Skip to main content

Teaching Our Children To Pray

This week a friend asked my wife a question about prayer. She prays with her children at bedtime and has taught them a simple prayer that they can memorize and repeat. This is a very good practice in my estimation. A friend of hers, however, said that she should not teach her children to repeat memorized prayers. Apparently, this friend believes that memorized or repeated prayers contradict Jesus’ instructions on how to pray. While I admire her friend’s desire to do what is right, I think she has reached an inaccurate conclusion.

It is true that Jesus taught his disciples not to “heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” (Matthew 6:7) The empty phrases here concerns prayer that is a string of many words such as, “bless me, bless me, bless me, bless me…” and so on; thinking that God will honor your work in prayer. It does not concern praying the same pray every night or even several times a day.

When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed the “not my will but yours be done” prayer repeatedly. Matthew tells us, “So leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again.” (Matthew 26:44) So we can and should teach our children to pray using prayers that they can remember and repeat. To be sure, we want them to mature in their praying as they mature spiritually, but grace gives us plenty of room to begin as we see fit.

I Hope This Is Helpful,

Pastor Mitch

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Generation of Mark 13:30

At the beginning of Mark chapter thirteen Jesus is leaving the temple area and one of his disciples points out the grandure of the temple buildings. Jesus' remark to that disciple concerns the fact that these buildings will one day be torn down. The disciples question Him further as to the times of these events, and so begins an extended teaching from Jesus on the end times.As Jesus' remarks are drawing to a close, He makes this comment in Mark 13:30: "Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place." (NASB) So the reader is left to wonder the meaning of this statement. Either our understanding of generation is wrong, or we are understanding what Jesus meant by "these things" wrong. I think there are at least two solutions. The word for generation (genea: Greek) could mean, as some side column reference Bibles note, "the human race". This is possible, since the events have not all happened and the human race...
15 comments
Read more

By This Time You Ought To Be Teachers

June 1, 2006 Sin has a way of crippling us and it is not as obvious as we might think. Sin is subtle and comes to us in the most gentle of ways. When the writer of Hebrews attempts to encourage the church to remain diligent to the faith he does it by writing a letter filled with warnings. One of those warnings has to do with the connection between disobedience and unbelief (3:18-19). Disobedience is equated with unbelief in these two verses, because Israel did not enter the land of rest by disobeying God, rather they failed to believe that God would keep His word to them. Disobedience is the fruit of failing to hear God’s word. At first this does not seem to apply to us at all. We hear God’s word all week long. Or do we? When sin settles into our hearts it begins to harden our senses (3:13). We do not hear God’s word like we used to and preaching, as well as Bible lessons, begin to sound more like traffic noise from the freeway than words spoken to us from God. The writer of Hebrews re...
Post a Comment
Read more

Children, Forgive Your Parents

Originally written on August 7, 2005 I remember the first time my father spoke to me as an adult. I was thirty. I had always looked up to my dad because he has many characteristics that are larger than life. Our relationship had always been that of a father and child. It did not change as I became a teenager and as I entered adulthood this unchanging relationship was the cause of much strain. So I was caught off guard as my dad began to speak to me over lunch one day at Chik-fil-a. As he spoke to me he began to confess the things that he had done wrong in raising my brother and me. It was a remarkable moment. Mainly because I noticed very few of his mistakes. He always worked to provide for us, loved my mother with all his heart, gave us plenty of hugs and kisses, and told us that he loved us everyday. So why would he admit to making mistakes in raising his children? After all, he had done a pretty exceptional job. The truth of the matter is that no matter how good we do as parents and...
1 comment
Read more