Reverence During Prayers

This is one of those lessons that comes about because a need is seen. Our boys seriously need to work on being reverent during prayers.

Goal: Being reverent during prayers

Song: Reverently, Quietly

Lesson: Start the lesson by whispering. See if you can get your kids to whisper with you. Tell them that when we are quiet we are better able to hear the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. When we pray, the Holy Ghost can answer our prayers, but we have to listen. Remind your children that when we pray, we want to be respectful to Heavenly Father and Jesus, and that means being reverent. Have your children repeat the word "reverence." Part of being reverent during prayers is being silent and still.

Activity: Practice being silent and still. Have a family member say a short prayer while the other family members practice. Let everyone have a turn praying.

Reverence During Prayers

Prayer Topics

Sometime this last April, I noticed that my oldest child, then four, was getting very repetitive in his prayers. I reminded him of the purpose of prayer and that we are supposed to offer sincere prayers.

"You shouldn't says the exact same thing at every prayer," I reminded him.

"Well, you and Daddy do!" He replied.

Oops.

Apparently, the entire family could use a Family Home Evening lesson on prayer.

As I studied my Gospel Principles book (the book being used by Priesthood and Relief Society this year), I happened to be reading the lesson on Prayer, chapter 8. Funny how that works out, right? I found it to be an excellent lesson guide for our Family Home Evening lesson. You can prayerfully read that and pull out what you think would be best for your family.

I wanted to share an idea I had while reading this. I had the idea to create a prayer paper for our family. Since my children are all young and don't really read yet, I did pictures. On this paper, I put pictures of things we should pray about. Here is a list from the manual:

• Strength to resist temptations
• Confess sins
• Ask for forgiveness
• Our families
• Our friends
• Our neighbors
• Our crops
• Our animals
• Our daily work
• Other activities
• Protection
• Express love
• Feel closer to Him
• Thank Him
• Strength to live gospel
• Keep on strait and narrow path
• Be righteous in thoughts, words, and actions
• Blessing on food
• Pray before meetings that we may worship in a manner that pleases Him
• Not in manual, but for our prophet

I didn't do a picture for everything here. I put a picture of our immediate family and our extended families. I put pictures of friends and neighbors. I put a picture of our garden and a picture of our dogs. I put a picture of our son playing soccer. I put a picture of a heart for love and a picture of Christ.

We don't look at this before every prayer we ever say. We try to remember to say it before family prayer at night. That way, once a day, our children (ahem--and their parents) are reminded of the things we are to pray about and we can hopefully avoid repetitious prayers.

Another idea for you if you have only younger children is you could make a page of how we should look when we pray. With our young toddlers, we teach them to close their eyes, fold their arms, and bow their heads. Then of course for some prayers you also kneel.

This was a great lesson to read to teach our family about prayer.

Prayer Topics

A House of God

Topic: This lesson is about making our homes like the temple.

Scripture: In D&C 88:119 we read "Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God."

Lesson: Start by holding up a picture of the temple and talking about how it is a special place where we go to learn about our Heavenly Father and try become more like him. We want our homes to be like the temple. Read D&C 88:119 and talk about the attributes of the temple. You could write them on a white board or a piece of paper, or just list them out loud (we just listed them out loud). We focused on three things: prayer, learning, and order. We had a short activity to practice each of those three things.

Activities: To practice having a house prayer, we let each child say a prayer. We had them repeat a very short prayer one word at a time. My boys (18 months) don't talk much, so most of the words didn't sound like what they were. You could pretty much only understand "Jesus" and "amen." But they both looked very pleased with themselves, and Mommy and Daddy were very proud. These were their very first prayers. :)

To practice having a house of learning, we read two books together and talked about what we saw on each page. We did a picture bible and a story book to show that we can get learning and knowledge from all good books. :)

To practice having a house of order, we dumped out some blocks and practiced putting them back away in the bucket. We played a couple times. :) While we practiced, we sang "Picking up blocks is fun to do." :)

Closing: We closed by going back to the picture of the temple and restating how it is a holy place and want our homes to be holy too.

A House of God