Welcome Your Children into Your Prayer Closet

By Becky Fischer

While Linette was driving home one night from church with her four-year-old daughter Ivy, an ambulance passed by.

“Let’s pray for whoever is in that ambulance,” Linette suggested. So they did. It seemed a rather uneventful prayer, followed by silence.

Then, all of a sudden, little Ivy began praying again. She prayed that the man in the ambulance would be made whole and that “he would come to know You, Lord, and that the sickness wouldn’t take him.” Ivy’s mother, not wanting to break in on the moment, began praying in the Spirit with her daughter. Then Ivy burst forth with even more requests: “Yes, and that the Chinese family would come to know You, Lord, the whole family, and that they would be free!” The preschooler then began rebuking the devil and calling him names—something the mom found surprising and humorous.

“You big stinky thing!” Ivy hollered. “And yes, you’re a god, but you’re not my God! You’re the god of this world, but I don’t serve you like some people do!” Mom wasn’t laughing anymore. They pulled into the family driveway, and the peace of God visibly settled upon little Ivy as her intercession ceased.

Historical Accounts of Praying Children

Praying children have changed the course of history over the centuries. According to reports from the Scottish revivals of the 1800s, children would weep loudly during church meetings, not wanting to leave. Eventually they would go home, straight to their closets, and pray through most of the night.¹

Some estimates are that half of Dwight L. Moody’s one million converts were children. He started his ministry as a Sunday school teacher, soon taking over an old brick building and packing it with street kids. After Moody’s revival meetings in England, reportedly, thousands of children would walk for miles to attend all-night prayer meetings that they initiated and led themselves. Children become passionate pray-ers when they are taken seriously and taught how to pray. In our kids and family conferences, it is common for boys and girls, ages four and older, to spend an hour or more in deep prayer at the end of our services. Children quickly commit to praying over very adult issues like abortion, various types of abuse, the salvation of the lost, government, the nations, and more. Their natural compassion and sensitivity makes them the perfect candidates to learn to pray.

In the Prayer Closet with Ken and Barbie

I asked Linette, an intercessor herself, how little Ivy started her prayer life. Linette told me that when Ivy was a baby, instead of finding a babysitter, Linette simply took her daughter into the “prayer closet” with her. As Ivy got older and began to talk, Linette would pull the child into her prayers with questions like, “What is God saying to you, Ivy? What do you want to pray about?”

Linette also described playing with Ivy and her Ken and Barbie dolls. After they played for a little while, Linette would say, “OK, it’s time for them to pray now.” And mother and daughter would have a little Ken and Barbie prayer meeting. Compare this training experience to the ways some adults prioritize their prayer-closet times. Parents may take to heart this biblical teaching: “When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matt. 6:6).

Based on this verse, they shut out the noise and distraction of their children so they can get some quiet time.  But if we take our children into our prayer closets with us, we can mentor them in prayer.

It’s the Prayers

I once interviewed a young Christian man who was born and raised a Muslim. When Hazem was a teenager, he and his family lived in Palestine, where he met some Christians and converted to Christ. He lost everything and everyone in his family because of his commitment to Jesus.

“What is there about the way Muslim children are raised,” I asked him, “that makes them so passionate about Islam?”

“The prayers,” he replied. That stunned me. We see images of Muslim men bowing with faces to the ground in their mosques, but I never considered there might be little boys with them.

My friend Hazem told me that when you pray five times a day from the time you are old enough to walk and talk, it becomes a part of you. Even when he lived in the U.S. he would take his prayer mat to school with him, and at the appropriate times he would go somewhere private and say his prayers. It was expected. All the Muslim kids did it. In fact, if you didn’t do it, he said, you would be punished.  It seems their culture takes prayer very seriously.

What a comparison between that and our Christian families. I don’t know what the Muslim children are taught to pray, but I’m certain it’s not something as seemingly trite as “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” If we’re going to teach our children to memorize prayers, why not teach them something more scriptural?

Why Teach Children to Pray?

First, prayer is our primary connection with God. It’s the tool by which we build our relationship with Him. When children are not taught to pray serious prayers, they have no way of learning how to build upon that relationship. Then we are surprised when they become older and have not developed hearts for prayer. In fact, how often have you heard older children complain that prayer times are boring?

Often, after teaching about prayer in churches, I invite children and teens to come forward and pray. In a couple of instances, teenagers of Christian parents literally had to be told what to say in prayer. It stunned me! They had no language for prayer at all, no comfort level with it. Yet they obviously were eager to be involved in that moment of prayer.

Second, it’s in prayer that we experience God’s presence. We learn to hear His voice and learn to obey and follow Him. Some surveys report that many children raised in Christian churches say that, as far as they know, they have never felt God’s presence or heard His voice. Could this be, in part, because we have never taught our children to pray in ways that can impact their lives?

Pray for Me, Too!

By contrast, the most amazing thing to me is how God uses and responds to children’s imperfect, stumbling prayers when they are properly taught.

One of our Kids in Ministry leaders, who lives in Burundi, East Africa, was training leaders how to teach children to pray for healing of the sick. This was a concept they had never considered.  Very few had even been trained to do it themselves. The training took place in an open-sided hut, and highly curious village children surrounded the hut, watching everything the Wazungu (white person) did. Through an interpreter, the trainer called these children inside and taught them how to lay their hands on the adults with illnesses, leading them, phrase by phrase, in a healing prayer.  Everyone was surprised when healings began to take place.

Then they heard the loud voice of an old African man sitting next to the building on a tree stump. He had been watching and listening to everything the Wazungu did. The old man himself could not walk. He had to be helped from one spot to another and could not leave until someone came to get him. He was known as the town drunk, a womanizer, and a wife beater in his younger years. My coworker took the children with her to see what he wanted. Having heard what went on inside the hut, the old man asked her to have the children pray for him. So once again the leader went through the steps of healing prayer with the children.

She sent us a picture of them laying hands on the old man’s head. Apparently they began pushing so hard on him that he nearly fell off the stump.  But as the boys and girls repeated, word for word, what my coworker told them to pray, the man’s thigh began to quiver a bit. Then his lower leg began to shake. “Do something you have not been able to do,” she told him.

Slowly the old man stood to his feet. Then he began to walk. He walked until he was out of sight. They didn’t think he would come back. But after a while he returned, grinning. He was totally healed because of the prayers of children. The following Sunday he brought his whole family to the local church, and he gave his heart to the Lord.

Where Do We Begin?

Many times adults don’t know where to start in teaching children to pray. First, don’t treat them like babies. Take them seriously as little disciples of Christ. We make a mistake if we think they won’t understand what we are talking about. Simply explain big words such as intercession by using smaller ones, such as praying for someone else’s needs. Keep your teaching simple and reasonably short (less than 15 minutes). Whether at home or at church, don’t preach at the children. Just talk to them.

Second, remember that children learn through their five physical senses. So engage them accordingly. If you want to pray for the world, show them a large globe and print out pictures of children in other nations. Tell them in age-appropriate ways about the problems children face or the conditions they live in, and then invite the children to pray.

For instance, one time we taught children to pray for the street kids in Brazil. We asked one child to lay on the floor on her side on top of a map of Brazil. We covered her with newspapers and explained that this is all most street kids have for blankets on cold nights. The other children gathered around her, laid their hands on her, and began to pray for the homeless children of Brazil. This powerful sensory illustration brought tears and mature supplication. On another occasion, we were teaching children to love and pray for Israel. We filled the room with symbolic objects from that nation—prayer shawls, shofars, maps, even inexpensive kippah head coverings for them to wear. We printed several pages of Scriptures about Israel, and taught the children how to adapt those Scriptures into prayers.

The children prayed boldly, with passion and power, for the “apple of God’s eye” (Zech. 2:8). It was one of the most powerful prayer meetings—for adults or children—I have ever been in.

Start Today

If you start them young, stay consistent, and make it interesting, you can raise amazing little intercessors in your homes and churches. Then find ways to give children a role in your adult prayer meetings. Children don’t need to bring their computer games or coloring books and wait quietly in a corner. In small-group situations, when you’re praying for one another, invite the children to join you and lay hands on those being prayed for. Remember the power of visuals.
If we mentor the young ones, we may have the privilege of watching many, like little Ivy, shake the kingdom of darkness and see the light of God’s Kingdom flood in.

¹Harry Sprange, Children in Revival, 300 Years of God’s Work in Scotland, (Scotland, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2002).

BECKY FISCHER is founder and director of Kids in Ministry International. She is an author of books and curriculum and has trained thousands of children, teens, parents, and children’s workers in prayer and the power of God.

When God Shows Up

By Nancy Sutton

Disneyland and an outdoor cultural park in Kiev, Ukraine, may seem unlikely pivotal prayer places. But they’re places where God heard my children’s prayers and showed up powerfully.

Prayer became a frequent topic of discussion around our household after I agreed to be editor of PrayKids! magazine in 2000. About the time the magazine prepared to launch, my family took a vacation to Disneyland. The blazing sun drew us to the refreshing Splash Mountain water ride. Knowing the height requirements for the ride, I told my four-year-old daughter Joy that she was not quite tall enough, and she burst into tears.

My seven-year-old son David grabbed her arm and said, “Joy, pray!”  She prayed a simple but heartfelt prayer. “Dear God, please make me tall enough to go on the ride.”  David implored her to keep praying until we reached the ride.

I grew concerned that an unanswered prayer at Disneyland would scar Joy’s memories of the “happiest place on the earth” and, worse, scar her view of God and prayer. So I silently rehearsed various speeches I could give Joy about God’s love for her even though He did not answer her prayer the way she wanted it answered.  As we reached Splash Mountain’s height marker, Joy ran to stand beside it. Instantly David began cheering. Joy was exactly the height required! She immediately thanked God for making her grow—and I confessed to God my lack of faith.

I have no idea whether her shoes were taller, the sign was leaning, or if she literally grew in stature as she grew in faith that day. Her simple trust that God could make her grow has given her confidence as she has grown to take any request, no matter how big or small, to her heavenly Father.

A Precise Request and Miracle

Fast-forward to 2006 when David accompanied me on a trip to teach missionary children at a conference in Kiev. A few of us from the conference spent the afternoon walking around a cultural park quite a ways from the city. As evening approached our small group was tired, hungry, and cold. One of the adults remarked that we could be stranded for quite some time waiting for a bus back to the city.

Instantly David began praying. “God,” he said loudly, “please send a bus in 30.5 seconds.”

While we trudged through the forest toward the bus stop, glances from the other adults revealed their skepticism about such a request. But after years of being told God could do anything, David boldly asked God for a real miracle.

As we reached the bus shelter, he said, “Mom, turn the video camera on because I want to record this miracle.”

I did, and David loudly counted the seconds on his watch so they would be recorded.

At exactly 30.5 seconds a bus appeared on the horizon. It took a couple of minutes for the bus to be close enough so we could see the bus number—exactly the bus we needed!

David cheered, the other group members shook their heads in amused disbelief, and I thanked God that He chose to bless my son’s faith in such an amazing way. I witnessed both of my children experience the benefit of praying with a pure heart. They saw God show up—in two unlikely places!

As a parent, I pray that my children will stay close to God and not reject their faith when life shakes their beliefs. Through the years, I have also watched my children deal with difficult issues that did not receive dramatic or quick answers to their prayers. But our family focused on the myriad of times God answered our prayers. Even when the answers were not what we hoped, my children strengthened their prayer muscles. They know God is real and that He is involved in their lives.

As they venture into adulthood, I trust they will continue to pray—and that God will continue to show up in unique places!

NANCY SUTTON is a Bible textbook editor and writer for the Association of Christian Schools International. She was the editor of PrayKids for three years.

Train Up a Child

By Zoe Puerner, age 16

Praying over your children, even when they are in the womb, can impact their lives. My parents prayed over me constantly once they learned I was on the way. I have begun to see the results of those prayers. I don’t know where I would be or what my walk with the Lord would look like without them.

I have learned that my prayers matter to God. It is hard to talk to a God we can’t see, but be assured, He hears every word that comes from our mouths, and He delights in our prayers. Psalm 66:19–20 says, “God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer. Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me!”

God loves us! He smiles down on us, and He loves to talk with us. Prayer isn’t just requests. Prayer is a two-way conversation with our Maker, who sits on His throne in heaven. Prayer is a big deal to God because He wants to hear us and speak with us.

Prayer is a way of communicating our trust in God. When we live a life of prayer, it shows that we lean not upon our own understanding but on God’s.

When we step out of that heart attitude, we trust in our own strength. It often leads to wrong choices and hurt, for us and for others. God is a Father who does what is right for His children. He will lead us perfectly. He wants us to pray so that He can come in and take His place on the throne of our hearts. God is a gentleman, and He never forces us to surrender to Him. So when we pray and put our trust in Him, He is happy to guide us on the right path. These are some of the reasons why prayer is important to God.

Why should you, as a parent, teach your children to pray? I have been taught that when someone takes me before the throne of God, He won’t “let me in” based on the salvation of my parents. Luke 21:36 reads, “Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man” (nkjv). I have to have my own prayer life.

Children should be strong in the Lord, praying with an unshakable faith. But parents, it is up to you to train a generation to follow after Jesus. You have been charged with teaching them what it means to pray. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (nkjv). It is key in your children’s spiritual growth.

Place the tool of prayer in their hands and they will go far, with the Lord as their guide.