FAMILY: Dry Erase Prayer Board

One of the things that people seem to struggle with is teaching their children to pray. Many, many people know and pray the common table prayer, but many families may need some hints about how to start praying more freely.

Today at dinner I brought up a few prayer requests for my teenage step-children because we've got some health issues in the family and I want them to start (if they don't already) talking to God about them. That brought me to this great idea about the prayer board. We have a dry erase calendar in our kitchen. Why not have a dry erase prayer board? The whole family can add to it and at dinner every night, after praying the common table prayer, everyone can pick something off the board to pray for. Adults can go first and last to model how simple praying for specific things can be.

Be sure to encourage prayer that's not just wishful thinking or "genie" type wishes. God is not a genie to whom we ask for stuff off of a Christmas list. We want to tell God how much we love Him, have some sort of confession or admission of our sinfulness, and thank God for the great things He has done in our lives (everything good comes from God). Among many other things, we want to:

• thank God for His Son's great sacrifice.
• thank God for giving us faith.
• thank God fot every good thing.
• ask that we can handle difficulties at school or at work.
• ask that a friend can experience the peace of the Lord.
• ask for strength to do what God expects of us.
• admit that we don't deserve the good things He does for us.
• ask God that in Him we can have confidence.
• ask God to help us trust Him more.
• ask God to work in us to help others.
• ask God give us strength of faith.
• and many other examples.