As a parent, I (Greg) am sadly aware of how often my children need to call my name repeatedly to get my attention: “Dad…dad…dad…DAD!” Too often as parents we can be so distracted or busy with something that our children need to nag us for attention or repeat their requests because we were not listening.

How wonderful it is that God does not respond the way we do. God is listening to us all of the time, and He always has a response. This was the awesome truth we aimed to teach our children this weekend. God is listening to us, always. He is never too busy for us and He is never distracted that He doesn’t hear our call. He is always available to us. How comforting.

Our Part

Focusing on prayer this term, we taught the children how we pray to God, we get to call Him Father, and in this intimate relationship He is always there to listen to us. We taught how we need to be aware of what we say because God is always listening. We taught that when we pray, we are not just saying fancy words, or repeating a magical spell, but are rather speaking to our Father God who loves to listen to us because of His desire for relationship with us.

We looked at the story in Luke 11 where Jesus teaches how even a grumbling neighbour, when persisted, will respond to a request. Our Father is far more willing to hear and respond to our requests. We explained how God’s answer can be “Yes”, “No” or “Not right now” but God desires us to persist in prayer. We can trust Him and rely on Him.

Your Part

Please continue to pray with your children. This week remind them that God will always listen. Even when He seems far, He is actually near and listening. With some of their prayer requests, help them to persist in prayer. Pray for a person every day, not just once. It has been so encouraging to see the children report back on how many of their prayers have been answered by our awesome God.

Some of the classes did a craft which emphasised the idea of keeping on knocking by praying to God and knowing He will respond.

We hope you are enjoying this term as much as we are!

– Children’s Church team