Pray with your kids? Where is that written?

ok.................

A warning

 

I think there's a bigger issue here than trying to find such a scripture.

Scripture doesn't tell me I should wipe my backside after using the washroom. But common sense tells me it's a good thing to do. Likewise, I pray with my family, including my kids. Even if there's no scripture that says I should, common sense tells me it's a good thing to do.

 

I can't think of any that specifically says pray with your children. I know psalms that says pray in the congregation and a family is a smaller unit. And I think teaching them the law is also teaching them how to interact with the lord
As in the first part.

which includes in my mind how to pray. And what better way to teach your children then to pray with them even as Jesus prayed with his disciples.

 

Gee, I don't find any verses commanding to put coats on in the winter time or make them eat their vegetables either.

:smilewinkgrin:

The Bible is intentionally written to preclude the Little League Rule Book rendering of Christianity.

 

You should turn the question around. Where in the Bible does it say you should NOT pray with your kids and families?

I can't find any verses for that one. But I can find a great deal of scripture that puts the responsibility on parents to train / teach their children. And if pray is a vital aspect of the spiritual life (and it is), then it is included in all those parental commands and responsibilities.

 

Here's just one verse that would seem to include the idea of praying with the family (kids).
(Eph. 6:4) And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Seems to me that prayer is big part of that commandment.

 

Teaching our children the commandments includes the commandment to pray. You should teach your children to pray. What better way to teach than to practice it with them.

Sort of like teaching them how to drive. How many people pull out the manual and go through it, the hand the keys over and let at it. You would never do that. It is vital to any new driver to not only see how to drive but to have a trained driver showing them. Participation is vital to learning.

 

Soli Deo Gloria Publications founder Don Kistler:

"If a child has made a profession of faith in Christ, commensurate with his or her age, and if we believe that there is some sincerity there (not as a parent who desperately WANTS to believe it, but as a person with discernment), then they should be allowed to pray.
If a child is an obvious non-believer, then “the prayer of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord,” and it is a sin to call God their Father when He is not their Father. It is a lie."

 

why on earth would someone be looking for a reason not to converse with God as a family?

That's kind of disturbing...

 

Oh good grief.

 

My thoughts exactly

 

I reiterate, I think there's a bigger issue here than trying to find such a scripture.

Scripture doesn't tell me I should wash my hands before eating, or wiping my shoes on the mat before entering a house, or watering my lawn in the mornings instead of afternoons. But common sense tells me these are good things to do. Likewise, I pray with my family, including my kids. Even if there's no scripture that says I should, common sense tells me it's a good thing to do.

 

Just where does the bible say prayer is a bad thing? Who is supose to teach our children to pray if we don't? Whose responsibility is it to teach our children about God and communicating with Him? Just another oppertunity to shove our resposnibilities off on someone else and ignore our own kids.

 

why would any christian want to teach this to their child is beyond me.

 

"I remember saying something on this subject on one occasion in a certain ultra-Calvinistic place of worship. At that time I was preaching to children, and was exhorting them to pray, and I happened to say that long before any actual conversion I had prayed for common mercies, and that God had heard my prayers. This did not suit my good brethren of the superfine school; and afterwards they all came round me professedly to know what I meant, but really to cavil and carp according to their nature and wont. "They compassed me about like bees; yea, like bees they compassed me about!" After awhile, as I expected, they fell to their usual amusement of calling names. They began to say what rank Arminianism this was; and another expression they were pleased to honour with the title of "Fullerism;" a title, by the way, so honourable that I could heartily have thanked thern for appending it to what I had advanced. But to say that God should hear the prayer of natural men was something worse than Arminianism, if indeed anything could be worse to them. They quoted that counterfeit passage, "The prayer of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord," which I speedily answered by asking them if they would find me that text in the word of God; for I ventured to assert that the devil was the author of that saying, and that it was not in the Bible at all. 'The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination unto tho Lord,' is in the Bible, but that is a very different thing from the 'prayer of the wicked;' and moreover, there is a decided difference between the word wicked there intended and the natural man about whom we were controverting. I do not think that a man who begins to pray in any sense can be considered as being altogether among 'the wicked ' intended by Solomon, and certainly he is not among those who turn away their ear from hearing the law, of whom it is written that their prayer is an abomination. 'Well, but,' they said, 'how could it be that God could hear a natural prayer?' And while I paused for a moment an old woman in a red cloak pushed her way into the little circle round me, and said to them in a very forcible way, like a mother in Israel as she was, 'Why do you raise this question, forgetting what God Himself has said! What is this you say, that God does not hear natural prayer? Why, does He not hear the young ravens when they cry unto Him, and do you think they offer spiritual prayers?' Straightway the men of war took to their heels; no defeat was more thorough, and for once in their lives they must have felt that they might possibly err." ---Charles Spurgeon

 

and your comment is what? so far I only see someone else's comment.

 

I'm puzzled at how we're making the jump from "praying with our children" to "forcing our unsaved children to verbalize a prayer." It shouldn't be too hard to spot the difference.