Prayer resources

So far in this prayer series, there have been three books about prayer:

A Call to Spiritual Reformation

A Praying Life

Praying the Scriptures for Your Children

There have been five posts about praying with children and in families (1, 2, 3, 4 & 5).

Finally we turn to some prayers themselves.  I'm sure there are plentiful resources of written prayers around.   Here are four ideas:

1. Old Service Books

If you grew up in a Christian home or if you have connections to older Christians or ministers, chances are they are some old Books of Common Order/ Common Prayer or Books of Services and  Prayers lying around. Get your hands on them if you can.  Of course, it is very possible you attend a church that still uses a prayer book of some type - fantastic!  Do you realise the resource sitting in front of you? 

Some are full of prayers for all times of the year, for all sorts of life situations and have many prayers praising God and Jesus.

I am very privileged to possess two old service books of my Grandad's:

• The Book of Common Order of the Church of Scotland (1940).  Inscribed as being presented to my grandfather in 1965.
• A Book of Services and Prayers (for churches of the Congregational Order), 1959

I tend to rewrite the ones I like the best into more modern language, so they feel more natural to pray.

I think our predecessors did a much better job of praying than many of our generation do, so I like to learn from them and keep using their prayers.

2. The Valley of Vision: Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions

About 200 prayers about God, Christ, his saving work and specific to situations and circumstances. Yes, they are old-fashioned and are full of thees and thous, which I have to translate as I pray to make any sense of them. Some are a bit archaic, but some are absolute gold. The ones I especially like I have rewritten in modern language and expressions which I find more natural to pray.  A great resource.

3. Prayers from the bible

The bible is a source to be harvested for prayer.  I know it sounds obvious, but it doesn't mean we automatically do it!  Psalms are often already prayers or easy to turn into prayers and many of Paul's prayers can be prayed verbatim.  But whenever you read the bible, be willing to turn whatever you have read into a prayer - whether praise of God, confession upon realisation of sin, the desire to be changed aligning with God's word.  Have a pen and notepaper handy and try it.  You will find yourself praying from the bible more and more. 

4.  The Prayer Project

I have decided to restart my prayer blog again - one prayer per week, either from the bible, one of the sources mentioned above or just perhaps from my own thoughts.  Perhaps you might also find them helpful to get you started.

Praying as a family - specific prayer

The last post was about regular general family prayers. However there are many times where we turn to prayer as a family for a specific reason. I mentioned some of these previously, for we want to be able to pray anytime. 

When children are trusted with information about people around them, we can turn specific news into opportunities for prayer. Sometimes these are praise points – someone became a Christian! Or is having a baby! Or is getting married! Other times they are prayer points – someone is sick or had an accident.

As they become more aware of the world and current events, we can also turn these into opportunities for prayer. Perhaps we will come before God about wars, natural disasters, elections, etc.

We have found that when our missionary updates come through, it is a great night to skip the general prayers and focus on that person or family in particular. We read the update together, talk about what it means, how they might feel in similar situations and then all pray for them. So if you are a missionary or ministry worker who sends out updates – let me encourage you to make them family friendly, then we can all pray for you!

That completes these 5 posts about family prayer and praying with children.   
Coming next: some prayer resources.

Praying as a family - general prayers

The ideas of praying together as a family are no different than praying with each of your children individually. The only requirement is that it is manageable for each age represented!

When we pray together as a family we do it after dinner at the table. We have a set of prayer cards which have a photo and some simple prayers. Everyone gets a card and we pray going around the table twice in order from youngest to oldest. The first time around we pray from our cards, the second time around we thank God for something. We go from youngest to oldest so the youngest ones don’t have their prayer points already used up by the time it is their turn!

The cards have both written prayers and photos so that:

• the non-reader can pray a simple prayer by recognising the person in the photo
• the early reader can read out the prayers
• the confident reader can read out the prayer or change it
• Mum & Dad usually add extra things to their prayers

We have 6 categories of cards:

• God & Jesus
• Our family - the five of us
• Extended family
• Godparents and Compassion children
• Staff at church & ES (these are the colleagues, friends and co-workers that our children know)
• Missionaries / overseas workers

They all sit in a business card display box, you can see a photo below. We just grab whichever ones are on top for that night and put them at the back of the pile again when finished.

I have realised recently that I need to update them all – they were all copied from the ones we do for our kids individually, so they are all singular (I/me). I want to change them to be plural for the family (we/us).

If you like this idea here is how we did it: I bought business cards to print out, printed them in colour, laminated them as full sheets, then cut out the individual cards. They do last longer if laminated, but they generally need to be updated every 6-12 months, so it doesn’t really matter. The holder was from an office supply store. Again, just like the written prayers for readers (link) it takes some time the first time you do it, but after that, it is quick and easy to update.

What other ideas do you have for praying together as a family?

Prayer with more competent readers

Continuing from babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers, we come to older children who are reading.

Once our children were able to read competently, we typed out prayers they could say.

These are intended to:

1. Help teach them a way to pray

I am sure you could teach children to pray by praying aloud and not writing out prayers. However, I pray from written notes myself and find it helps me pray purposefully, broadly and biblically. We have decided to write out prayers for our kids at this stage to help them set good early habits of broad ranging prayers. They include praise points, confessions and prayer requests.

2. Give confidence to pray

By having written prayers and not having to think up things on the spot, they are more confident to pray. However, they do not have to stick to the prayer points, in fact we encourage them to go ‘off script’ as we often have more up to date information about the people from week to week.

3. Give familiarity with bible passages and how to use them in prayer

Where possible, we write prayers from bible passages so they can learn how to do so themselves.

Our format is to provide prayers for each day of the week, which include 3-4 categories.

• a praise point about God, Jesus or the Spirit and their character
• prayer and praise points about an immediate family member (us 5 and both grandparents)
• prayer and praise points about godparents and their family / extended family
• prayer and praise about school, a ministry / missionary, or church.

We have kept photos in these ones too – it looks good and is fun to organise and update.

****

A sample is below:

GOD

• God – you love us even when we don’t deserve your love. Thank you for loving me all of the time.
• God, you are compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. (Psa 86:15)

DADDY

• Thank you for Daddy, that he loves me and cares for me.
• Thank you for fun times we have together – playing soccer, chess and other games.
• I am sorry for times when I am disobedient. Help me to listen to Daddy.
• Thank you God for Daddy’s work and that he can tell people about Jesus every day.
• Please let the word of Christ live in Daddy and that he will teach others with wisdom. (Col 3:16)
• Please help him to always speak the truth of Jesus and to be loving to others.

SCHOOL

• Dear God, thank you for my teachers. Thank you that they teach me about new things and how the world works.
• I am sorry if I am disobedient or I lie in class.
• Please help me to do my work properly.
• Please help me to be obedient in class, to listen and to be helpful.

• Thank you for my school friends –___________________.
• I am sorry for the times when I am mean to my school friends.
• Please help me to be a kind friend and a sharing friend.
• Please help me to look out for others who don’t have friends and to be nice to them.
• Please God, let my friends know that Jesus loves them, and he wants to be friends with them.

Yes, this is a bit of work to organise the first time - but it has been fantastic for our older two both in being able to pray with us or to start praying on their own.  They tell me when they want to update it with new prayer points and photos and then we do it together on the computer.   

I see no reason why this format cannot last for years to come.  It is essentially what I do myself but in a more simplified format.   

What has worked for this age in your family?

Prayer with babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers

Keeping in mind the principles from the last post – that we want to pray with our children and model that it’s normal – it makes sense that we want to model prayer from the earliest stage. I remember walking with our babies to their cots at night, praying ‘with’ them at the end of day – often they were simple “thank you for my day and please help me sleep well tonight” prayers, sometimes there was a bit more.

We started to get into the habit of saying grace as soon as they were starting solids (I never thought of saying grace before a feed – perhaps I should have!)

With toddlers, we often prayed for emergency vehicles with their sirens on: “Please God thank you for the ambulance drivers, help them to drive safely, get to the people in need, please help the doctors at the hospital to be able to help them get better and please help them all to learn about Jesus.”

We always found the end of the day to be a good time for prayer. It was also bible time and both naturally fit together. It is calm time and a lovely way to finish the day together.

Once our children could recognise people in photos (maybe from 6-12 months), we had a ‘prayer diary’. It was a simple A4 sheet with photos.

It was set up for the days of the week, with three categories for each day: family, extended family/godparents, ministry/other.

This has worked for years. In fact, until they could read independently, this has been the way we prayed with our children. As they got older, they loved helping organise it – choose who was on which day and it helped with learning to recognise everyone’s names in print as they were written underneath their photo.

Our youngest, age 5, still uses this as she is not ready to progress to written prayers yet.

I have included a table of it, so you can see an example.  It is a very bland example - usually it is a colourful photo display with everyone's real names.  However, since I felt I could not put up all these people's photos & names without permission, I have just given you an edited version.

DAY	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Family	Daddy	Mummy	Child 1	Child 2	Child 3	Grandparents	Grandparents
Family / Friends	Aunty, Uncle & family	Aunty & Uncle & family	Child 1's godparents	Child 2’s godparents	Child 3'swgodparents	Other family	Teachers and school friends
Ministry/ Other	Daddy’s work.	Missionary	Missionary	Missionary	Missionary	Compassion children	Church &  Friends  at church.

This is the one of the ways we have found that works well for us with little ones.

Next time - prayer with more confident readers.

Praying with children

Over the next few posts, I’ll share some ideas about praying with children, mainly covering the 0-10 age group.

Basics first.

1. Pray for your children.

Make sure you pray for your children. Use the types of prayers in Praying the Scriptures for your Children and you will be praying biblical prayers on a wide range of issues.

I know some parents pray daily for each of their children. That is great and is a wonderful discipline. For myself, I have a five day cycle that works through us all. It keeps me a bit fresher for each and more detailed for that person on that day.

I don’t think you have to follow a set strategy or format, just make sure you are praying for your family members.

Miller makes this comment in A Praying Life:

It didn’t take me long to realise I did my best parenting by prayer. I began to speak less to the kids and more to God. (p59)

Prayer for our children acknowledges God is in control, that we cannot change the hearts of anyone and that we call on Him to do his work in our loved ones.

2. Pray with your children

One of the most important things in praying with children is showing that it’s normal. Anyone can do it, anytime.

We don’t need a special time, a special situation, special words or a special voice to pray.

We just need to turn to God and trust in Him.

So, we can pray anytime, which may include:

• At the beginning of the day
• At bedtime
• Before meals – thanking God for the food
• When we have fears / bad dreams – asking God to take them away
• For our special events – starting school or pre-school, birthdays, etc.
• For world events – elections, natural disasters, wars, etc
• About issues – problems with friends, when people are sick
• About character development – eg. needing help to be kind, gentle, compassionate
• For forgiveness - when we’ve done the wrong thing
• For emergencies – eg. for emergency vehicles with their sirens on

I’m sure you can think of many other times and situations when you would pray with your kids.

How do we pray? 

In an age-appropriate way and in words they understand. As they get older, the language we use will progress, showing them how prayer can come clearly from the bible, and also be more detailed and more varied.

So with a 2 year old you might pray, “Thank you God for my sister and that you love her”

With a 6 year old, you might pray, “Thank you God for my sister, thank you that you love her and sent Jesus to save her. Help her to love you more each day.”

With a 10 year old, you might pray, “Thank you for my sister and the fun we have together. Help her to always know she belongs to you, and please make your word a lamp to her feet and a light to her path. I am sorry for the times when I am not kind to her, please forgive me and help me to be kind”

Over the next few posts, I’ll share some ideas about prayer with various ages of young children, starting with the youngest – babies, toddlers & pre-schoolers. This is a rather personal series - it is really a collection of the things that have worked for us as a family. I would love to hear your input throughout on other ideas that have worked for you.

Praying the Scriptures for Your Children

Praying the Scriptures for Your Children, Jodie Berndt

This is a rewritten review of one I posted years ago.  Since I am doing a prayer series, I wanted to redo it and remind you all of its existence.   This book transformed my prayer life 5 years ago and I have never looked back.  I now use biblically based prayers for all my praying and I have detailed categories for prayer than have broadened the scope and depth of my prayers for others.  

She divides the book into 5 sections: faith, character, safety, relationship and future. Each of these is then divided into subsections. Each chapter contains numerous bible verses from which to pray for your children. The best thing about this book is that it focuses your prayer life. Instead of vague prayers such as:

Dear God, please look after A, help him to be safe and to become a Christian

I now pray things like:

• I pray that A will confess with his mouth "Jesus is Lord" and believe in his heart the God raised him from the dead and be saved (Rom 10:9)
• Give A wisdom and understanding. Do not let him forget your words or swerve from them. Cause him to love wisdom and to value it above all worldly desires and accomplishments. (Prov 4:5-7)
• Let A's light shine shine before men, so that they may see his good deeds and praise you, our Father in heaven (Matt 5:16)
• Show A that all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim 3:16-17)
• Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of A’s mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. (Eph 4:29)
• Help A to be self-controlled. Let him show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about him. (Titus 2:6-8)

Things I really enjoyed about this book:

• It was easy to read, with lots of anecdotes, and was well structured.
• It gave me better ways to pray
• I love the idea of praying straight from the scriptures, but had never been very good at it, so it set me up with some good principles. You know (as long as you are using the bible appropriately) that you are praying in line with God’s word.
• It challenged me to think about how I pray and how much of my praying can be mechanical and over and done with very quickly.
• It's ‘ready to go’ - each chapter contains the bible verses at the end to use to pray for your children, great for busy mums
• A friend also pointed out that it would a helpful book also for new Christians or people that are learning to pray, and could help them get into good habits

Other comments:

• I do have some hesitation with her use of Scripture at points - when you look up some of her references in context, they don't always seem to fit with her use of them. Most of her general principles are biblically accurate though, I just wouldn't choose that verse necessarily. And like any book, if you do the work yourself as well, you can make those judgments as you read it.
• I felt the scope was too limited. It was great to point out the ways to pray for your children, but the areas for prayer and the prayers themselves could have a much wider application, to my husband, to me, to our friends and others in ministry, for Christians and non-Christians. Therefore, after reading this book, I used her prayers and her layout, and set up a way to do it myself, with a broader scope. In doing so, my goal was to take some of the standard jargon out of my prayer and replace it with scripture, and in so doing, help me to learn more of the bible at the same time.  
• Similarly to above, I thought it was a shame it is so focussed on mothers, because it can restrict the possible audience (what about fathers?).

When I read this with a book group, they raised the following concerns:

• She has a lot of prayers for your children’s future, including their marriages.  However, she does not seem to consider the option of praying for them if they remain single. For example, for contentedness for the parents and the child, or an acknowledgement that it might be God's plan that they remain single.  I don’t want to be closed to that option as a praying parent - rather I pray that my children will make godly and wise choices either in marriage or singleness.
• One of our group was offended (understandably, and personally) that Berndt prayed that her children would marry people from unbroken homes. She felt it was holding the sins of the parents against the child.
• Another of our group thought that her emphasis on Satan was at times unsettling and too strong.

Having said all that, this is a great book.  It remains on my recommended reading list for new mothers, for if it encourages mothers to pray biblically and intelligently for their children, that is a wonderful thing.

A Praying Life

A Praying Life, Paul Miller

If Carson wrote a theologically practical treatise on prayer from Paul’s letters, Paul Miller has written a personal account of how he has learnt to pray over the years and how he has seen God continually work through prayer and the lives of others.

This is a book that convicts you to pray, to pray often and to pray well. I would finish a chapter and want to pray, not because I felt I should, but because I wanted to, and that is probably my highest recommendation of this book: it had me wanting to pray immediately.

Miller’s prayer life has been very shaped by his own family and their struggles. He is very open about the challenges they faced, especially raising a disabled daughter. He knows God led him & his family through this experience to teach them a prayerful dependence on Him, for there was no other way forward.

It is biblical, honest, realistic and purposeful. He deals with issues that many Christians face such as:

• How do we deal with Jesus’ extravagant promises about prayer?
• What about when God doesn’t answer prayer?
• Why we find it hard to ask God for some things?

I found I had to read it with pen and paper to follow through the structure logically. The sections and chapter headings were not entirely obvious and because he used language that I tend not to use (eg. Living in your Father’s story), it took me some time to ‘translate’ it for myself. Having said that, this is great book full of good ideas and personal reflections for anyone who wants to think about prayer and to then turn to praying.

As with any book, I had some hesitations. He was surprisingly critical of the ACTS prayer system (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication) and indeed of any system, yet went on to advocate prayer cards and prayer journaling in detail. I thought there was too little emphasis on how we can use scripture itself to teach us to pray, on praising God himself for his character and works and on praying more widely than our personal circles.

Overall though, it is a great book. Some quotes to whet your appetite:

“One of the subtlest hindrances to prayer is probably the most pervasive. In the broader culture and in our churches, we prize intellect, competency, and wealth. Because we can do life without God, praying seems nice but unnecessary. Money can do what prayer does, and it is quicker and less time-consuming. Our trust in ourselves and in our talents makes us structurally independent of God.” (p16)

“Many assume that the spiritual person is unruffled by life, unfazed by pressure…even a cursory glance at Jesus’ life reveals a busy life… If we love people and have the power to help, then we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of outer busyness we can develop an inner quiet” (p23)

“Praying out loud can be helpful because it keeps you from getting lost in your head. It makes your thoughts concrete. But it is more than technique; it is also a statement of faith. You are audibly declaring your belief in a God who is alive.” (p48)

“Prayer is where I do my best work as a husband, dad, worker, and friend. I’m aware of the weeds of unbelief in me and the struggles in other’s lives. The Holy Spirit puts his fingers on issues that only he can solve. I’m actually managing my life though my daily prayer time. I’m shaping my heart, my work, my family – in fact, everything that is dear to me – through prayer in fellowship with my heavenly Father. I’m doing that because I don’t have control over my heart or life or the hearts and lives of those around me. But God does.” (p257)

A Call to Spiritual Reformation

A Call to Spiritual Reformation, D. A. Carson

This is one of those books on prayer that everyone recommends; in fact it has been spoken about and suggested as crucial reading for the last 20 years. It takes me a while to catch up sometimes, but I tend to get there in the end!

I have read through this book over the last few months. It is like mining for treasure. You have to work a bit, it is a bit dense theologically at times and it takes some serious thinking, but the treasures abound. D. A. Carson is a skilled theologian who can explain many a passage. Yet at the same time, he is pastorally sensitive, astute and aware of the struggles many Christians face with prayer.

Combining these two gifts he has written this book which looks at a number of the prayers found in Paul’s letters in the New Testament. Each is filled with detailed explanation of what Paul is praying and why, and how then we as believers should think about prayer. Interspersed are chapters on practical issues such as why we do not pray, how we think about God’s sovereignty related to personal prayer, and how we make sure our prayers are focused on others. I found the first chapter, with eight lessons to learn about prayer incredibly helpful and adopted some immediately myself.

Some of the things I was challenged by are included in Carson’s own words below:

“Christians should pray long enough and honestly enough, at a single session, to get past the feeling of formalism and unreality that attend not a little praying … To enter the spirit of prayer, we must stick to it for a little while. If we "repay until we pray", eventually we will come to delight in God’s presence, to rest in his love, to cherish his will” (p36)

“We must look for signs of grace in the lives of Christians, and give God thanks for them” (p44)

Paul’s prayers are primarily about others not himself, they are “outstanding for the large part intercession for others and thanksgiving for others play in them” (p66)

“What we need, then, is a prayer life that thanks God for the people of God, and then tells the people of God what we thank God for” (p88)

If you are like I was and have not read A Call to Spiritual Reformation yet, even though you have heard about it for years – do yourself a favour - get a copy, put aside time to read a bit of it each day, and go looking for treasure.

I plan to return to it regularly, digest it in small chunks and keep being challenged about how to pray.

Some thoughts on prayer

Over the next month or so, I will be putting up a number of posts about prayer. These will include books about prayer, books of prayers and some ideas for praying with children.

Something to get you thinking, and hopefully even praying!