Teaching Your Children to Pray

In this episode, I’m sharing simple, practical ways to teach your children to pray and make prayer a natural part of everyday life at home. We’ll talk about leading by example, keeping prayer simple, using one-word prayers with young children, and creating an atmosphere where talking to God feels comfortable and real. If you’ve ever wondered whether your prayers and everyday faithfulness are making a difference, this episode is for you.

Transcript

Mother’s Day And A Listener Question

Audrey 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Grace for My Home. I'm Audrey and I'm so glad to be back with you again this week. I hope that you had a wonderful Mother's Day. I had a great Mother's Day. All of my boys, they conspi together and bought me a gift basket. Everybody contributed a little bit of a little something, and it was so nice. I woke up on Sunday morning and I went into the kitchen and they had it on the table there on the kitchen table, and it was beautiful. And they, as they've gotten older, they've got they've gotten wiser, and they they each each of them helped and did a special part of the basket, and they got the things I love. I got a Starbucks gift card, some flowers, some candles, some dark chocolate. So it was really nice. And they had even taken rose petals and s and sprinkled rose petals around the basket, which I was pretty impressed with that. And I asked every each of them had to tell me what part they had to play, you know, in the basket, who bought what, and and of course, my middle son Luke had to tell me that he's the one who organized it, he's the one who started the group text. But I had to find out who did the petals, like whose idea was that. And that was my oldest son, David. He's working at the melting pot, which is in case you don't have one in your area, it's a fondue restaurant, and they do that for their guests. So he he's picking up tips and tricks, and I was impressed. But I it was a I had a wonderful day, and of course, the best part was just having everybody together with everybody driving now and having jobs. It's just a treat for me that we were able to all go to church together and then able to go out to eat afterwards. We took my mom out, so just spending time with them was the best part. Today, I wanted to share with you something that has been on my mind. I want to share with you about teaching your children to pray. A while back, a long while back, a listener sent me an email and asked, How do I teach my children to pray? She had little kids. Her children are young, and she was trying to teach them to pray and didn't feel like she was having much success. And so I shared some thoughts with her, and I thought, you know, there are others who maybe they want to hear this also. And so I thought I would share that today. And I want to let you know if you have questions, like this listener. This listener was actually Kayla from Alaska. But if you have questions that you'd like to ask me, please let me know. Shoot me an email or send me fan mail and let me know what your questions are and I'll try to answer them. Even if I don't answer them in a podcast, I'll send you an email like I did with Kayla. But I thought some other people besides Kayla may want to hear my thoughts on this. When my children were younger, I often wished

Why Prayer Training Matters At Home

Audrey 3:05

I'd had an older woman that I could ask questions, a mentor. You know, I did have older women in my life. I had my mom and my mother-in-law and ladies in my church, but none of them had homeschooled their children. And for me, homeschooling was more about discipleship than it was the academics. Now, we took care of the academics, don't get me wrong. I wanted to make sure that my kids weren't at a disadvantage because I homeschooled them, but it was more about discipleship and about teaching them about the Lord. And I didn't, I didn't really have anyone who I could ask those kind of questions to. Nobody who in my immediate area homeschooled. We are thankfully we live in a very good school district, and so there's not a lot of reason for people to homeschool. But it was something that the Lord had put on my heart and I really wanted to do, but I just didn't have a lot of um, there were there wasn't a big co-op in our area at that time. Actually, since COVID, several have popped up, which I think is awesome. But at the time when I was homeschooling my children, which was 15 years ago when we started, there there wasn't a lot of resources around. And I live in a rural area, but I never I never found my person. Like I never found somebody who I could ask questions, and I had to rely a lot on homeschool forums and online communities and books. Books were my mentors for a long time, blogs and podcasts, and that's really why I do this now. This is why I do the blog and I do the podcast because I so longed for somebody to help me, to tell me things I didn't know, and to ask questions. And his grace is always enough, you know, even if you don't have an example, even if you don't have an older woman or somebody that you can go to and ask questions or or show you the way, you always have Jesus, and he is more than enough. And often when it comes to disciples and my children, the Lord would point me back to his example. That, you know, in the Bible, we get to see a little bit into the lives of Jesus and his disciples and how they related to each other. And, you know, Jesus spent time with them, you know, he taught them things that he didn't teach the crowd, and he spent time with them. And, you know, he even after he had ministered in front of them, he there were times when he sent them out, like he showed them this is how you do it, and then he would send them out to do it. And so the Lord used his example a lot in my life. And I so I think, you know, even if we don't have that person to walk beside us and tell us exactly how they did things, we've always got the example of Jesus, and his grace is always enough. And that's why I named my podcast and my blog, Grace for My Home, because I found that there was always enough grace, that he always gave me enough grace for our home. And even the disciples asked Jesus, Lord, teach us how to

Learning Without A Mentor

Audrey 6:10

pray. Jesus had just prayed, and I imagine hearing Jesus pray to the Father was quite an experience. And after he prayed, they asked him, Lord, teach us to pray. And he longs to answer that prayer. And in answer to that prayer, he gave them the Lord's Prayer. Now that's an excellent way to start teaching your children how to pray. Say the Lord's Prayer together, memorize it together. That's a wonderful example of prayer. This listener, she had very young children. I think they ranged from age 10, 5, 7 to 1. So they were very young, and she was asking, how do I get them involved? And I just want to say that the first advice I have for teaching kids how to pray is to start very simple. You know, do not complicate it. Keep it very simple and always lead by example. You praying in front of them or praying with them or around them, like Jesus praying around his disciples, is the catalyst for them wanting to pray themselves. Now, I wanted prayer to be a very natural part of life for our home. I wanted, you know, God is with us, and I wanted to acknowledge that God is here. You know, he's always with us. Let's not exclude him, let's bring him into the conversation. Now, years ago, when I first got saved, someone shared a book with me, and it was called What Happens When Women Pray? And as I was preparing for this podcast, I thought about that book and how that book influenced me. I went on Amazon to see if I could find it, and it's way, it's out of print like a long time ago. But it was a good example to me because in the book she talked about how to create how to make prayer circles or how to create prayer groups within your church. And one of the things she mentioned was that you need to keep it simple because people who have never prayed in a group or never prayed out loud, you don't want to intimidate them. You don't want them to hear your grandiose prayers or your wonderful long poetic prayers and think I'll never be able to do that. And so they're embarrassed to even pray out loud or even try. And I always kept that in mind with my kids. You know, I want to keep this simple so they see this is something that they can do. And I'm not saying that there's not time for long drawn-out prayers, you know, but those are probably best for your quiet time. When you're trying to encourage your children to pray, you want to show them how easy it is to talk to God. And so that's what I tried to keep in mind. And I tried to model that, you know, anywhere there was an opportunity to pray, we prayed. And I tried to keep my eyes open for opportunities to pray so that they would be able to see that example. You know, sometimes it was me and their dad praying, and we would invite them over to pray with us. Sometimes it was just things that happened during the day, or someone would call and say, Hey, would you pray for this? And I would gather them and say, you know, Aunt Juanita called and said, Would you please pray? Because she broke her arm and we would pray for Aunt Juanita and her arm. And so we, you

Keep Prayers Simple And Visible

Audrey 9:30

know, I tried to bring them into prayer and make it a very natural part because I wanted them to learn that they can talk to God, that they don't need mama to talk to God for them, that they can talk to God. If something good happened, then we would thank the Lord. We would, you know, say a prayer and say, Lord, thank you so much. One time we had a need, and only God could meet that need. And I remember, you know, I was worried. My husband had gone to work, and I gathered the the boys and we prayed for that need, and before the end of the day, God answered it. And I remember thinking, we have to acknowledge that. We have to, you know, say, Lord, thank you. And they got to see in real time that God answers prayer. And that they were a part of that because we prayed together. And and there's so many opportunities to bring prayer into your home. You know, you can pray before meals, you can pray during family devotions, you can pray goodnight prayers. You know, when my kids went to bed, I tried, didn't make it every night, but I tried to kiss them goodnight and to pray with them and to pray for anything that was that was weighing on them or anything that they they had on their heart that they wanted that they wanted me to pray with them about. Also, as we were driving down the road, if we saw an accident, I would say, let's pray for the people involved in that accident. And that would be an opportunity for us to pray. And once you start doing that, your children will start looking for opportunities to pray. You know, you'll go by an accident on the road and they will say, Mama, look, there's an accident, let's pray. And as things happen in their life, they will start thinking, I can pray about this. And one of the ways I got them to start praying, because I didn't want it to just always be me. One of the ways I got them to start praying, even from a young age, was one-word prayers. You know, as we had devotions together and as we had meals together, and the way I would do that is I would say, okay, guys, to God has been so good to us. And today we're gonna thank him for one thing that he has done, one thing that we are thankful for, one thing that we're glad he gave us. And I would start and I would say, okay, guys, no, I would say, now when I pray, I'm gonna pray, and then David, I want you to pray, and then we'll go around in a circle until everybody has said one thing that they're thankful for. And so I would start us off and I would say, Father, thank you so much. You always meet our needs, and you give us so many wonderful things. And today I want to thank you for, and then I would say something, and then David would say one word, and then Luke would say one word, and then Caleb, if he was old enough, he would say one thing. And so that kind of got them in the the practice of, you know, you're you're not just listening to mama pray, we're participating. And there are a lot

One Word Prayers That Include Kids

Audrey 12:30

of one-word prayers that you can pray. For example, you can pray for somebody. You can say, Today we're gonna pray for somebody that we love and we want God to bless them today. And we would go around and I would start, and everybody would name one person, they would just say the name. And then we had other things like, and so there are a lot of one-word prayers that you can pray for. We'd pray for the dog, we'd pray for the chickens. You know, it was funny, just this past Sunday on the way to to eat for Mother's Day, we were talking about all of the chicken funerals we had. You know, we have chickens now, we've had chickens for many years, but when my boys were little, they were our pets. And I remember before church one Sunday, we went outside to feed the chickens, and something had gotten to our chicken coop, and one of them had died. And it was traumatic for these little boys who loved these chickens. And we had to have a chicken funeral before we went to church. And they prayed at the chicken funeral, they actually conducted the service, and so when you make it natural, then it pulls them in and never reprimand or never correct or never you know be judgmental. If they don't want to pray, just skip them. They'll get it. It you don't want to make this anything that's forced. You want to make it very natural. You know, this is what we do, this is who we are. God is with us, he's always with us, and we're always acknowledging that he's with us. And then things will grow from one-word prayers to one-sentence prayers. I would start saying things like at breakfast, Luke, would you thank the Lord for our breakfast this morning? And he would say a short prayer. And so I tried not to make it a big deal. Sometimes in our devotion, and we had devotions almost every day. I would ask somebody to close us out in a prayer, and that just made it very easy because there's no judgment, there's no, you know, it's just us at home, and they caught on and they would pray. Now, they would not pray in public, they did not want to pray at church, and they didn't want to pray in front of other people, and that's fine. And over time they grew and they become less shy and they would pray in those settings. But as they get older and they grow more confident, those prayers will build and they will start praying for things that that's on their heart, and they will start having their own conversations with God. At one point, I bought them a prayer journal when they were old enough to write. I bought each of them a prayer journal. Now, for two of them, it didn't really catch on, but I have one son who he keeps a journal now faithfully, and he writes his prayers in that journal. And when he's talking to the Lord or reading the Bible, if something stands out to him, he'll write it down in that journal. And that's important to him. And see, I'm like that. That's how I am. I have journals galore. I have so many journals, but he he's like me, he likes to write those things down, and that was a way of showing them that you know you can pray these prayers so you can go back and see where God's answered your prayers and you can see how you've grown. And so I encouraged them to do that. Like I said, it's not for everybody, but the ones who think like that, they'll enjoy that. It'll it'll catch on for them. Sometimes we would call their grandmother or their grandfather and say, Can we pray for you today? I remember when, you know, one of them fell off the bike and scraped him himself up pretty bad. I called everybody over and

Journals And Praying For Others

Audrey 16:15

said, Let's pray for your brother. He's gotten hurt. And they would pray for their brother. They'll catch it and it will become a very natural part of their life. And God will use that. You know, I told you guys last week that I have uh a son who's graduating in about two weeks, and it's hard for me to believe. He is a senior this year. And this Thursday night, there is a senior awards banquet, and he's been asked to lead the opening prayer. And he could have said no, but he said yes, and he has to write out his prayer and submit it to the principal for approval, which isn't a big deal because his dad is the principal. I'm pretty sure he's gonna approve it. But this is the little boy who didn't want to pray in front of people. This is the little boy he didn't want to pray at all. He was kind of stubborn like that, you know. He didn't want to pray out loud, and I never forced him to pray out loud, but he grew up in an atmosphere of prayer, and now he's getting up in front of his entire senior class, the teachers and the and the staff and the parents, and he's saying the opening prayer for senior awards night, and that's kind of a validation for me. It's kind of like you didn't give up, honey. You know, even when you thought, and there were

When The Harvest Finally Shows Up

Audrey 17:45

days when I thought, this is useless, this is futile, you know, this is such a waste of my breath and my time. But it faith is like sowing seed, right? You bury it, it looks like nothing is happening, nothing is going on, but you keep uh planting, you keep watering, you keep believing, and it happens. And that's the seasons that we're in, right? The little seasons you plant little seeds that seem like they're never going to amount to anything. And then before you know it, you have a harvest. And I'm starting to see some harvest, and it's so encouraging, guys, and it makes me want to tell you don't give up. God's got a good plan for you and for your family. And if you don't think you're doing anything of any value, let me tell you, honey, you are you are making a difference. You're making a difference in the lives of your children and in the lives of your grandchildren, and you don't even know it. You're just going, you're just doing the things you know to do because you love God. But you will be blessed by the blessing that comes back to you. And if nobody else is saying thank you today, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for the sacrifices you're making. Thank you for doing things when you feel awkward and you feel like this is futile. It's not futile. And you can do this, you can do this precious one. God has his hand on you and on your family, and your children need you to do it. They need you, even though they don't know they need you, they need you to do this, they need you to put your hand to the plow and to keep on going. Even when it doesn't feel like it's making any difference, it's making a lot of difference. It's making eternal difference. And that's what I wanted to share with you today. And I hope that it was a blessing. And I hope that you will meet me back here again next week. I'm gonna add some things to the podcast and probably gonna add some devotionals to the podcast, but I'll announce more of that as the time comes. I really want to encourage you and support you in your walk with the Lord and in your work as a mom. And I appreciate you. I appreciate you coming each week and listening. If you have any questions, like I said before, please send me a text, an email, something to say I'm out here, I'm listening, and this is what I would like you to speak on. That helps me immensely because then I know I'm speaking directly to you and things that you care about. I just want to close us out in prayer. I think that's appropriate, right? Father, I thank you for this precious mama who is trying to do the right things and she's not always sure she's doing the right things. But Lord, I pray that you would encourage her. I pray, God, that you would help her, that you'd give her ideas, that you you would help her to see opportunities that maybe she doesn't see, but they're right in front of her. I pray, God, for hope. I pray for joy. I pray that you would help her to laugh today, and Lord, to remember that you're on her side, that you're cheering her on, that Lord, she is not doing this, Lord, by her own strength, but Lord, you are giving her all the grace she needs, and there's more than enough grace. And Lord, we thank you for it in Jesus' name. Amen.