The Power Of Prayer

In the past week I’ve taught two lessons - one with the youth group and one with our junior Sunday school class - about the power of prayer. It’s been an amazing time of study for me because I always feel like I need to be prepared for any and all potential questions.

They are kids, after all.

With the teens, we had them use the Bible programs on their phones to look up any time Jesus prayed or talked about prayer. They wrote down the verses they thought were most important, and then got back together as a group. We went around the circle and told them to choose one verse (or passage) and explain how Jesus is our example for how, when, where and what to pray.

So many questions came from these mini lessons, and afterwards they said it was one of the best times they’d ever had at church. Any time they actively participate, especially when they are leading the lessons themselves, they give it a huge thumbs up. Now we have to study even more, since we know they have all these questions stored up inside them.

In our Sunday school class, we teach third through sixth grades. For the prayer lesson in this class, I borrowed an idea from the Internet and used Skittles for our object lesson. When you line them up around the edge of a paper plate and cover them with hot water, they melt and the colors run together. The rainbow they make is so pretty, and we were surprised at how quickly they ran together.

The idea behind this lesson was the power of prayer and how, when we join with Him, God uses us to have an impact on earth. We talked about how many prayer requests our church has and how we are called to pray without ceasing. It was a lovely time of sharing a few verses about Jesus’ prayers and how they weren’t vain repetitions, but conversation with His Father.

It’s such a blessing to teach these two groups of young people and sharing God’s Word with them. Now I’m off to do some studying so I can prepare for the next round of questioning and learning.