Growing a Passion for Prayer in Your Family!

For more Kids in Church info and resources, 
go to http://ekidzministry.blogspot.com/p/kids-in-church.html

This Sunday is a Kids in Church Sunday.
Ken Rudolph will be preaching from Nehemiah 1 and 2:8.
The title of sermon is "Four Passions the Church Must Pursue for God's Hand to be upon Missions."

We need a passion
  for lost people
  for laboring prayer
  for virtuous faith
  to be used by God

You can use each of these passions as talking points.  Here are some ways to talk about the first two.  On Sunday afternoon there will be a post about the last two.

A passion for lost people - 

• Make sure your child understands what it means to be lost and saved.
• Talk to your child about their own salvation.  HERE is a recent post about talking to your child about salvation.  HERE is the pdf version of a great booklet on How to Lead Your Child to Christ. 
• Who are people in our family, neighborhood and life that need to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior?  

A passion for laboring prayer

Here is a family night devotional and activity to build on the sermon and the 2nd point, laboring prayer:  You can get the pdf of this by clicking HERE. 

Read Nehemiah 1 

QUESTIONS:

• Why was Nehemiah so disturbed?

• What was his response to his trouble?

• What are the different parts of Nehemiah's prayer?  (Adoration of God; Confession of sin; confession of truth - reminder of God's promise and His faithfulness; request)

• How did God answer Nehemiah's prayer?

• Why did Nehemiah find favor in the king's eyes?  (See verse 8)  Read Proverbs 21:1.  How does the story of Nehemiah show the truth of this verse?

• What does this story tell you about how God's children should respond to problems?  What does this story tell you about our need for God?

• Do you stop to pray from time to time during your day?  Is the Lord continually in your mind and heart?  How is this shown in your life?

• How can you remember to pray constantly?

ACTIVITY: 

Review your day.  Talk about the times when you could (should?) have stopped to pray.  You may want mom or day to review the day first.  Then play a game having one person review his day, the others yelling "STOP" at time when it would have been good to stop and pray.

ADDITIONAL ACTIVITY:  

Have everyone take a ride in the car to look for stop signs.  Every time you find a stop sign, someone in the family can tell about something you can "stop" to pray about.  Then pray together about that concern.  Remember that prayer can be praise (adoration), thanksgiving, confession or requests.

OPTIONAL: 

Make a prayer reminder that looks like a stop sign.  Write:  STOP - PRAY on it.  This can be kept in your pocket, attached to your keys, hung on your purse, etc.  (any place it can be a reminder).