Gratitude

Illustrated prayer journal

Creative crafts

Help your children each make a colourful prayer journal that will remind them to include elements of adoration, confession and thanksgiving in their prayers.

For each child’s journal you will need a three-ring binder, a hole punch, pages to insert, a glue stick, pictures, decorative lettering and embellishments of your choice.

Work together to decorate the cover of your journals.

Your first page will be dedicated to pictures that represent adoration and worship. Ask your children, Which pictures can we put on this page to remind us that God is wonderful? (For example, you might choose a picture of a rainbow to represent God’s faithfulness, or a heart to represent God’s love.) Spend some time praising God in prayer.

The second page is for confession. Ask, Can you think of some things we do that make God sad? Add pictures to this page of soap and cleaning products, to illustrate that God washes away any sin we confess. Talk about confession as a positive time, because it is refreshing to ask God to clean the sin out of our lives. Now spend some time confessing.

The third page is for thanksgiving. Have your children choose pictures to represent things they want to thank God for.

For the final page, let each child select pictures that represent things they want to pray about.

As prayers are answered and new prayer ideas come up, record them in your prayer journals, inserting additional pages as needed.

Relevant Scripture

John 16:23-24 “In that day you will ask nothing of Me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

James 4:1-3 “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.