Bring Heaven Here With Our Kids |
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In 2014, three-year-old Mateo Beltran went viral after arguing with his mother Linda about a cupcake. Negotiating like a seasoned veteran, Mateo — hands on hips for full effect — announced:
"Linda, Linda, honey. Listen to me. Listen to me."
Three going on thirty-seven. Parenting, as the old saying goes, is more caught than taught. Our kids mirror what they see, and that's a sobering thought, especially when it comes to something like prayer. Most of us crave a prayer life that's vibrant, nourishing, and consistent. What most of us actually have is just… life: busy, distracted, and scattered.
How can we offer our kids something better?
Maybe prayer, like everything else our children learn, begins with imitation. The solution, according to Jesus, might be simpler than you think. Praying Like Your Rabbi In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus taught His disciples to pray saying, This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. — Matthew 6:9-13 Apparently, Jesus wanted them (and us) to pray these particular words. But why?
In Jesus' day, it was common for a Jewish sage or rabbi to give disciples a set prayer, words that reflected his own life with God. The Lord's Prayer is no exception. Matthew places it at the very heart of the Sermon on the Mount, a biblical writer's way of saying, Don't miss this. Every line pulsates with meaning. It may be Scripture's most concentrated summary of who God is, why Jesus came, and what our role is here on earth. The Lord's Prayer wasn't a mindless mantra to be recited, it was the life Jesus embodied: feeding the hungry as the bread of life, forgiving enemies and friends who'd betrayed Him, and delivering people from evil and isolation through healings, exorcisms, and shared meals. For disciples, a rabbi's prayer was an invitation to a way of life: to receive it was to agree to live it. But there's another reason Jesus gave them a set prayer, a reason rooted in how every Jewish child first learned to talk with God. |
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In the Jewish world, prayer was something you caught before you understood. |
In the Jewish world, prayer was something you caught before you understood. |
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Praying Borrowed Words
In the Jewish world, prayer was something you caught before you understood.
You learned to pray the same way you learned to speak, by repeating the words of those who came before you. Jewish children grew up reciting the Psalms until the language of prayer lived inside them. Once those prayers were in their bones, they began to improvise, mixing and matching like a jazz musician.
You can see this in Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish. You'd think a man trapped in a fish would come up with something original. Instead, with his back against an intestinal wall, Jonah starts quoting the Psalms.1 What's more, there are essentially two kinds of psalms: lament and thanksgiving. Based on his circumstances, you'd expect Jonah to pray a lament. Instead, he offers a prayer of thanksgiving shaped more by God's faithfulness than his own fear. In the words of Eugene Peterson, "His prayer is kicked off by his plight, but it is not reduced to it. His prayer took him into a world far larger than his immediate experience."2
This is the wisdom of prayer as imitation. If our prayers are limited to what we know and feel, we'll never learn to pray beyond ourselves. Pastor and author Brian Zahnd puts it like this: "We pray the Psalms, not to express what we feel, but to learn to feel what they express."3
If imitation is the first step in formation, then teaching kids the Lord's Prayer isn't rote — it's revolutionary. By giving them these words, we're handing them an anchor strong enough to steady their world, and ours. Learning to Pray Together Each night when I tuck my nine-year-old daughter into bed, we pray together. So recently I told her, "There are seven lines in the Lord's Prayer and seven days in the week. Let's pray one line each night."
On the first night, we prayed Our Father. I explained that the first time God is called Father in the Bible is when He hears the cries of His enslaved children in Egypt and sends Moses to tell Pharaoh, "Let my son go, so he may worship me" (Exodus 4:23). "That means," I told her, "God is a loving Father who rescues and redeems His children in their time of need. Does that make sense?"
She nodded.
"Okay," I said. "I'm going to pray for you and ask that you'd know the Father's love, and that he would rescue you in your time of need, and then I'd like you pray the same for me. Deal?"
She agreed. So, I prayed for her, and she prayed for me. It was beautiful. (Side note, if you want to be undone in prayer, ask your kids to pray for you.)
With Thanksgiving around the corner, we'll be praying the line, "Give us this day our daily bread" with greater intentionality.
That line is the language of dependence and trust. It reminds us that everything we have is a gift from God: the food on our table, the roof over our heads, the people we love. Gratitude opens our eyes to how much we've been given. But notice that Jesus didn't say Give me my bread but Give us our bread. When we see how faithfully God meets our needs, we begin to see where others are experiencing lack, and realize we might be His way of providing for them.
So, when my daughter and I get to daily bread, I'll tell her, "I'm going to thank God for all the ways He's met your needs, and ask Him to give you eyes to see how you can do the same for others. I'll pray for you, and you pray for me. Sound good?"
Then I'll reach for a box of tissues as she schools me on why the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these. |
1. Jonah's prayer was composed of lines from Psalm 3:8, 5:7, 18:4-6, 30:3, 42:7, 69:2, 120:1, 139:7, and 142:3. 2. Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (Eerdmans, 1992), 102. 3. Brian Zahnd, Water to Wine: Some of My Story (Spello Press, 2016), 78. Written for Devotionals Daily by Brad Gray and Brad Nelson, authors of Bringing Heaven Here. * |
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Do you pray with your children? Teaching kids to pray from the Bible can give them language for a rich and intimate prayer life with God! ~ Devotionals Daily |
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How The Lord's Prayer Can Change Your Life and Our World |
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The Lord's Prayer is the most iconic and widely spoken prayer in human history. It's not only a sacred prayer, but the very essence of the Bible's message—showing us who God is, why Jesus came, and how we fit into the unfolding story of God's redemption. Yet, familiarity often dulls the power of this profound prayer, leaving its deep meaning untapped and unlived. Every single phrase of the Lord's Prayer is loaded with revolutionary significance for Jesus' original audience—and for us. In this book, Brad Gray and Brad Nelson draw on decades of research to unpack these words in their original historical and cultural context, revealing the bold truths that can still shake our lives today. You'll discover how to: - partner with Jesus in bringing heaven here by aligning your daily actions and influence with His kingdom and will.
- gain wisdom to mend broken relationships and stand against the forces of evil.
- understand what Jesus' words meant to his original audience.
- gain confidence and peace from bearing God's name, goodness, and glory to the world.
- experience each moment as holy—as an opportunity for the life of heaven to be a part of your life now.
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Brad Gray and Brad Nelson |
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