My prayer life, like everything in my walk of faith, continues to grow and change. Prayer is so intertwined with my faith and relationship with God that it is like a mirror, reflecting my connection with Him. When I’ve been busy, distracted, and my relationship with Him is in second place, my prayer life reflects that. It’s dry and becomes rote. When my passion and love for Him is strong, when I’ve been feasting on His Word, and drinking from the well of grace, my prayer life is active and amazing.

My children continue to grow in their prayer life as well. My goal is to faithfully encourage them to pray, give them opportunities to pray, and model prayer for them. If you’ve read my other posts on this topic, you know that I’ve done crafts, read books with them on prayer, as well as other activities to reinforce what I’ve taught them.

I noticed recently that my oldest was struggling with prayer. He was saying the same things each time he prayed. I could tell it wasn’t from his heart. During our devotional time, he’s been memorizing the Lord’s prayer and the corresponding catechism questions that teach about the prayer. In homeschool, he and I have been going through Lord, Teach Me to Pray for Kids (Discover 4 Yourself® Inductive Bible Studies for Kids). During school one morning, we read various prayers from Scripture, including those of Daniel, Jeremiah, and Hezekiah. I pointed out to my son various aspects to the prayers and asked if he saw anything different between how he usually prays and their prayers.

“Yes, I pray the same things over and over. I just don’t know what to say.” He admitted that he struggled with praying and knew that he had been praying repetitively rather than from the heart. We decided to create a prayer log. He’s started with the letter “A” in the ACTS prayer model. He began by listing reasons for praising and worshiping God.

“Mom, when I can’t think of something to pray, I can look at this log. I know, let’s also add some of the names of God that we learned last year.”

Later that night, as I listened to him pray, I could hear a change in his voice and his prayer was more authentic and from the heart. He’s decided that he wants to continue adding ideas of things to pray about to his prayer log.

Prayer is an expression of a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father. I can’t force prayer on my children. And I wouldn’t want to. I want them to go to the Father in prayer because they want to.

And that has become my own prayer, not only for my kids, but for myself as well.

Do you have any “teach me Jesus” moments to share this week? Tell us about them in the comments or include a link in your comment to your own “teach me Jesus” post.