In talking with many people, children included, I like to ask what people do for prayer.  I’m not asking because I am grading or judging how people spend their time in prayer.  I am truly interested in the different times, ways, and places that people find most fulfilling in their prayer life.  Many times people stutter and stammer and then come up with some answer that they think I want to hear.  In reality, we all just need to be real!  God wants to talk with us!  He wants us to have a relationship with Him!

I tell children all of the time, if you are friends with someone (in a relationship), do you talk to them?  Do you listen to them?  Do you have conversation?  Do you spend time with them?  The answer is always yes!  How many of us take time each day to spend time with God?  And when do we do it?  Do we give God our best time, or is He an after thought that we realize at the end of the day?

And, let’s talk about the monkeys in our brains when we are praying!  We need to quiet ourselves so that we can give God all of us during the time that we are talking.  And listening!!!  There are many time during the day that I am faced with a situation and I will just stop and pray.  Not in the middle of the street, but safely.  Do you find yourself praying all day long?  Just little prays, almost like a reassurance that He is still with me, listening, guiding, and loving.  Prayer is sooooo important in growing our relationship with God!  And we get better at it when we practice!

No one said prayer can’t be fun too!  Find all different ways to pray.  I think that God probably doesn’t care how we pray, it’s more the fact that we do pray.  Keep talking and listening!  God is the greatest friend you will ever have!

Try this –

This is a really colorful way to pray for people and situations where you’d like to see God’s power breaking through. Visual pray-ers will love it!

You will need: shaving foam, a tall glass, water, food coloring in two or three colors, small dishes, teaspoons or droppers.

Pour a couple of tablespoons of water into each small dish.  Color each dish of water with a different food coloring.  Don’t water the coloring down too much because the more intense the coloring the better!

Fill the glass half way with water and squirt shaving foam to make a ‘cloud’ in the glass above it (this will probably fill the other half of the glass).

Think of a person or situation you’d like to pray for and choose a color of water you’d like to use to represent that prayer. Ask God to help them and then use a teaspoon or dropper to pour a small amount of colored water on top of the shaving foam cloud.

The coloring will slowly seep down through the spaces between the foam and the glass, and ‘rain’ down into the water.  As this happens, imagine God’s power breaking through and changing that situation, just as the color is breaking through and changing the water.

Repeat with other colors as you pray more prayers.