As we begin the school year, we find ourselves getting into various routines: bedtime routines, homework routines, drop off and pick up routines. As we think about all that needs to be done daily, it’s important to establish spiritual routines with our families as well. These do not need to be extensive or complex. Just intentionally thinking about ways to cover our kids in prayer and fill them with God’s word.
While you prepare anything that will be going to school with your child, take a minute to pray for them, their friends, their teachers, and their school. We can do this while packing a lunch, signing an agenda, or folding laundry. You can write a weekly, daily or monthly Scripture in their agenda, or on a post-it note in their lunchbox. Cover your kids in prayer as they enter their school or board the bus. They are headed into an environment filled with potential temptations, discouragement, frustration, as well as opportunities for success, friendships, and witnessing to others. Sprinkling these seeds into their daily lives is a way of modeling for our children that a relationship with Christ is not limited to Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights.
Your kids will see the value and effectiveness of prayer and will sometimes remind you to pray if you forget. They will ask you to pray for specific things, and give praise to God for answered prayers. Just taking those few minutes can set the tone for their day and hopefully remind them they are not alone.
Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it – Proverbs 22:6
Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. – Ephesians 6:4
How can a young man keep his way pure?
By guarding it according to your word.
With my whole heart I seek you;
let me not wander from your commandments!
I have stored up your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you – Psalm 119:9-11
North Bullitt Christian Church 