3 things we teach our children when we pray

Last week I published a piece in which I encouraged each of us to really pray when we pray. Since then my thoughts on prayer have moved in another direction, particularly regarding the education of our children. I am becoming increasingly convinced that one of the most significant ways of transmitting spiritual truth to our children is through our prayers. I believe that when we pray with our children, our children learn our relationship with the Lord and what we believe in God. We take a look at three things we teach our children when they listen to us pray.

1. When we pray, our children learn that we have a sincere relationship with the Lord.

Last Sunday I was talking to a friend about what children learn when they listen to their parents pray. He shared with me that when he was older his father's prayers were formulas and seemed artificial to him. But in recent years my friend has noticed a change in the relationship of the elderly father with the Lord. What is significant is that the main way he has come to recognize change is by listening to the way his father prays.

I grew up with a mother who had a delicate relationship with the Lord and I knew it from the way she prayed. When I was a child, he told me that even if all my friends had stopped being my friends, Jesus would always have been my friend. I believed you. The reason I believed her was that when she prayed, I could say she was talking to her closest friend.

2. When we pray, our children learn that we truly believe that God can and will answer our prayers.

Honestly, learning to pray in a group in the United States was a bit difficult for me. When my wife and I lived in the Middle East, we were often around Christians who expected God to do great things. We knew it by the way they prayed. But a message came to me loud and clear in most of the prayer meetings I attended in the United States: we don't really believe that anything will happen when we pray! I want my children to know that when we pray, we are talking to a God who is strong enough to answer our prayers and who cares deeply enough to act on our behalf.

(Please note that you do not generate such faith as to prove really hard to believe,., Rather, sensitivity to the Holy Spirit develops more and more which helps you know how to pray, and which increases your faith as you pray in addiction about him, but that's another topic for another day.)

3. When we pray, our children learn what we believe in God.

I've thought about it more since reading the recently published book by Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity changes everything. The basic biblical model is to pray to the Father, on the basis of what the Son has done, empowered by the Spirit. Of course, it is possible that we can communicate to our children a deficient vision of the Trinity by always praying to Jesus as a friend or by being overly focused on the Spirit in our prayers. (I'm not saying that a prayer thanking Jesus for his death on the cross or a prayer to the Holy Spirit asking him to authorize you for the testimony is wrong, it's just not the biblical model.)

Your children will learn from you that God is holy by listening to the way you confess your sins; that God is a God of power when you worship him; that it really matters to God when you call on him in time of need, and so on.

When I am alone with the Lord, one of the prayers that I pray more than any other is: “Lord, I want it to be real. I don't want to be a fake. I need your grace to live what I teach. " And now, by God's grace, I want my children to see the same thing in me. I don't pray for them; I pray to the Lord But I think it's nice to remember that our children are listening.