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4 Fun Activities to Try with Your Kids

Mother and son praying

Getting children excited about prayer can be challenging. Images of people praying typically show someone standing calmly with their head bowed and eyes closed. That’s hard for many people, let alone a kid who’s now stuck at home all day.

But prayer is simply talking with the God who says, “let the children come to me.” God loves to hear the honest cries of your children’s hearts.

Helping your kids talk openly with God now will also impact the way they view prayer in the years to come. So, here are 4 easy prayer activities to help your family pursue God through prayer.

Child praying

  1. Count Your Blessings

    At the end of each day, spend 5-10 minutes talking about a few things that blessed your family. After everyone’s shared, thank God for the good He’s done in your life that day.

    Modeling thankfulness for your kids now will help shape the way they remember hard seasons. (Plus, focusing on your blessings can help lower stress levels.)

  1. Pray Through the Week

    Each week, pick a theme with your kids. (It could be a country, a person, or something your children love.)

    Every day, have a child pray for that theme and allow whoever prays to choose a theme-related activity for you to do together. (Need activity ideas? You can find Bible-based coloring pages and Adventure Books here.)

  1. Go on a Nature Walk

    The next time you go outside, ask your children to point out anything that makes them smile. Take turns thanking God for creating the beauty around you. Try to enjoy the world through their eyes, together.

  1. Pray through Praise Songs

    Everything you do can be an act of worship. Pick one of your children’s favorite worship songs and sing it together. Make that song your prayer for the day.

    Or, if you or your children are musical, pick a Psalm or the Lord’s Prayer and put it to music.

[Worship Songs Made for Kids]

When prayer is a daily activity that your children look forward to, you help show them that they can talk to God anywhere, at any time, for any reason.

And, by letting go of any expectations for what their prayers should look like, you make space for your kids to creatively express themselves to God.

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Need some peace? Start here.

We’re here for you.

Fear, sadness, anxiety, anger. It’s hard to make sound decisions when our emotions are compromised. Take care of your emotional health by actively seeking out peace, encouragement, and truth.

For more than 10 years, we’ve been carefully crafting free experiences designed to help people draw closer to God. Whatever you’re facing right now, we have several ways for you to seek Him:

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Looking for answers?

Man searching on phone

We live in an uncertain world. But no matter what we face, God’s Word provides hope for our souls. If you’ve been wondering what the Bible has to say about your current situation, try searching for answers in your Bible App.

Just start typing in the Search (Search icon) bar to get suggestions for Scriptures, Verse Images, Plans, and more.

Once you find the answers you’re looking for, encourage your community by sharing on social media the hope you’ve found.

Find Truth

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Free Resources to Shift Your Church Online

Your church can't meet. Now what?

With so much uncertainty still unfolding, your passion to lead people to Jesus is more important than ever. In this season when people can’t gather at your physical location, we want to make sure you know about free tools and resources that can help you redirect your entire ministry to where the people are right now: at home, online.

If you didn’t know, YouVersion is a digital ministry of Life.Church. And Life.Church has been doing church online for over 15 years. Here’s everything you need to make sure your church can keep impacting your community:

(just tap any box for more details on that resource)

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Try Doing this for the First 5 Minutes of Every Day

Verse of the Day icon

In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice.  Psalms 5:3

When you wake up in the morning, what’s the first thing you do? Grab your phone and scroll through Instagram? Check texts and emails? Check the news?

Those first 5 minutes can set the tone for your whole day. How do your choices during that time make you feel? Stressed? Anxious? Like you’re falling behind, even before you’re out of bed?

What if you invited God to speak into your day first? Tomorrow, before you do anything else:

1. Pray a simple prayer.

Maybe something like this:

Heavenly Father, please provide for my family’s needs today. But please give me more than food, Lord — please speak to me through Your Word. And help me to hear Your voice. Amen.

2. Read or listen to Verse of the Day, noting anything that stands out.

We’ll use this verse as an example:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

1 JOHN 4:7

Examples of notes you might take:

– Who are my “one anothers”?

– Love comes from God

– I must “know God” to be able to truly love

3. Think about how you can apply what God shows you.

Here are some ideas for our example verse:

– Today, I should encourage a friend

– Could I join a group at my church and connect with other Jesus followers?

– Can I provide a meal for someone who’s going through a tough time?

4. To finish, pray again.

This time, ask God to help you with whatever He showed you today. For example:

Father, thank you for Your perfect love. Please show me ways I can begin to know You better. Help me love people the way You do. Please show me what You want me to do next. Thank you, Lord. Amen.

That’s it! You can use this same technique every day—with any passage of Scripture. Or, even better, subscribe to Verse of the Day, and every day the Bible App can help remind you to put God and His voice first.

Subscribe to Verse of the Day

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