I'm super excited to share with you all some ideas on infusing faith into your home! I joined the 31 day link up challenge being hosted by www.thenester.com which is taking me WAY out of my comfort zone to blog THAT much, but this is the season of my life right now. A season to be stretched...all for His glory.

After prayerfully considering where to even begin, I feel the Lord led me to start right at the beginning with prayer. Imagine that?! You may be thinking "I got this one in the bag- easy breezy!" Or you may be thinking "Pray for my family...what does that even look like?" Which ever camp you are in- I invite you to join us on this journey for the next 30 days to learn, grow and maybe even teach! I plan to share ideas that we do as a family in our home, ideas I have learned from others and share new ideas I plan to try.
Feel free to comment or contact me with ideas that you use to infuse faith into YOUR home. We are all in this together after all! *if you are new to the blogging world, the comment box can be a little tricky if you don't have a blog or gmail account so don't get frustrated- just hit my contact me tab and shoot me an email if your little heart desires!

So what does prayer look like to you? To me it is very simple...it is just a conversation between me and God. Or, if I'm praying with others it is a conversation between all of us and God. (Matt 18:20) God wants us to have a RELATIONSHIP with him and we can not do that with out conversing with him. Amen? This conversation is a two way street. We have two ears and one mouth- so you may say we are supposed to listen twice as much as we are to speak. I have never audibly heard the voice of God, but I have heard from Him many many times. He speaks to us through many ways: the living word- the Bible (2nd Tim 3:16), through other believers (James 3:17), through nature and our surroundings (Rom 1:20) and through His spirit that resides in us as believers (often known as that small inner voice- John 14:17, 1 Corin 3:16).

In Matthew 6:9-13 Jesus gives us a GUIDE on how to pray which we commonly know as The Lord's Prayer. I say this is a guide because Jesus never intended us to ONLY pray those same exact words over and over again. Just imagine if you had the same exact conversation with your husband over and over again- day after day or multiple times a day. That will drive you batty!! Of course, The Lord is soverign and not on the same exact level as our spouse or anyone from that matter- but He desires to have a relationship with us just as our spouse or friends do. We can certainly pray the Lord's prayer together on occasion as it is a beautiful prayer, however, we are also to use this as a guide. In fact, I taught my daughter Kaylee The Lord's Prayer this summer- it just melts my little heart hearing her say it...even when she does get goofed up a bit!

Let's take a quick look at The Lord's Prayer and see what we can learn from it

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father, which art in heaven, we recognize here that He is King of Kings and resides in Heaven

Hallowed be thy Name. we can bless his righteous name. I often use many of The Lord's names when in prayer such as Abba, Sovereign Lord, El Shaddai, Yahweh etc

Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven. Here we learn to pray for His will to be done on this earth. That doesn't always mean that He won't give us something NOT in his will...he gives us the free will and the ability to make our own choices. We should however, pray that His will be done. Even in the daily task.

Give us this day our daily bread. There is simple peace in only praying for what we need TODAY. Worrying about the future is exhausting.

And forgive us our trespasses, yes friends, we need to repent of our sins

As we forgive them that trespass against us. and also ask for hearts to forgive others that have wronged us

And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil. Temptation is ALL around us. We are constantly advertised to and surrounded by temptations. Part of our daily prayers for our self AND for our family can be to lead us not into temptation. I love 1st Corinth 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

For thine is the kingdom,

The power, and the glory,

For ever and ever. We pray to our Lord, our King because it is His world. It is His power that can deliver us and all of the glory goes to Him for getting us through day by day- every single day for ever. He wants us to be fruitful (successful- in all areas of life), He is glorified when we are set apart from the world. How humbling but also how powerful this is.

Amen.

By simply using The Lord's Prayer as a guide to pray for not only our self, but also for our family we can create a strong foundation for our family to be built on.

Other ways to incorporate prayer into your home

Pray at dinner or before a meal (again, doesn't have to be the same 'ol prayer day after day so that it looses its freshness).

Invite your children to lead the prayer *see printable examples below

Prayer at bedtime with your children and/or your spouse

Family devotional time. If your children are little- you can read a story from a Children's bible as a family. If they are bigger you can find an age appropriate devotional to do together and discuss as a family. Or maybe even bonding time between mom & daughter and dad & son or vise versa

Here are my daughter and son's personal bibles. (Well, we love us some bibles up in this house so we have several- but these two are special as they received them on the day we dedicated them.) Children like having something they can "own" so I encourage you to invest in one for all of your children...age appropriate of course