How to help your kids pray for others

One of my favorite parts of each day is bedtime. We sit together as a family and read a devotion, the kids pray and we read a book together. The devotion has been added just in the last two years, but everything else we’ve been doing since our now 10-year-old was a baby.

I have loved hearing how my children’s prayers have evolved through the years as they get older. But sometimes they get stuck on repeat. A few years ago we used prayer envelopes for them. About four months ago, we decided it was time to use prayer envelopes again. And I’m so glad we did!

What are prayer envelopes?

Very simply, prayer envelopes hold slips of prayer requests the kids come up with. Each night, they draw out a new slip of paper of someone or something to pray for. While they can and do pray for other people and things as well, this gives them something specific to make sure to pray for.

I love that this reminds the kids of people they want to pray for that maybe they had forgotten. When we sat and made their lists a few months ago, I was flabbergasted by the topics and people they came up with. Of course there are expected names like grandparents, their dad and me, each other and the puppy.

We have encouraged them to pray for their teachers and friends, so those made the list. And we have talked about praying for our church and specific leaders at our church. Those made the list.

They both also decided they want to pray for the food pantry ministry that we work with, which blessed my heart. My kids are praying for the right president to be elected for our country this year. My daughter is praying about global warming. Their prayer requests are sincere, sweet and surprisingly insightful.

How to make and use prayer envelopes

You can certainly make the prayer envelopes look cool or fancy, and you might totally have a better idea for how to do them, which is great! I am not crafty and tend to be pretty darn simple. Here’s how we did ours.

First the kids made a list of their prayer requests. My daughter wrote hers out and then I typed them up. My son, who is newer at reading and spelling, just told me what he wanted to pray for and I typed it.

We printed out the lists and cut each request into a strip.

The strips went into a small envelope marked “To pray for.” We then put that envelope into a 5×7 size envelope with their name written on the outside.

Each evening, they draw a slip of paper out of their small envelope. That request then goes down into the larger envelope and the small envelope goes back into the larger envelope one as well. Basically, we keep the “prayed for” requests, so that when the small envelope is empty, we can refill it and rotate through the requests again.

And that’s really it. Prayer envelopes are a simple concept, but can have a big impact on our kids in teaching them how to pray!

More prayer resources from Families with Grace: