Many grandparents are looking for simple tools to help them guide their grandchildren toward a personal relationship with God in Christ. One of the most powerful tools for doing that is prayer, but sometimes we try to make it too complicated.
Ernie Rosenberg knows that challenge all too well. Having devoted a great deal of his time cultivating the discipline of prayer, Ernie has agreed to share one way parents and grandparents can help a child learn important truths about who God is and how he views them as a person created in His image.
I hope you will find his article a helpful tool in this important spiritual discipline. Grandparents are often in a unique position to influence a child, and what better way to do that than to introduce them to their heavenly Father through prayer. Be sure to also check out Ernie’s web site: www.mychildsprayers.com
Do you remember bedtime with your children when they were young? If they were like mine, you probably found them sometimes resistant, sometimes playful, and sometimes contemplative. There were also those moments when they were eager to talk about more serious things…things that they might not understand, but were none-the-less important to them. Perhaps they had been hurt by a friend, or were grieving the passing of a pet. For me, bedtime was often a time when my children turned inward—a very, very special time. I regret that I did not do more to make it a significant time for the most special of friends—God, the Father. Perhaps, like me, you’d like to make it a more significant time with your grandchildren…
I often imagine what might have transpired if I had done more to encourage them to talk to God according to their knowledge of Him at that time in their life. What might have been different had I encouraged them to express all their feelings, whether joyful, serious, angry, or even bewildered? In short, what if they had grown to know God as a true friend—a very real, personal friend who hears and delights in their prayers? I’m not talking about God giving them everything they want, but that He lovingly and carefully hears their prayers.
There’s one more thing I sometimes imagine. What if my wife or I had copied these prayers down in a little book? Imagine, too, that the children were the illustrators.
What a book that would be! What a gift!
This is not something only for the imagination. We have the power to make it a reality now—with our own grandchildren. When our grandchildren are with us, we have a unique opportunity to put into practice the “when-they-lie-down” command of God in Deuteronomy 6, even if we didn’t do it well with our own children. And as we teach them to pray, why not begin keeping a record of those prayers?
Today sites like blurb.com make it so easy to reproduce a quality book for a modest cost. Think of the precious gift it would make for parents or even for a child to treasure for generations to come. What grandparent wouldn’t be blessed to receive their grandchild’s own book of prayers for a birthday or Christmas present? What relative or friend wouldn’t hold it as immeasurably precious?
There are yet more benefits to this simple bedtime practice of prayer.
For example, the child establishes early in life an intimate, very personal relationship with an enduring friend—the God of heaven and earth. This relationship is not mediated by anyone and thus the child has a real independence in an essential area of life. Should the relationship with God be disrupted at any time in life, their simple childhood prayers serve as a reminder of the purity and delight of that relationship that could serve as a tool to revive the heart. It becomes a testimony of your child’s beauty and understanding, as well as God’s love, which can then be a source of strength and joy throughout their entire life.
If the households of an entire congregation created these books, imagine the treasure house of delight and insight that would be produced for future generations.
In fact, suppose their prayers could be shared with untold others who could benefit as well. Well, they can.
Go to my website (www.mychildsprayers.com) and click on Prayer Share to upload your grandchild’s prayers for all to see. Your child’s wisdom and purity can be shared across the Internet. There’s no cost for this. You simply type in the prayer and give us permission to post it on the Prayer Share page. We’ll then index the prayer by topics (e.g. bedtimes, pets, family, etc.) and upload it back to the Prayer Share page. Click on an indexed word, and you and your child can read all the prayers related to that index.
Your child’s prayers can touch the hearts of so many. They can be a source of much needed goodness and child-like faith in our world. That’s something we can never get too much of.
Author‘s Bio
Ernie Rosenberg, co-founder of one of the early special education schools in the San Francisco Bay area, has two children and two grandchildren. Most of his professional work has been in education with a focus on children, including operating a home for teenagers with legal issues. He shifted his professional focus to the environmental area after realizing the impact it would have on his own children. Subsequently, Ernie produced environmental education software, which was distributed by Apple Computer, Inc. He has a Ph.D. degree in psychology, and has devoted several years to cultivating prayer as a primary spiritual practice.
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