Enemies of Prayer

Destinee showing off her artistic talents.

Central Truth: There are many obstacles to prayer, and Satan is constantly at work trying to interfere with prayer life.

Memory Verse: "God within us will always conquer the world outside us." (I John 5:4)

This week wraps up a seven-part bible study on prayer with a discussion of how Satan throws many obstacles in our way to keep us from praying. It is important for us to pray daily and to not let life intrude on our time with God.

After our lesson, we played a game called a Bubble Puzzle, which is a game that encourages the children to learn how to look up bible scriptures. One of the next areas of concentration for the children's church is to have the children begin learning the books of the bible and how to look up scriptures.

"Power of Prayer" Bubble Puzzle

Finding God's Way

Central Truth: God's way can be found through prayer and reading the Word.

Memory Verse: "Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths." Psalms 25:4

In this week's lesson, the children learned how to find God's way, which is by reading God's word. I explained to them that the Bible works like a road map. When we are lost, we use a map to find our way, but we can not find our way if we do not use the map. The Bible is our map to God's will, but if we never read it, then we will never know what his will is.

We also did a fun demonstration using Alpha-Bits cereal. I poured some out in the middle of the table on a paper towel and spelled the word "box." I told the children that the cereal is fun because, not only can you make words, but you can eat them as well. The children spelled out words of their own and had a fun time, sharing and laughing at their choices. I told the children that the cereal and the Bible have something in common: the cereal is food for our physical bodies, and the Bible is food for our spiritual selves. We must feed our spiritual side by reading the Word of God. If we do not, then our spiritual selves will starve.

Persistence in Prayer

Memory verse: "Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you." Luke 11:9

Scriptures: Luke 11:1-13

In today's lesson, the kids learned to continually pray to God for our needs and for the people around us. We read in Luke 11 how Jesus taught his disciples to pray and the story of the neighbor who needed bread at midnight and kept knocking on the door until his neighbor got up and helped him. When we pray to God, we must not give up and keep praying. At the end of the lesson, we read about the comparison Jesus made to parents giving good things to their children much like God gives good blessing to his people.

For our activity, the children learned the importance of keeping a prayer journal. It is important to not leave anyone out when we pray and keeping a journal is a good way to keep up with who you are praying for as well as the answered prayers.

I made 10 prayer journals ahead of time because I knew it would take the children a long time to do it during class. I used construction paper for the outside and stapled four blank sheets on the inside. I gave the children construction paper, stencil, colored pencils, markers, and glue to decorate and personalize their prayer journal. Below is an example of one:

Pray in Jesus' Name

The second part of our prayer series discusses the importance of praying in the name of Jesus. By praying using the name of Jesus, the prayer is a recognition of his life, death, and resurrection, which is what has brought us back to God. Because of our belief in Jesus, we can pray and receive anything that God wants us to have, including all of the promises in the Bible.

Memory verse: "Jesus said, 'I am telling you the truth; the Father will give you anything you ask Him for in My name'." John 16:23

Our lesson began with a story called "Aisha's Letter," which is a story of an old woman's faith in a letter that helped her to gain the access she needed to heal her blindness, which is a parallel to how we have faith that in the name of Jesus we can have our prayers heard.

After the story of Aisha's letter, I gave the children color paper, markers, envelopes, and colored pencils. We wrote out our memory verse across the top of the page. Beneath the memory verse, we wrote "In the name of Jesus, I pray that..." and we wrote what we desired of the Lord. We decorated our pages and folded them and stuffed them into an envelope with our name (I decorated mine), and then we sealed our prayers inside the envelope. We agreed that once a day we will pray in the name of Jesus with our envelope - this is to get the children practicing prayer and developing a prayer life.

At the end of the church service when Pastor Horne asked for any prayer requests, we told the congregation about our prayer envelopes, and we had the church pray with the children and their envelopes. It was a moving event, and one I believe that instilled the importance of prayer.

Why Pray?

From "Prayer" and can be found at bibletoday4kids.com

This week, the children began a seven-part lesson on prayer, using a lesson plan developed by Margaret Law and can be downloaded for free from www.bibletoday4kids.com. Part one of "Prayer" discusses why we should pray - because prayer is "our lifeline to God." The children learned that they should pray at all times and talk with God as if talking to a friend. We pray to develop a relationship with the Father. Prayer is something that should be a big part of a Christian's life.

Memory Verse: "Pray at all times." (I Thessalonians 5:17)

I also introduced a fun app on the iPad called Jesus Loves Me by Listener Kids. It is a fun app mainly for smaller children, but my ten-year-olds had fun with the recording section of the app where they sang "Jesus Loves Me" to several different music mixes, including dance, hip-hop, and video game. There are more games and songs that are not free ($2.99), but I think it is worth the price. Below you will find Listener Kids's video on YouTube.



The kids did their own recording of "Jesus Loves Me" to the dance mix and can be found on the Tabernacle of Praise website. Unfortunately, Blogger does not have a way to share audio.