I've had the privilege this year to help out with various ages of our student ministry at our church. It all started last year on our mission trip to Mexico when I felt God was calling me back to minister or at least be a role model for these kids I had taught Sunday school to years ago who are now all high schoolers and a few of them are graduating this year. So I've been helping out with our senior high youth group on Sunday nights and on Wednesdays I've been helping herd cats....I mean work with a group of middle schoolers. Though I'm not sure which is harder to keep on track the kids or my co-leader. He will claim it the opposite way that I'm the problem but we all know the truth. But the curve ball came when I agreed to help my wife teach Sunday school with my daughter's class of preschoolers. I figured it couldn't be that bad I already run the city's youth soccer program in the winter and summer for 3-5 yr olds so it couldn't be that hard...right?
Recently in all these groups we've touched on the topic of prayer. In high school youth group we watched the Francis Chan Basic DVD series and one of the weeks focused on prayer but more importantly on our prayer life. And despite his freakishly creepy large hands he had some great insight. I think we have come to take The Lord's Prayer for granted. I know I sure did growing up Catholic and hearing it as the rosary was prayed, saying it every week in church (well every week we were there) and before every football game. Though I would always mumble through the last part because we never learned the For thine is the kingdom,The power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen. As a congregation we recently switched from forgive us our trespasses to forgive us our sins. Which for me when I read this translation years ago it was one of the times I really got smacked upside the head by God and it made me take a closer look and really focus on what I was saying and made me realize in order to be forgiven myself I had to forgive others with no conditions attached. But Chan's focus was that he really wanted us to redirect our prayers to those very things that Jesus himself would have prayed for instead of some of the superficial things we tend to quickly throw into a prayer.
Now most would think that preschoolers would should have claimed the cat herding award but they actually have better attention spans and less distractions in their life than middle schoolers these days. A while back we had everyone write down a prayer request and despite our attempt at seriousness one of the boys wrote down that he wanted Black Ops 2 and to prove a point to him Brandon (my co-leader) said fine you're gonna get your game and sure enough he did. But we try to make them realize that they should be in constant prayer because their lives are reflection of their beliefs and they should pray about every decision they make. But we also remind them that if they still are questioning something to contact us because between the 2 of us we've done some pretty stupid stuff and we'll help them through the matter prayerfully.
But the kids who tend to teach me the most with their knowledge and understanding are the group of preschoolers. This past week was no exception when we talked about prayer and when and how we can pray. We let them know it doesn't have to be fancy and that you just have to talk to God. But what's even better is when they talk outside of class about the things we talked about. Here's a little example of a conversation between my wife and daughter this morning. To set the stage they were having breakfast with Kutless playing: so I sing in her ear, "you could be, you could be a hero". She smiles and says "I wanna be a hero". I tell her all she has to do to be a hero is tell people about Jesus. She says "I already do dat. I say Do you know Jesus? Well, you should pray about Him because Jesus is alive. He loves you." She's only 4 (she will tell you 4 1/2...duh) and she gets it.
What finally made me say ok ok I'll blog is that I've been seeing a lot of and have been hearing this song quite often. It's called Pray and it's by Sanctus Real. Just listen the lyrics and I'm sure you can picture yourself saying these same words.
But the kids who tend to teach me the most with their knowledge and understanding are the group of preschoolers. This past week was no exception when we talked about prayer and when and how we can pray. We let them know it doesn't have to be fancy and that you just have to talk to God. But what's even better is when they talk outside of class about the things we talked about. Here's a little example of a conversation between my wife and daughter this morning. To set the stage they were having breakfast with Kutless playing: so I sing in her ear, "you could be, you could be a hero". She smiles and says "I wanna be a hero". I tell her all she has to do to be a hero is tell people about Jesus. She says "I already do dat. I say Do you know Jesus? Well, you should pray about Him because Jesus is alive. He loves you." She's only 4 (she will tell you 4 1/2...duh) and she gets it.
What finally made me say ok ok I'll blog is that I've been seeing a lot of and have been hearing this song quite often. It's called Pray and it's by Sanctus Real. Just listen the lyrics and I'm sure you can picture yourself saying these same words.
Sorry when this was in my head it seemed so much more epic than what I just read .
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