Teaching Children to Pray: Adoration

Adoration:  The simple act of showing you adore someone or something; Giving someone your utmost respect and admiration.

Adoration is Essential to Christianity

One of the essentials of Christianity is putting others ahead of themselves.  First we are to love God.  Then we are to love others.  We put ourselves third.  

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him,“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”  Matthew 22:36-40 ESV

Adoration is Important in Prayer

If something is important to us, we need to pray about it.  That includes showing God that we love and adore Him.  

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matthew 6:33 ESV

Praying prayers of adoration not only show God that we adore Him, but they put us in a position to be blessed!  God is so good that He asks nothing of us without blessing us in return.  

God is so good that He asks nothing of us without blessing us in return. Click To Tweet

Why It’s Important to Teach Adoration to Our Children

Children, by nature, are selfish.  Before you get mad, let me explain.  We are all born with sinful nature.  None of us are perfect.  We could possibly even say that all humans are selfish.  Children, however, win the prize.  Even the famous psychologist, Jean Piaget, said that children in the pre-operational stage, ages 2-7, were egocentric. They have a hard time thinking of anything from someone else’s viewpoint.  

We are asking young children to pray to a God they can’t see and tell Him how much they adore Him.  The awesome thing is that though children may not be able to see God, they have a vast amount of faith.  When you watch children pray, it doesn’t seem like such a stretch or a difficult activity.  It’s almost as if kids are wired to pray!  

Though children may not be able to see God, it’s almost as if kids are wired to pray! Click To Tweet

Far too often, however, we focus on telling our children that they can ask God for anything they want.  We tell them how powerful He is, but we don’t tell them how AMAZING He truly is.  We teach them, often by accident, that it is okay to treat God like Santa Claus and just list whatever we want.  If want our kids to be considerate and truly honor God, we need to teach them to simply start by showing God adoration.  

Here are a few simple steps to get our kids to practice adoration in prayer… Click To Tweet

Here are a few simple steps to get our kids to practice adoration…

1. Have your kids make a list of things to adore about God.  
2. Model prayers of adoration by saying something like, “God we adore you because you are ___________.”  Fill in the blank with what you want–honest, good, kind, loving, etc.  
3. Each time you pray over the next week, have your children choose one thing to tell God that they adore about Him. They may pick their own word, or they could draw a card with one of God’s attributes and pray over it. (Click here for printable cards.  There are extra spaces for you to fill in some attributes from your own list as well.) Help your children if they don’t know what to say.  Explain what the word means if they need it.  We want them to be praying from the heart, not just repeating a word.  
4. Keep praying prayers of adoration.  Remember that it takes a long time to break habits.  Even as adults, how many times do we have a need and just want to charge straight into asking God to take care of it for us?  Be patient and God will reward your efforts.  

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord

   in the land of the living!

Wait for the Lord;

   be strong, and let your heart take courage;

   wait for the Lord!” Psalm 27:13-14 ESV

If you want to explore this topic further with your children, you may want to consider doing a Bible study on the names, attributes, or character of God.

What do you adore about God?  How do you teach this to your children?  

 

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