Crafts About How God Hears Our Prayers

God hears all our prayers.

When working with children and even adults, educators can find it hard to explain how the unseen God of Christianity is present everywhere, hearing our prayers whenever and wherever we pray. Crafts are a good way to provide both concrete images that children can grasp and teaching opportunities for them to better understand this profound mystery about our relationship with God. Employ a variety of craft ideas to demonstrate the many facets of this complex mystery.

God Is Close

A classic craft illustrating communication is a tin can-and-string phone. Take four old soup cans. Make sure they are clean, safe and stripped of their original label. Attach a yard of yarn to the ends of two cans with strong duct tape. Attach 10 yards of yarn to the remaining two cans with strong duct tape. Using four blank pieces of paper cut down to fit around each can, tape a blank label onto each can. On one can of each pair, write "Me." Then write "God" on the remaining can for the short-length pair and "Best Friend" on the remaining can connected to the 10 yards of yarn. You can now play telephone with these pairs of attached cans, illustrating that God can hear us even better than our closest friend.

God Responds To Our Prayers

One of the most striking images in the Bible is of God hearing the prayers of someone in trouble and parting the clouds to come to the rescue. This image is found in Psalm 18 and 2 Samuel 22. For this craft, use a standard sheet of construction paper, a box of crayons, white glue and cotton balls. Draw a picture of someone on their knees praying on the bottom of the sheet of paper. Then glue cotton balls to the paper at the top in two groups, forming two clouds. Make sure you leave enough space to draw a hand coming down through the clouds towards the praying figure. This is a picture of God reaching down to rescue us when we pray.

Filling Prayer Bowls

The last book of the Bible, Revelations speaks of golden bowls filled with incense rising before the throne of God. Revelations 5:8 tells us that this incense is symbolic of prayers to God. For this craft, use yellow modeling clay to design a golden bowl. To make the bowl, make a flat, round base, and then roll out cylinders or snakes of clay to wrap around the perimeter of the flat bottom. Stack these cylinders or snakes of clay on top of each other to make the bowl. Fill the bowl with slips of paper with prayer requests written upon them. These slips of paper take the place of the incense as symbolic of our prayers always being present in God's throne room and thereby always being heard by God.

General Teaching Points

With all these crafts, make sure to convey that God is close and actively listening. God hears every prayer and is even closer than our closest family member or friend. These crafts form ways of imagining how God hears our prayers and is able to answer them.

Resources

• Bible Gateway