I'm assuming your children have heard you pray, right? Nancy Guthrie wonders, what kinds of prayers have they heard you pray? Have your kids ever heard you confess a specific sin? If we want our kids to have a relationship with God, that includes the joy that comes from experiencing forgiveness, followed by confessing a specific sin to God.
Maybe they need to hear us confess a specific sin to God. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.
I'm Bob Lapine. When we teach our children about prayer, in addition to instruction, they need to see us modeling what prayer looks like. We'll talk more about that with Nancy Guthrie today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.
Thanks for joining us. So, we're going to talk about prayer, and we're going to talk about two things about prayer. We're going to talk about parents praying for their kids and about parents teaching their kids how to pray. So, which one of those two do you want to talk about first? Which do you think is the bigger issue for most parents? Teaching their kids how to pray or parents praying for their kids?
Wow. I think they go hand in hand. That's a big one, Bob. I don't think you can teach your kids how to pray. You're sidestepping the issue.
Yeah, she's good at that. I think you're right. No, I will grant you, I think you're right that they do go hand in hand. What's the bigger felt need for parents? How to teach your kids. How to teach your kids how to pray. I was going to say the opposite.
I was going to say we worry and we're so stressed about our kids, we forget we can pray. So, I'm telling you what, I'm right, Bob. I'm right on this one.
We're no help to you. Here's what we'll do. We'll throw it to our guest.
Good idea. And let her decide where we should start with this. Nancy Guthrie joins us on Family Life Today. Nancy, welcome back.
Oh, my goodness. I'm so thrilled to get to be with you guys today and with your listeners. It's been a while since you've been on Family Life Today and when you were here before we talked about hope and Gabe and about the challenge you and your husband faced with two kids who did not live long.
That's right. And I just didn't want to let this pass without you knowing that we still think about you guys and still think about hope and still think about Gabe. You know, I guess I would just say, as we're going to talk about prayer today, I think those experiences, you know, when I gave birth to a daughter and found out that she was going to live less than six months and I began to ask myself, how do you pray for a child who's going to die? And maybe that was beginning ground floor of trying to figure out what does it look like to be a parent who prays in this world where God is sovereign and we would like to be.
So maybe that was actually a good place to start. That's inspiring in and of itself because many people would have a hard time even beginning to pray at that point. And I think that's really good because we're not praying that much. I mean, I think initially we did, but then there was just there were so many questions and honestly just hardly knowing where to begin praying. He prays for us with this groaning. And so that was really good news to me in our online archive at familylifetoday.com.
If listeners want to listen back to that conversation, you can go and download these these conversations at familylifetoday.com with Nancy Guthrie and hear about those days with with hope and with Gabe. You have since written on prayer. You've written a one year Bible devotional for parents to pray for their kids and then wrote a book for kids on learning how to pray. Where do we start? Do we start with parents praying for their kids or do we start with teaching our kids how to pray? Well, let's start younger and go older. OK, so I think we should start with what every child should know about prayer.
Yeah. I think all of us who have children, grandchildren, we want our kids to know how to pray. We want them to pray. But if you think about it, you know, what is the way we typically teach our children to pray? I mean, most kids, when they pray, I think one thing dominates their prayers.
Thank yous. Yes. And telling God what we want. And those are good things. I mean, those are a big part of prayer. Aren't we so glad that we have a God who's so worthy of thanks to thank him and that he is our loving father that we can approach him and tell him what we need. But I think that's pretty limited vocabulary for prayer. And so that's one reason I put together this book, Whatever a Child Should Know About Prayer, because I want to expand children's vocabulary, children's focus, children's expectations and children's experience of prayer. Don't you think most kids have that limited vocabulary because all they've ever heard is mom and dad?
Well, I think you're stealing my points. Yes, exactly. I mean, if you think about it, you know, when do they hear us pray? Usually before meal.
I mean, I would imagine a lot of homes. That's the only time. Right. Maybe bedtime. Maybe bedtime.
Right. That they hear their parents pray. And it might not even be an authentic prayer. It might be a read or memorized.
It might be a read by rote prayer. I mean, I can think of a lot of my experiences in my family that I mean, I know exactly what's coming because it's what's always said. Did you have a common table prayer when you were growing up?
My mom did. Yeah. What was it?
It's funny. I'm trying to remember, but it was come, Lord Jesus, be our guest and let this food to us be blessed. I remember that.
Look at that. I can remember that over 50 years. We used to have our kids and we still do this when they come home for a visit and we're having a meal together. We have one we sang, so we would sing for health and strength and daily food. We praise thy name, O Lord. Amen. Sometimes we'd sing dig in instead of Amen.
Yeah. So there are those simple rote prayers or the bedtime prayers that you get. Bless us, O Lord, for these gifts which we are about to receive in thy bounty through Christ the Lord. Amen. That almost become perfunctory. And when that's what you're modeling in prayer.
Yeah. What are you teaching kids about prayer? Well, I think it takes away from it a genuine conversation with a real person who is God Himself.
Right. And so, yeah, as parents, we want to model a genuine conversation about things that matter. You know, one thing I write in the book, what do we talk to God about? We talk to Him, God, about the things that matter to us and the things that matter to Him. And that means that we have to be people who are in God's word.
We have to be in scripture, too, because that's going to inform how we pray. But that's a genuine conversation. I mean, you know, I come here and I meet you guys and I talk, what are we talking about? We talk about the things that matter to us and talk about the things that matter to you because that's relationship. That's a genuine conversation. That's what we want prayer to be. And Nancy, this book is beautiful and it's beautifully illustrated as well.
Well, OK, this is the behind the scenes for you. So when 10 of those publishing, which is a UK publisher, they came to me and they actually asked me to write this book. They had done a previous book called Everything a Child Should Know About God. They had taken a text written by Kenneth Taylor, who wrote the Living Bible.
And he had written a book for Tindale many, many years ago called Everything a Child Should Know About God. And they'd gotten this artist to do the artwork for it. And they put out this book and it was so popular. It was selling like hotcakes.
And so they wanted to do more. And so he came to me, we write one on prayer. And I was like, if this gouge any break will do the art because it's the cutest art I have ever seen.
I'm going to buy these for our grandkids, but I'm going to read one of them. And it's beautifully illustrated. God hears us when we pray. And then it says, God can hear us when we say our prayers out loud or when we talk to him from our hearts.
If we say them out loud or whisper them, it might help us to keep our minds on what we want to say to him. God has promised to hear the prayers of all people who belong to him. And then you have Psalm 116 one. I love the Lord because he hears my voice and my prayer for mercy. And then there's a prayer.
I can pray. I love you, Lord, because you listen to my prayers. That alone for kids to understand God hears us. He listens to us and then scripture to go along with that. I love pouring this truth of gold into kids hearts and they'll want to read it.
It's so good. This is 141 pages. Yeah, it's not a short little book. This is not bedtime story, although you can take two pages. Basically, every two pages is a new thought, right?
Yeah. I mean, I know a lot of people who say, you know, they take either a section a night, depending on how old the child is, or just one page. And I've tried to make the pages create the opportunity for interaction between, you know, adult and child who's reading it. So that it can lead to actual prayer. As you mentioned there, it says, I can pray. And so I'm trying to give them some words to pray. Or sometimes it's a question you could ask and discuss with the child. So it becomes, yeah, not just reading a story, but a conversation about this important thing called prayer. Here's what's really amazing about this. I mean, as I look at each couple pages, it's stuff adults need to learn.
This isn't just five year olds. I would love people in my congregation to know that. I think that was part of the idea.
It's your secret plan. Well, it's certainly what I have heard over and over again, which I have to say does thrill me, you know, that I hear from adults who are reading. Maybe they got it for their kids because of the cute art and they do want their kids to pray, but they're like, I'm learning some things as I read this.
And that makes me really happy. Are you a natural prayer? Oh, I was afraid you were going to ask this when we talked about prayer. Now we're going to expose the reality of your shallow spirituality? Yes. Yes. I think my, one of my most common prayers is, Lord, forgive me for my prayerlessness.
Oh, wow. Because, yeah, I mean, it's a lot easier to talk about prayer than to pray. I think actually I'm becoming better at prayer, but I think it is a lifetime pursuit. I want prayer to be more a part of my waking up rather than scrolling through my phone. I want prayer to be more a part of through my day, not just at mealtime. I want prayer to be the way I end the day, not with Netflix and, you know, not with so many other things that can be filled with, but with talking to that person that I would say to you is my most important relationship. What's interesting, you say that and yet you wrote this book. What prompted you to want to write this about prayer?
Yeah. Well, I think because I do see this need with kids to really be grounded in prayer that's real and not prayer that's rote. And I really wanted to use the opportunity to really mine through the Bible about what it says about prayer and not focus solely on the experience. So as you see in there, you know, I've got a section on the Psalms. I mean, the Psalms are incredible resource when it comes to prayer. These are divinely given words that are it's such a unique book in the Bible because they're divinely given words for us to sing or pray back to him back to God.
That's amazing. So I've got a section on, you know, how the Psalms help us to pray and shape how we pray a section on various people in the Bible and what they prayed for. And I think that's really significant for kids. You've got, you know, Solomon who prayed for wisdom and you've got David who prayed that God would make his heart clean after he sinned. I think maybe the most poignant to me is Paul. When Paul prays, he begs God three times to take this pain away of this thorn. And there I think we learn a very important lesson for us to talk to kids about God. And that is that sometimes God's answer to our prayer to take our pain away is that he says, my grace is sufficient.
My strength is made perfect in weakness. I had a man in our church come to us and say, I would like to buy a copy of this book for every family in our church and give it as a gift. May his tribe increase.
Well, and I think it was his burden to see not just kids learn the basics of prayer, but moms and dads find a way to incorporate this and to make it be a more vibrant part of what the family's structure is. You know, your confession, let's just be honest. We can ask around the table. No, let's not.
Let's not. We can go out to most Christian gatherings and we could say, how many of you would say in my spiritual life, the area where I, you know, I may be struggling in all kinds of areas, but the area where I've got it most together, my prayer life, I'm doing really well in that. You asked that question. I guarantee you, you may have two hands go up from people who, for whatever reason, are gifted, burdened. It's just a part of the makeup of who they are in prayer. They're prayer warriors, as we like to say. I think most of us would just say my prayer life is not what it ought to be, what I'd like for it to be.
That's the discipline. It's Mary and I were having this conversation recently and I just said, this is something that I do by faith. And she said, well, what do you mean you do it by faith? I said, prayer is is always an exercise of faith because you can't see who you're talking to. He doesn't talk back audibly to you. You are praying, believing somebody's there. Somebody's listening. Somebody cares.
This really matters. And this is not just an exercise in some kind of futility because God is sovereign, going to do whatever he's going to do anyway. So why bother to prayer?
I can come up with all of the reasons why prayer does not make rational sense. But the Bible tells us this is what God wants from us. And so I have to, by faith, say I'm going to respond in faith and do what God's called me to do. And I'm going to teach my kids the same thing. And can I go back to this, what I was talking about earlier when I said that mostly our kids know how to thank God for things and ask God for things.
And I think that can be our tendency, too. And I know that one thing I feel like helps me in regard to prayer and that I think the Bible teaches so clearly regarding prayer has to do with some of the other elements that should be in our prayer. And I think one of the ones that's missing so often is beginning with praise.
You know that my husband David and I host weekend retreats for couples who have lost children. And on the Sunday morning of those retreats, we go out to the back patio and we have a time of prayer and praise. And I lead people through not just a prayer free for all, but through a kind of a guided pathway of prayer.
And even doing this now over 10 years doing these retreats, this is helping me get better with prayer because I experience in those times how much more vibrant that time of prayer is by doing this. So we begin, I say, we're going to begin by offering prayers of praise and we see, Lord, I praise you. And I say this, I say, we're not yet thanking him for what he's done. We're praising him for who he is.
And it's really fascinating to me retreat to retreat how much us standing there as adults struggle with that differentiation. Thanksgiving for what he's done seems to come a lot more natural to us than praising him for who he is. Just being willing to land and marinate on his character and who he is and allow that to then just flow up in prayers of praise. But we discover when we do that, that's such a great foundation to then begin to talk to him because we're so clear on who it is we're talking to.
And I was wondering if you found that the reason, because I agree, I've seen the same thing even in my own life. But I wonder if people don't know his character, like if they're not in the word, they're not looking at revelation of who he is. I know what he's done and I can thank him for that in my life, but I get stalled.
Like, who is he really? And so I have a couple of words and I'm done. Which shows sort of the depth of our spiritual. And I think you're right that biblical literacy is a part of that. The more we know his word, we've got those words to pull on, that he is shepherd, that he is rescuer, that he is the righteous one, that he is Jehovah Rapha, the healer. I mean, so we pull those words from scripture and it helps us with that. So we do offer prayers of praise. We offer prayers of Thanksgiving. But maybe the sweetest time is when we move into prayers of confession. And so, you know, just to begin our prayer, Lord, I confess.
And honestly, that's when it gets the most real out there on the patio. But I think that might be the biggest thing missing also in our family prayer time and our prayer with our kids. And I guess I would just ask the question to those parents who are listening. Have your kids ever heard you confess a specific sin? And if they haven't, I mean, you know, you can read my book all you want, but I think all of us as parents know that our kids, they tend to follow our example more than what we tell them to do. And they're probably going to follow your example more than what you read to them, even out of a book. And so if we want our kids to have a relationship with God, that includes the joy that comes from experiencing forgiveness, followed by confessing a specific sin to God. Maybe they need to hear us confess a specific sin to God. Now, have you done that? Have your kids heard you? My big regret is one of my biggest regrets during my son's growing up years was not doing that more.
I think I didn't figure out until he was a young adult how much that void in my prayer presence in his life, I think, was harmful to me and to him. See, I thought I need to be the model and the example. That's exactly it.
He needs to see righteousness in me. Exactly. That's what keeps us from it. Right. But if I'm going to be the model and the example, I need to model for him and be an example for him of what you do when you fail. Exactly. And he needs to see me do it and hear me do it. So he knows how. And I, like you, it was like, oh, I didn't think about that till later. I think it was like, I got to predict my credibility.
Right. So I can't confess what I've done wrong here. But what I was robbing him of is actually seeing up close a parent who says, I have this sin and some of these, you know, ongoing sins. And what I robbed him from was hearing me pray, confess it as sin, name it as that, the accountability that comes in a family then from that. But then also praying and asking God for the power to forsake that sin and letting him see the gospel is not about perfect behavior. But instead, the gospel is about being able to confess my sin and experience not only his forgiveness, but the power to forsake that sin and then walk in that newness of life, walk out that repentance.
That would have been such a better example than some of the ways he did hear me. You know, as you say that, I go right to James five, thinking about what James told us to do with confession. Think about that as you're talking about sharing it with one another, because often we think confession is a private thing. It's just me and God. I don't want my son or daughter to know.
I don't even want my spouse to know. And as he says this, look at us. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. And I've thought this as a pastor, I've thought, OK, you can confess your sin to God and you think you're done.
Like, we're good now. Nobody's ever going to know about this. God and I. And yet when you never speak that out to a friend, somebody that loves you, what's going on, you may not be healed of that addiction because it's like, oh, we're good now, God and I.
And you know, you're going to go back to it because nobody knows. But the second you bring somebody else into it, whether it's a son or a spouse or a best friend, now I'm on the hook. Bob, I just told you I struggle with this. Bob's going to be like, dude, I'm going to hold you to that. There's some accountability. Let's see you get healed by God.
And it doesn't happen until it's public. That's where to go. Nancy, you've got six sections in the book, What Every Child Should Know About Prayer.
And I just want to walk through these. I think it gives parents an outline for how we teach our kids about prayer. First, God wants us to talk to him. Second, prayer is more than asking God for things. Third, God's people have always prayed. Fourth, the Psalms give us words to pray. Then fifth, Jesus teaches us to pray. And then the last section is, let's pray.
Here's how we can do this. I can see where a mom and a dad or a grandparent with a grandchild reading through these sections, you're learning yourself. You're teaching your kids. You are getting very practical about what the discipline of prayer can and should look like.
I would think kids going through this would come out the other end and it would be something maybe they're even more comfortable with than mom and dad are. Wouldn't that be great? Yeah. I've gotten actually some of the sweetest letters. I was speaking at a conference in the UK a couple of months ago. And this woman came up to me and she brought to me this handwritten letter by a six-year-old because she had told the woman, the lady who wrote what every child should know about prayer is going to be at this conference. And so she said, can I write her a letter?
And she sent me this letter and, you know, she was just kind of saying back to me some of the things she's learned in the book. And I've got to tell you, that really warms my heart that it's not just reading a book, but I think about if you can learn to pray as a child and you know you've got a heavenly father who hears your prayers and you can tell him how you feel and what you need and you can tell him what you've done. And that becomes a habit in a lifetime.
I think about how that changes the teen years and the young adult years and all the years. And I think for me, I didn't grow up in the church, so I had no modeling whatsoever. But I knew that I had a relationship with Jesus and probably out of my youth and not knowing much, I got into this habit of praying out loud with my kids all the time in the car from the time they were babies. And because I knew it was a relationship, I was very honest with God saying, God, I'm so mad at you today or God, I need you today. And there was a desperateness in my prayer, and I didn't make them listen, but I don't know why I even prayed out loud all the time with them. And later, as they've gotten older, I think they've told me, like, I learned how to have a relationship with Jesus, watching your conversations and listening to your conversations. Well, I just want to let listeners know, if you're a parent or a grandparent, this is one of the privileges we have to help guide our children and our grandchildren in this discipline of learning to talk to God. And, Nancy, your book, What Every Child Should Know About Prayer, is a great book for parents or grandparents to take their kids through and to help them think about, help them learn about how we communicate with God, the invitation he's given us to build a relationship with him through prayer. We've got copies of the book, What Every Child Should Know About Prayer.
Again, this is a book for you to read with your kids or to your kids, depending on what age they are. You can go to familylifetoday.com for more information about Nancy's book, or you can call to order at 1-800-FL-TODAY. In addition, Nancy's got a one-year prayer guide for parents called Praying Through the Bible for Your Kids, and this is not with your kids, this is for your kids, but we've got that book in our Family Life Today Resource Center as well.
So parents may want to get both the book to read to their kids and the book that they can use themselves as a prayer guide that we're going to talk about more this week. Again, go to familylifetoday.com for information on these resources or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to order. The website, once again, is familylifetoday.com, and our number is 1-800-358-6329.
That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Now, we are excited here at Family Life about the month of May. We've had some friends of the ministry who recognize that for ministries like Family Life, the summer months can be challenging. We often will see a dip in donations to this ministry during the summer, and so these friends came along and said, let's give you guys a boost, a little bit of a head start as you head into summer. And so they have agreed during the month of May that they're going to match every donation we receive this month dollar for dollar up to a total of $250,000. That is an incredible offer on their part, and we want to do whatever we can to take full advantage of it. So we're coming to you and asking, would you consider today making a generous donation to support this ministry, knowing that your donation is going to be matched dollar for dollar up to that total of $250,000?
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We're going to move from talking about teaching our kids how to pray to how we can pray more effectively, more deeply, more regularly for our children no matter what age they are. Nancy Guthrie will be back with us. I hope you can be back with us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, got some extra help from Bruce Goff and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you tomorrow for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.
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