If your kids wanted to learn to fly an airplane, who would you want as their teacher? You’d certainly prefer a flight instructor rather than a football coach. But if you were trying to increase their likelihood of scoring a touchdown, you’d choose the football coach instead of the pilot. What if you wanted to teach your kids about prayer? Who would be the best teacher? Imagine if they could learn from the teacher who knows more about talking to God than anyone else in history! Good news — they can! Your kids can learn about prayer from Jesus! Jesus is the perfect person to teach about talking to God because he IS God!
Jesus taught his friends about prayer, and even gave us a model prayer to learn from. I want to share a simple object lesson that uses the Lord’s Prayer to teach kids what Jesus taught about prayer. It’s simple! You’ll need your Bible and a gift bag/box containing a clock, a trophy/award, a map/globe, a dictionary, and a picture of someone you love. If you’d like pictures of these things to use instead, along with an entire lesson series to teach kids about prayer, you can download our free curriculum kit, “Teach Us to Pray!” It has six full lessons on the Lord’s Prayer for kids! Once you’ve got your supplies gathered, gather your kids too and you’re ready to get started!
Jesus Teaches Us to Pray
Imagine if you had the opportunity to learn about music from the greatest musician in the world. Imagine if you could have the best athlete in the world as your sports coach! You may not have these experts as your teachers, but you do have the greatest teacher of all time to teach you about prayer. Prayer is talking with God. That’s our Big Idea today. Anything I ask “What’s the Big Idea?” I want you to shout back, “I can talk with God!” We know how to talk with God because the greatest teacher of all time, Jesus, teaches us about prayer. Jesus is God! He’s the best person to teach us how to talk to God in prayer. Prayer is a wonderful gift from God, so I have a gift bag with items that will help us learn what Jesus taught about prayer.
(Pull the suggested items from the gift bag to use as visual aids while you read and teach from Matthew 6:5-9.)
CLOCK – Jesus taught us WHEN to pray! – I’m going to read some things Jesus taught about prayer. Listen closely and count how many times he said the words, “When you pray.” (Read Matthew 6:5-8.) Did Jesus say, “You should always pray at 3 p.m.?” or “You must pray at noon?” No. Jesus didn’t teach exact times of day when we should pray. Instead, he said the words, “When you pray,” three times. This helps us understand that we should pray and we can pray ANYTIME. You can talk to God anytime of the day or night! When will you talk with God today? What’s the Big Idea? I can talk with God!
TROPHY – Jesus taught us HOW to pray! – In Matthew 6:5, Jesus described someone who prayed like they were trying to win a prize for being the best at prayer. But prayer isn’t a contest. We shouldn’t pray to show off for other people or to try to impress God. We don’t have to worry about using lots of impressive fancy words. God wants us to talk to him with real words that come from our heart. What’s the Big Idea? I can talk with God!
MAP/GLOBE – Jesus taught us WHERE to pray! – Matthew 6:6 says God sees when we pray in secret. This doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to let others hear us pray. It means we don’t have to make a big show of it. God is always present everywhere. He can hear everyone praying everywhere in the world at the same time! You can talk with God ANYWHERE! Where are some places you can talk with God today? What’s the Big Idea? I can talk with God!
DICTIONARY – Jesus taught us WHAT to pray! – A dictionary has ALL the words in it from A to Z and it tells you what they all mean. In Matthew 6:7-8, Jesus says some people pray lots of pointless words without really thinking about what those words mean. God wants you to really mean what you say when you talk with him. You can talk with God about anything as long as you really mean the words you say. What will you pray about this week? What’s the Big Idea? I can talk with God! Jesus even gave us an example prayer to help us learn what we should pray. He said, (read Matthew 6:9-13). Jesus isn’t telling us exactly which words to say every time we pray. He’s helping us learn some things God wants us to talk with him about. We’ll be learning more about this model prayer from Jesus for several weeks.
PICTURE OF A LOVED ONE – Jesus taught us WHY to pray! – Do you like to talk with people you love? I want to talk with people I love because I have a relationship with them. Prayer is sort of like that. We talk with God because he loves us and we love him back. Jesus said, (read Matthew 6:9). We can call God our Father when we pray because we have a relationship with him. How can we have a relationship with God? We can only become God’s child by believing in Jesus to save us from sin. He died on the cross and came back to life to take the punishment we deserve for sin. When you trust in Jesus to rescue you from sin, he helps love for God grow in your heart so that you want to talk with him! If you’ve never believed in Jesus to become God’s child, I’d love to tell you more about that. If you’ve already believed in Jesus to become God’s child, you have a relationship with God. He is with you now and someday you will live with him in heaven forever. You can talk with your heavenly Father anytime, anywhere, about anything. What’s the Big Idea? I can talk with God!
After you’ve shared this object lesson, you can help the kids learn more about prayer by saying/reading the Lord’s Prayer together. Better yet, you can SING the Lord’s Prayer. I wrote a song a few years ago to help my kids memorize the Lord’s Prayer and it worked great for our family. I’d love to have your family or church use it too! Prayer is a marvelous gift and we have the greatest teacher in the world to help us, and our kids, learn how to talk with God. God bless you as you teach your kids to talk with him!
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