Welcome back to Beyond the Pew. In this video, Matt shares with us different ways to begin and continue to pray with your kids.
Welcome to Beyond the Pew, my name is Matt Rice and parents, I’m here to talk to you about praying with your kids. I hope you’ve had a chance to listen to Alyssa’s talk on What is Prayer, Jennifer’s presentation on Ways to Pray, and Taylor on the specifics of How to Pray.
So, now we’re getting down to the practical kind of nitty gritty what does this look like in your life. Parents, the first person or the first people that should be praying in the family is husband and wife. Y’all should be praying together to strengthen your bond between each other, but also for your family. The next step is to pray with your kids. I’m going to challenge you on that one. I want you to spend some time with your kids: praying with them.
the first people praying in the family need to be husband and wife
A little backstory on me and how that became something important in my life was at a Father and Son campout. And the leaders of the camp out challenged all the men that were there to spend some alone time with their kids. Now, it was me and my two oldest boys and one of them was 8 and the other one was 6. The kind of questions they put down for us to talk about kind of intimidated me a little bit. I had to be vulnerable and share from my heart with my boys. They had questions like, “How am I doing as a father? If there was one thing you could ask for me to change, what would it be?” Those kinds of questions are pretty hard for a parent to ask, because we have to admit that we aren’t perfect.
Find out what kind of struggles are going on in their life. Find out what kind of issues they’re facing. If it’s not something they are directly facing, ask them about their friends. “Hey, are any of your friends having a hard time right now?” And then you can pray with them for that friend. That’s actually a good way to start praying with your kids is to pray for their friends. And then as y’all develop the relationship you’ll be able to go deeper and deeper in that prayer specifically for your child.
[tweetthis]Parents, pray with your kids. Find out what struggles they’re facing and pray with them. They need it. They need you[/tweetthis]
Sometimes when we start to pray we’re really nervous about how perfect it’s going to sound, if we’re going to say the right words and is this the right way to pray. As long as you are praying with your kids, then it’s the right way to pray. So the challenge is just to do it. Spend time with your kids and pray with them.
My wife and I made it a priority a couple of years ago to pray over our kids and we would start every day in a family prayer in the morning and then as they left the house I would bless them. The prayers were really simple, something as simple as “ I bless you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” And as parents, that’s our role: to bless our children. To send them out into the world with that blessing. It’s a very easy way to start.
not only will your relationship with your kids get deeper,
but their relationship with God will-
and that’s our goal
I was talking to my wife about what should be on this video and she said, “Matt, just get parents to pray with their kids.” And that reinforced exactly what I wanted to get across here. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It can be messy. Just get out there and pray with your kids because they need you. They need you in their life in prayer. As you develop that prayer relationship with your child, your relationship with him or her is going to get deeper. And that’s something that is going to be so foundational that they can carry with them throughout their entire life. But not only is your relationship with them going to be better, but their relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ is going to be better. And that’s our goal. Because if that relationship and that foundation is set, then our goal as parents to get them into heaven, we’re that much closer to achieving that goal.
[tweetthis]Parents, as you develop a #prayer #relationship with your child, your relationship with them is going to get deeper.[/tweetthis]
God bless and we’ll see you at the next episode of Beyond the Pew.