Spiritual Disciplines and the Psalms: Prayer - Praise, Thanksgiving, and Petition

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

      

 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lordyour God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

  I've tried to space these posts out to give you a chance to put some things into practice to make them habitual/cultural in your home. So far with prayer, we have focused on praise and thanksgiving. This week, we will add petition. I won't give you as long to practice this, because I think we all have a lot more practice in this area of prayer than any other.

   The reason I think it is important to order your prayer and to teach your children to order your prayers in giving God praise and thanksgiving, then petition, is that when our hearts are praising and thankful and see who God is and what He has done for us, our petitions will be more focused on God's will than what we want.

  I think a good way to implement petition is to divide it into two categories:

      Spiritual and physical

When Jesus prayed, He prayed for the spiritual and the physical. I don't know that there needs to be an order. I can see the benefit of praying for the spiritual first and then the physical, but I also think that praying for the spiritual second might be good, because then that's what was on our tongues and minds last.

 A good way to work on petition with your children is at bedtime. We divide our physical and spiritual again by asking God to help others first and then ourselves second. There is nothing that makes us more righteous or spiritual by doing this, but we are also trying to create a culture of selflessness in our home. Praying this way just gives us another opportunity to help our children think of others more than themselves.

 We ask our children (after they have first praised and thanked God) for one thing they would like to ask God to help someone else. Obviously, we do not want to limit our children, but we say one thing just to make things a little more simple in this stage of the day. This item is sometimes physical and sometimes spiritual. Our little 4 year old girl often prays "at" her brother during this time by asking God to help him obey. ....... the temptation to pray "at" people instead of God's will for them starts so early, doesn't it?! If your kids struggle with this (as mine do), it is OK to help them and give them ideas or words to say to guide them into better praying habits.

 After praying for someone else, we then as each of them if any of them have anything specific they want to ask God to help them with or maybe have some physical need. They usually have no trouble coming up with something. If they do, my husband and I typically steer them in a spiritual direction. We also use the opportunity then and throughout the day to remind the children that God always hears our prayers and delights to answer them. This, however, does not mean that we will always get what we "want" when we want it. God always provides for His children.

   A book I would highly recommend on prayer for your children helps go through the concept that God is God and will do what is right and best. This book has helped my two older children tremendously with prayer. In fact, they both often say in their prayers - "God, thank you for hearing our prayers and thank you that you are God and will answer and do what is right." This is such a hard concept to understand and believe, so even just helping get the right words into their hearts now will help so much. All of the books in this series are wonderful and deal with some difficult doctrines to explain to your children. Matthias Media is wonderful! Check them out! Grumpy Day

 

   Prayer of petition can also be used throughout the day when difficulties come up. We often stop and pray to ask God to help us feel better if we have fallen down or to help us share and love others more or to pray for a friend that we've heard about having a hard time. I do always try to include at the end - "thank you God for hearing and answering our prayers and thank you for always doing what is good, best, and right."

                                                               

 Reading

   If you would like some good examples of petition:

• Psalm 28
• Psalm 43
• Psalm 86
• read these for yourself this week and try to read one of them to your children as well (even as they play)

So to wrap it all up - continue with your discipline of the one minute of praise and one minute of thanksgiving. Continue asking your children for one thing to praise God for, thank God for, and ask Him for.  

Later this week, we will focus on confession and a few summary ideas and some songs or specific passages and resources that can be of further help to you before moving onto our next discipline.