Part 2 of How To Teach Your Kids To Pray.
Part 2 of How To Teach Your Kids To Pray.
We are approaching the Christmas holiday and there will be plenty of Christmas movies for us to watch with our families. movie, It's a Wonderful Life. Helps us understand a little bit about conversational prayer. George Bailey's in trouble. His family savings and loan business has been muddled up by his clumsy uncle and the greedy Mr. Potter. He says in his prayer, Dear Father in Heaven, I'm not a praying man, but if you're up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I'm at the end of my rope. Show me the way, God. He later becomes convinced as he's standing at the bridge. Looking into the river of Bedford Falls thinking if he takes his life, the life insurance policy can save and bail out the situation. And he says, please, God, let me live.
Ethan:Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture.
This is Raising Joyful Children in an Angry World. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. The last time we talked about the importance of teaching our children to pray, we got through the first I believe four petitions of the Lord's Prayer. What we are looking for is learning to have conversations with God, the way George Bailey did, in whatever way our children are capable of discussing it based on their age. was just visiting Italy over the Thanksgiving holiday. Got to take that trip. And I learned that 90 percent of the country identifies as Catholic. Yet according to ISAT, that's their statistics bureau, Just under 19%, like 18. 8, of the population regularly attends church. 36 percent attend on Christmas and Easter. And that's one of the best in Western Europe. 20 years ago, the numbers were the opposite. 36 percent were regular attenders and only 18 plus percent were going on Christmas and Easter, the poinsettia and lily crowd, as they're sometimes called. Crux Magazine said that the biggest reason was personal disagreement with the social positions of the church. It wasn't theological. It wasn't some, well, I don't like this interpretation of the Bible. Instead, it was an idolatrous loyalty to popular opinion and political views. over faithfulness to God and the scripture. Societal approval can become a poison. It actually begins to imprison people and we get swallowed up into this and we kind of get tricked. See, we, we say, well, I'm the captain of my ship and I'm going to do it my way, but it's actually the wind of the crowd, the current of the culture. That is steering the ship and filling the sail. Crux Magazine may have told us Why? And what happened? But I think the explanation of this helps identify why it's so important for prayer. Because when we stop talking to God in prayer, the crowd becomes the only voice in our life. The world becomes the only pieces of influence. And so, if we don't teach the discipline of prayer, how to have conversation and talking with God and listening to God, I'm not sure who will. Teaching children to pray. is how we build meaningful relationships with a God who is in heaven, whose kingdom we want to come. It is a consecrating of our family, a setting of our lives apart, so that we might live joyfully in his kingdom. I think part of our problem is this paradox that Eugene Peterson points out in his book, Run With the Horses. He says, our issue is, we want to be excellent. at whatever gifts and talents and callings that we have. And we really want this for our kids. I mean, we want them to get better and better at whatever their practice of sports or their music or getting great report cards and learning how to do things. But at the same time, we hope that they remain humble and dependent on God's wisdom. See, our society though is, is emphasizing on finding your best life right now. And it says, study yourself. It's that old, to thine self be true. Peterson says, whoa, wait a minute. Let's look at the book of Jeremiah, reminding us what God told Jeremiah. He said, before I formed you in your mother's womb, I knew you. God gives Jeremiah, later in this book, the vision for his life. He becomes a prophet because God puts his word. on his lips and his tongue. Peterson points out if we want our life to be excellent and certainly we could translate this or transfer this to wanting our kids life to become better and better. We're going to have to learn to converse with God so that we remain dependent and humble while becoming excellent. we started the last time with a number of the petitions, and we want to pick it up on the petition, Give us this day our daily bread. We need to see God in this petition, and our kids need to see God as the giver. Sometimes this is called supplication, but I'm afraid that word sort of means begging in our modern language. God's not up there holding backs or a stiff arming us and reluctantly wanting to give us something. He gave us his only begotten son. He gave us creation. He gave Abraham a nation. So our prayer life has to be dependent on our seeing God as the giver who wants to give us talents, who wants to give us courage. This can be seen in Psalm 145, verses 15 and 16. There was a denomination that particularly sings this before a fellowship luncheon. The eyes of all upon thee wait, their food and season thou dost give. Thy open hand does satisfy the wants of all. wE can teach our children that God is a giver just by taking them into our backyard or park and watching and observing squirrels finding acorns. They'll look up, look around, almost like they're praying, and then look down and find their acorn. Take it, hide it or eat it, then look up and repeat it. And so one of the things that we want to try and teach our children in this petition is, Lord, give me your gifts. Lord, my belly's hungry. Feed me the good food. As our children maybe get older, we may teach them, Lord, give me a vision for my life. Show me what I need each day to get better at what I'm called to do. Show me what my skills are. And then, as kids get older or in the middle school years, we might have more of a catechismical discussion around this petition. What does give us this day tell us about God? Well, it tells us that God is a giver. He gives everything. How do we know? Well, we see it in nature as well as the Bible. We see God constantly giving gifts in the Bible, but all we have to do is look at nature. The bees move pollen. The tree, the fruit trees give fruit. The trees take in the bad air and they give us our oxygen. The world is constantly giving and giving. The world that God created. Well, how then should we live? Well, we're going to receive gifts in order that we might give. If we're just a taker, taker, taker, we're going against the created world order. We're kind of walking against the universe. We're almost like setting ourselves up like the alchemist when he says that the universe conspires against us. No, no, God doesn't conspire against us. He's a giver, and we want to be givers. This is what St. Francis tells us in his prayer. It is in the giving that we receive. It's what Jesus means when he says, He who loses his life shall find it. We see this principle in the next petition. We then say, God, forgive us so that we can forgive others. It's not, I'm not going to be forgiven if I don't forgive other people and all this kind of stuff, but it's forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others. This simple phrase, however, is completely counter cultural to the no worries, no judgment. We have to understand the judgment. of our sin is necessary for us to be forgiven for healing to begin. And that then shows us how to give forgiveness to others. When we allow God to judge us and we then confess what he has judged and ask for his forgiveness, it's a freeing and empowering part of life. ouR tendency, though, is to blame others or defend our actions. I mean, I've played enough games with my kids and grandkids. We'll throw the football, it touches my finger, it then hits a light. Oh, you touched it! I see you through it. It's kind of a harmless joke, but this is how we operate. And so we've got to teach our kids, God, forgive me for the sins of this day. I was unkind to my sister. Help me be like you. Help me give forgiveness to my brother who was unkind to me. This is why I find prayerless marriage so sad. You won't be married for long before forgiveness is going to be required. In fact, forgiveness is going to be required for a family to remain joyous. And then we go to the next petition. It says, lead us not into temptation. Who you follow, what you listen to. what really takes you to many of your destinies. Years ago, back in the mid 90s, Tipper Gore was the wife of then Vice President Al Gore. And she was raising concerns about violence in music, and potentially labeling it. And she was Ripped, accused of censorship, and then evangelicals kind of got a little weird. They're like, Oh, there's this game demons and dragons, and they wanted to put warning labels on everything, and it became this oversimplification of evil and of temptation. we need to protect young Children, but it's not enough. We need to be in conversation with God and asking God to lead us. And so, the prayer should be something like, Lord, help me to follow you. Lead me to the places where I will not be tempted. Lord, send voices to speak truth into my life. Lead me away from temptation. Let me walk with people who walk with you so that together we can follow you away from the places that tempt us. And then last petition is to deliver us from evil., For a small child, it might be Jesus, deliver me from the bad guys. Keep the bad guys out of our kingdom. But we've, unfortunately, kind of lost this concept of evil. Bart Swain was talking about Halloween and how jack o lanterns and Charlie Brown, specials have become something really odd in our country. Almost a flirting with this death and serial killers and all sorts of strange stuff most people, you know, kind of like to play with this, he says. Because we have little chance of actually being killed. We see evil as some consequence of bad societal arrangement or underfunded education. And so we play, wouldn't it be fun if we could pretend that there was somebody trying to kill us. This isn't something that's healthy for us. We need to actually understand that evil exists. And we need to teach our children to ask God to deliver us from it. I think this recent war in the Middle East and the evil that took place by a particular side of this against innocent women and children has allowed us to see that evil is still around evil just finds a new address and we have to go to God in prayer and ask him to deliver us from it and to ask him to deliver His kingdom from any attacks of evil. And then lastly, we're going to, to come to the conclusion in this prayer. The way we began. Yours is the power and the glory. In the end, we commit ourselves that it is God's kingdom, not mine. It is God's glory that I'm seeking, not mine. Teaching your children to pray is not easy. Children want to worship. As they're young, children want to sing songs. Children want to learn things. But as they get older, this becomes difficult. It's difficult in our own practice and in our own life. It's not something that they want to do. Oh, my kids just aren't religious or my kids just aren't into that Bible stuff. But it's, it's just not an option. We have maintain the practice. It can be simple. It doesn't have to be fluffy, big theological words. It can be something as simple as George Bailey's prayer. Lord, hear me. Show me the way. me the way. 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.