Helping children learn to pray with Scripture
“Just talk to God about whatever is on your mind.”
It’s easy to tell our children that praying is simply talking to God about anything. He loves them and wants them to share what is on their hearts at any time. We pray at meals, teaching them to fold their hands and close their eyes, thanking God for food and asking for His help.
But as a parent, I have discovered that knowing about prayer and actually praying are different things. When one of my children struggles to pray, I realize that I also have the desire to pray, but I can’t always find the words. I have found that the best place to turn when words are hard is to the Bible.
The Bible contains many examples of prayers and conversations with God. The Psalms especially stand out as prayers that we can make our own. Their authors give voice to the many emotions we experience. There are songs of praise and worship, confessions of sin, expressions of joy and thanksgiving, cries for help, and prayers written from places of lament, darkness and sorrow. We can use these psalms to teach our children that we can come before our loving God just as we are, bringing whatever emotion we may be feeling.
When we read Psalm 23, we can talk to our children about what it means that God cares for us as our Shepherd. He gives us what we need, and we know He is near us when we are afraid. We use the words of the psalm to make our own prayer. As we pray Scripture together, our children learn more about who God is and how this shapes what we say to Him.
Thinking intentionally about praying Scripture led me to write When Words are Hard, a collection of prayers for children based on the Psalms and other Bible passages. I wanted to create prayers taken from the words of the Bible to teach kids how they can use Scripture to make their own prayers. God has given us so much in His Word, and He shows us that we don’t have to have just the right words or feelings. As they grow in prayer, our kids will learn that they can turn to God in any circumstance and pour out their hearts to Him.
It can also be comforting for children to see that repetition is part of prayer throughout the Bible. The psalms contain repeated themes of praise and crying out to God. Jesus gave His disciples a model of prayer in the Lord’s Prayer that they could return to again and again. While we want to teach our children to pray from the heart rather than simply repeat words without any thought, familiar prayers can give them comfort and help them talk to God.
Sometimes, kids may have lots of things to say, and other times they may need our encouragement or a Bible verse to pray. It is beautiful for a child to see that they can pray about their needs and thankfulness, but that they can also bring emotions like sadness, worry, anger and uncertainty to their heavenly Father. Using the Bible to pray helps make prayer a natural part of everyday life, teaching our children to turn to God as we seek to pray without ceasing in every situation of our lives.
Adena Timmerman of Fergus, Ont., is a mother of four and author of When Words Are Hard, a collection of Scripture-based prayers for children. Photo of two children by Ben White from Unsplash.