Prayer Books
PRAYER BOOKS are great for both getting prayer subject matter and prayer language in front of your child, no matter what age your child may be. Plus, they are portable! PRAYER BOOKS can be used in corporate prayer settings as well as individual prayer times. They can also be customized for each child, so they are personal. Could they be just what you need to revolutionize your family prayer time? Read on and see.
What are Prayer Books?
When I say “book”, I’m talking about a three-pronged folder with sheet protectors. You could do it differently, but that’s how we roll at our house. When you open up the folder like a book, the prayer sheet goes on the left and the subject sheet goes on the right (for younger children at least. The order isn’t really relevant for older children.) You can pick any number of prayer subjects. We started with ten. Each of our children – from two years old and up – has a prayer book with ten prayer subjects in it and ten corresponding prayer sheets. I have one myself!
Why have a Prayer Book?
“I don’t know what to pray for!”
“Go get your Prayer Book.”
“I don’t know what to pray!”
“That’s okay. Go get your Prayer Book.”
If you’re doing a corporate family prayer time and you have a child prayer leading who needs a little encouragement when they step up to the plate (or mic), that prayer book in his hands is golden.
It brings confidence to the place of prayer, and therefore enjoyment.
The Deets:
For Younger Children – We put a picture prayer on the left side and a picture of what they are praying for on the right side. To help them take ownership of their own prayer books, I showed them all the choices of picture prayer pages and prayer subject pages and let them match the two together as they wished. Therefore, all of my littles’ prayer books look a bit different from each other.
*Actual footage of well-loved prayer books.
Ideas for prayer subjects: family members, family friends, pastors/children’s ministry teachers/leaders, your country, your city, your church, orphans, the homeless, the poor, widows, the sick, the president, Israel, schools, the lost/unsaved, refugees, children in foster care…
For Older Children – I have my older children create their own prayer books. They choose their prayer subjects, find a picture of them online, and come up with a Scripture and prayer points. This takes some time (a lot of work on the front end) but once a prayer book is done, it’s done! It’s fun to see their individual personalities come out in the way they organize their prayer pages and in the subjects they choose. It’s a joy to see the passion that God put in side of them have an outlet. Now they can take their prayer book even to a corporate prayer microphone outside the home and pray. They might be reading from a page, but it came from their heart. The more they pray it, the more their prayers start to expand.
We use these prayer books for quiet time. All of my children can go through their prayer books independently and pray individually for their subjects (although the younger children go through theirs much quicker!) I use my prayer book as my personal prayer list. We also have used the prayer books for our family prayer times. Each child gets a turn to be the prayer leader and they take their prayer book up to the microphone and use it to pray from.
Prayer books revolutionized our prayer times. Might they revolutionize yours as well?
