There is a growing number of parents that are sending young children to be immersed in foreign language, as early as three. Now there are many benefits to being able to communicate in the words and expressions of another land, tribe, or nation. But for families in the kingdom of heaven, there is a language immersion that is most important. How to talk with God in the practice..
Ethan:Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture.
Welcome to Raising Joyful Children in an Angry World, I'm your host, Paul Osborne. I attended, not long ago, what I would call a secular wedding. The ceremony did not contain Bible reading, no blessing of the rings. No mention of St. Paul's description of love during the ceremony. There was no tying of knots or putting a glass and a towel and stepping on it. The vows, self written by the bride and groom. The wedding leader was a friend with online credentials. And I thought, well, if you're not a believer, I guess this is what you do. But it felt odd, even sad, that two people Entering the biggest event of their life? No prayer? No request to God to bless the couple and their marriage? But this is the world you and I live in. And this is what the technocratic world has brought us. The Christian family has to come to terms with the fact that we live in a growing, secular, and godless society. We dwell among a large portion of people who have a zero prayer life. The evidence of a prayerless nation is everywhere. The culture will celebrate kids meeting some famous athlete or some actress or Disney star. And that can be fun. Talking to God is almost something you never hear about. And sadly, America now contains a small but vocal group of prayer critics, people who condemn prayer when it's offered in times of crisis, when people will say you're on our hearts and in our prayers. Oh, they condemn that. Teaching our children to pray has never been more important. It's interesting, the one thing the disciples asked Jesus to teach them was how to pray. We rarely ask people to teach us something as adults, but it's something. that the childlike faith that Jesus demands happened when they said, Master, teach us to pray like John did for his disciples. Now our Christian prayer life is a habit that is vulnerable to procrastination and like foreign language skills, it tends to fade if we don't practice it. Most of us do not have a habit of prayer that we aspire to. We find ourselves having to recommit and renew prayer life. It slips from us. We don't get into our prayer closet. But none of this should prevent us from teaching our kids how to pray. The Lord taught us to pray by giving what is called the Lord's Prayer. It's in every Christian denomination. And the fathers of our faith used this prayer not only for something to be memorized, but as a teaching tool for learning to pray. Martin Luther was asked by his barber the same question, Dr. Luther, will you teach me how to pray? And he wrote him a paper called A Simple Way to Pray. You can listen to it on the internet. Go to a simple way to pray by Luther and Luther's words. Luther used the Lord's prayer as the model for teaching his barber how to pray. By giving each petition and then writing in his own words or writing words that could be used. The goal is to point the heart, the heart of your children to God. C. S. Lewis encouraged parents to teach kids to talk to God about what's on your heart and not make it a duty but to see it as a gift. J. C. Ryle in his book tells us that our kids need to learn that God wants to hear from them and that they should boldly ask things of him because it is God's desire To give sometimes I see kids in church and they have sort of a superhero understanding of God they carry around these superhero figures. And while God is beyond and above certainly any superhero concept, we can even leverage a piece of that in the understanding of prayer life. Now there are eight petitions in the Lord's Prayer. The idea is to use them to help the framework of what to pray. And depending on the age of your children, what words you use behind them, is really kind of depending on how old they are, anyway, let's start. I want to start with a few of these petitions. I want to go through some of them. And then, maybe make some other suggestions. Today, just the first four petitions. Our Father who art in heaven. Might be something like, Dear Lord, thank you for being my Father who's in heaven. Thank you that you invite me to ask anything, and to trust you, that you will answer what is best for me, as my Father in the kingdom of heaven. And thank you that as my Father in heaven, my Daddy, you know my name, and you hear. My prayers. Second petition. Hallowed be thy name. Dear God, your name is holy. It's clean. Teach me to be respectful of your name. To live in your kingdom with your name in my heart and in my mind. And Father, teach me to know your name and to respect it and help me to make sure That my name doesn't forget that your name is holy. A third petition. Thy kingdom come. Lord, let me see your kingdom. Let your kingdom shine in me. Let your kingdom come into my life. God, help us set up your banners and, and celebrate and shout and wave our flags to have your kingdom come. Help me to understand how to celebrate and cheer on your kingdom coming into my life. The fourth petition, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God, let me celebrate with all of heaven, all the saints, all the people on your team that your will is going to be done. Lord, thank you that We're on your team. Thank you, God, that we're on your side, here where I live and in my life. Lord, I want your will that's up in heaven to happen right here. Now this may be something to pray itself before the big game, big test, or that trip that you're going on. God, we pray that your will would be done tomorrow. As we, as we play that soccer game, as we have our recital. God, we pray that your will would be done, that you and all of heaven would be with us tomorrow and that your will would be done in a small part of your glorious kingdom. God, bless our soccer game tomorrow. God, your will be done on all the kids on my team and that my coach and everybody would see that your will is being done. And when the game is over. Let's remember that your will be done. Or maybe you're facing conflict, and this is where I might borrow from the superheroes. Lord, let your will be done. We ask God that you would hinder those who would do us and your kingdom evil. Lord, we ask that you would stop the will of the devil. Lord, we ask that you would thwart the will of the bad guys. God in heaven, we ask that you'd send your angels to watch over us tomorrow. Lord, help us walk on this earth, trusting your kingdom on earth will carry out what your kingdom in heaven has already willed. Lead me tomorrow and incline my heart to delight in your will. Holy Spirit, guide my heart, that I would see your will, and I would walk in it tomorrow, on earth, as you've, as you've declared it in heaven. You know, we, we kind of just have to make some short little conversational things. We might simplify them, we might make the language, I think one of the things that we have to do, a few things that I would suggest we do before we go next time into the other petitions. But here are some basic ideas that I think help. One is to to teach your children to pray for each other. And one way to do it is, let's say tomorrow is a day that one of the kids has a big game. And so the whole family... puts a hand on the shoulder of that member of the family and everybody asked God to bless the event, to be a part of the event, that their will would be done, and that God would watch over them, and that they would be, they would carry and shine God's light. And then the kids are like participating, even if they're not even participating verbally, They've got their hand on that member of the family. There's something about your family praying for you that is really powerful. And then the other thing I might suggest is to create a family prayer journal, not something big and complicated. It might just be something that, your family is aspiring to in 2024. And so you're saying, God, we need you to lead us in this particular area and you post it. And it can't be some Santa Claus thing that parents kind of manipulate and control. It has to be something that you bring to God and you're counting on God to do. I also would encourage you, one of the easy ways is to ask the kids to pray for the people in your family or for their friends that are ill or that are traveling. Ask God to heal them. Ask God to protect them. Another way that we learn is to pray a favorite Bible verse. The Psalms are a great place to learn to pray the Scriptures. And we can go in and open a few of those up and learn them. Life that is without prayer, I want to say, is not a place that you want your family to live in. I was just flicking back through Francis Schaeffer's book, How Shall We Then Live, back in 1976. In his book, he quotes a Harvard professor named Daniel Bell, who was writing and almost prophetically writing about what a post industrial society would look like. He was looking at what we were going to be he called it a technocracy. Long before we knew what it would look like and the things that would be happening, Bell was predicting. He said that they would create all the machines, they'd make them so complex, that they would have to be in charge because they were the only ones that knew how they worked. Kind of a 1984 sort of look at it. But he wrote that society would be Without a transcendent ethic with no moral roots. Schaeffer goes on I would call it the real Da Vinci code. He said even Leonardo Da Vinci recognized that humanity with just particular forms that was combined with math would only get us to mechanics. It would help us understand humanity, but it would not give us universal meaning to our life. Leonardo da Vinci is one of the humanist favorite people to quote, but they forget about the spiritual side. Perhaps it was best summed up, this sort of godless, secular, prayerless life, by his son Frankie, who is quoted in the book. He said humanistic society would change the 23rd Psalm. He said it would become, I am my shepherd. Rugged individualism. Individual rights that we see. Sheep are my shepherd. Oh, consensus. Oh, see, I'm, I'm with all these other people. They, they influence me. Then everything is my shepherd. Then you kind of proclaim yourself as your own king. It's not just you individually, but now you're over everything and then finally... Nothing is my shepherd, a dystopic fatalism. You ever wonder why dystopic novels and movies like Blade Runner and Hunger Games, Matrix are so popular. I remember talking to a young lady at a sales meeting. That was her favorite thing. And I was like, I don't understand why it's such a negative outlook. And it really was unexplainable. Prayer is the first discipline. It's the first step in teaching our kids that the Lord is my shepherd. He is the source of my freedom. He gives us our universal purpose, our ethics, our morals, and our strength. Don't be caught up in the criticisms of those who don't like the phrase, you're on our hearts and in our prayers. Don't shy away from the simple prayers of God is good. God is great. Let us thank him for our food. Learn to pray with your children. It will be an incredible source of strength and joy. And when you walk them down that aisle, you won't walk them into those of life's biggest events without having the time to ask God to bless it and to bless them. The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight for identity. Our king invites our kids to know who they are, what to believe, and where they belong. Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.