Teaching Your Child to Pray: Seven Prayers for Seven Days (Plus Free Printables!)

This is the first post in a series of ideas of things I'm doing to help teach my boys to pray.  Right now we pray at meals and when they go to sleep, but I wanted to begin making some more concentrated efforts to teach them what it looks like to talk to God.  They learn so much by observing what Matt and I do, so when I found this idea to pray 7 prayers for 7 days a while back I knew I wanted to do it!



I found the idea on Angie Smith's blog (wife of lead singer for Selah) quite a while ago and have had it in the back of my mind ever since.  I finally got organized and am going to share it with you today, plus some free printables.  That way, if you're a frazzled procrastinator like me, you don't have to get organized and can get started now!  :)

The basic idea is that you pray out loud for your child(ren) with your child(ren) present to hear you.  You use Scripture, but personalize it with their name and make it into a prayer.  Angie did the hard work and chose all of the Scripture already and adjusted the wording.  There are 7 different designated occasions to pray throughout the day that include:  when they wake up, when they're getting dressed, when they eat, when they leave the house, when they are taking a bath, when they are going to bed, while they are sleeping.  (Obviously they won't hear the last one.)  


I put my cards around the house in places that I will easily see them and be reminded to pray at the designated times.  Here's the one I have by the bathtub.

My one disclaimer is that I just copied and pasted Angie's prayers adapted from Scripture.  Many of them are worded in such a way that it assumes your child is already a believer.  I'm going to adapt it just a bit when I actually pray and include a short prayer that God would draw my kids to himself and that they would come to know him as their Savior.  


Want to know why it took me this long to do it?  It's ridiculous, really.  I don't like how my handwriting turns out when I try to write a bunch of stuff like this out.  Too many scribbles and mistakes and thinking something will take more or less space in the writing area than it actually does... and then I have to start over or hate how it looks for the duration that I use it.  I know... I've got issues.  :)  So, if you would like yours to look cute too, I made some printables that you can have!  I made a girl version (using "she" and "her"), a boy version (using "he" and "him") and a multiple children version (using "they" and "them").  Each one has a caption above the verse on the printable telling you which time of day the prayer is for.  Print any or all of the ones you want!


Here are the links to the printables:
For Girls
For Boys
For Multiple Children


I'm so excited to try this out!  I can't wait to see how the Lord uses this to make me and my children more conscious of God and our actions as we go about our day.  I'm committing to do this for one week.  If you're interested in joining us this week, we'd love to know!  I can't think of a better way to start the year!


 

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