Kids Praying for Our Church Family

The BIG IDEA for the 1st - 5th graders in Children's Church Sunday morning was "God wants us to rely on Him."  We looked at Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18 and 19.

With this as our lesson and several different prayers needs that directly impact the kids at TBC, the last part of the lesson was changed.  The focus was on praying the Bible for one another.  First, we talked about ways we rely on God.  Three of the specific ways mentioned were praying, reading the Bible, and being part of the church.

So we looked at a prayer in the Bible for a church.  It is the same prayer we looked at on May 28th in our combined class time.

Parents, read through Colossians 1:9 - 14, verse by verse, and ask your children what you can pray from each verse.  Read until the end.

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, 

• be filled with knowledge, wisdom, and understanding that the Spirit gives.  What does this mean?

so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in 

every good work, growing in the knowledge of God,

• so that you may honor God in the way you live
• that you would bear fruit
• that you would grow in the knowledge of God

being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 

• be strengthened
• have endurance and patience

and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.

• giving thanks to God 

For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son, he loves,

• thankful for what God has done for us through Jesus

in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

• thankful for redemption and forgiveness of sins.

The kids read through these verses in 3 small groups and talked about how we can pray for each other.

When people are hurting, we can pray that they would know we love them and that God loves them.  
We can also show hurting people the love of God by helping them because we know that God provided for our ultimate need in Jesus.

We can pray that in ways that only God knows that our church family will honor God as we go through hardships and help others go through hardships.

Here is a summary of a conversation from the children's church time.

Child #1:  Pray for me and my family; our kitten died.

Dave:  How can we pray for [this child and family]?

Child #2:  We can pray for [this family] to get a new cat so they can have some comfort.

Dave:  We can pray for a new pet, but even more than that, we can pray that [this family] and [this child] will grow in how they trust and hope in God.