blood of Jesus He shed for us and the blue of God being over us, He created the whole world and He's with us no matter where we are under the sky.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: When they combine that purple is a color of royalty to remind us we are royal children of God.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's why He answers our prayer.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's why He listens to us.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: We may not always get the answer we hoped for, but we get God's best answer for us.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So those are some simple ways to pray and engage with your children that they can have fun with while they're learning about it.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because as you're doing any activity, you can explore what this means.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you're using the one with the water, you can talk about well, what is a blessing?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what are some other types of blessings we didn't even think about?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I got a postcard or letter from grandma today, and that just cheered me up, or maybe someone complimented me.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have to be big things, or maybe I saw a flower bloom in our yard, and it was so pretty that it brightened my day.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Anything like that can be a blessing and an entry into talking about God and the blessings that He gives us, and then talking about blessings and thanking God for them.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that helps everyone.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that I just think those are amazing.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're I can't wait to get your book because those are so practical.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: You can start with very, very young children.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, those ideas are just wonderful.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: And there aren't many books out there.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a lot of books that have prayers written that you pray for children or they read and pray.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: But these are so much fun, so practical, so hands-on that I think they're great.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much for sharing those with us.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And when will when will that book be out?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the prayer one is out already.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's been out for a couple of years.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So 52 Weekly Devotions for Family Prayer is out.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it won an award from ASA, Golden Scroll Award.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and it is for me a way that we engage our children and we pray together.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I wrote it because, as you said, there's a lot of books on praying for your children, but why not pray with our children?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's how they learn.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's absolutely true.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it sounds like a wonderful book.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you again, Karen, for being with us today.