The Prayer Game - helping you and your children pray for others

I'm posting here to share about a game I've made to help our family prayers go a little bit further than 'God please help us have a lovely day/God please help us sleep well.'

I was inspired by another friend's blog called 'Supper's not in the slow cooker'.  Find it here at: https://vicarwife.wordpress.com/resources/  (scroll down to her prayer game and you'll find a lot more ideas because I've simplified what she did).

I love how she starts her resources page, so I'm going to 'nick' that paragraph too:

WARNING: These resources may be dangerous to your health if you are not properly equipped with anti-comparison shields and a clear understanding that ideas like these will NOT make or break your children’s’ faith.

So, one of my struggles with wanting to pray for others and not just ourselves is how long to make the list.  I mean, my kids have 13 first cousins.  Then there's all the missionaries we know. Where do you draw the line?  How do you stop it being another unbearably long list to get through?

Well, my friend's blog had the ingenious idea of making a game and using a box file of index cards. This means you can have umpteen cards but no sense of pressure that you have to get through every single one. 

So, how does it work?  

The board is mostly coloured circles. Each colour represents a category.  I chose 10 different categories:

1) Red - our family  - 1 card per member of our immediate family

2) Orange - relatives on Mummy's side - I chose to do 1 card per couple and 1 card per child

3) Yellow - relatives on Daddy's side. jot down specific prayer requests you know about already on some, leave the others blank to fill in as and when

4) Pale green - church - so far my cards are titled - leaders, members, workers, Sunday services

5) Dark green - OM - this is the Christian organisation my husband and I are with. My husband works in the office.  Cards include  - leaders. Carlisle team, teams around the world

6) Pale blue - Mike's tots - this is a toddler group I help with - cards include: team, mums, children

7) Dark blue - Houghton School - this is the school my children go to - cards include the head, each of their teachers, the parents, the children, mid-day supervisors

8) Friends - 1 card per friend we particularly want to pray for

9) Salvation - people we particularly have on our hearts to pray for their salvation

10) Missionaries - 1 card per family.  I'm building this up gradually as I get prayer emails/letters - it's easy to pick out a new card and jot a few things down.

On the cards I've written the heading and then a few ideas of what to pray for. Many cards don't have any particular 'points for prayer' yet but we can add them as we go along.

Things I love about this:

You can always add new cards and add to what's written on them. It doesn't have to be 'finished'. 

You can always take away cards. It doesn't ruin the game if you remove a card once it's not a prayer priority any more.

You can change  what the categories are for each colour e.g.  If I stop doing Tots. If my husband changes job. If my children move school. 

There is no sense of having to pray through the whole lot, because you just choose a card from the section you land on.

Best of all: My children love it and want to pray!

So I made the board using a program called publisher. The grid is simply a table and could probably be done in Word or something similar.  If anyone wants me to email them my grid I'm happy to. You just won't be able to open it and make changes if you don't have Publisher. I can send an un-editable pdf version though.

Every coloured circle appears twice but one of them has a Bible on it. When you land on this square you pray a Bible verse over the person whose card you took.  I nicked the prayers from my friend's blog and added a couple of my own favourites. I reckon as I come across other prayers in the Bible I can just jot them down on another card to add to the repertoire.  It's been lovely to see how enthusiastic the children are about doing this and to hear them praying scripture over their school teachers!! Yay! :-)


Other special squares:

1) Thank you - thank God for something!
2) man listening - spend a moment listening to God
3) man kneeling at the cross - thank Jesus for dying on the cross for us
4) singing man - sing a praise song to God
5) Globe - pray for people in another country. I found some resources for children for praying through the UN's goals but adapted for children. It gives a short specific story and a couple of simple points for prayer for each day.  I've also sent off for the children's version of Operation World called Window on the world.

6) Hand - reach out and put your hand on someone near you and pray for them
7) Pray4Me - ask someone to pray for you!
8) The Lord's prayer - say the Lord's prayer together
9) Pru - She is our Compassion sponsored child.

I laminated the board I printed out to make it a bit more durable. I also cut out a circle of the laminate and drew a smiley face on it to be our see-through counter with a bit of blue-tak for the nose. My children's favourite is when we land on Pru and the blue tak goes over her nose. Hilarious!  I also got out a cool see-through 20 sided dice just because they'd be motivated about throwing it.  Any dice will do because it really doesn't matter how many spaces you go.

My little boy wanted the numbering to go in a spiral round the edge into the middle so we did that just to be interesting. Then when you get to the end you just jump back to square one and keep going round.

I share this because my friend's blog post helped me and I'm wanting to 'pay it forward' as it were. My prayer is that it will help and inspire you to find a way that works for your family.