“The biblical wisdom and attention to Scripture that she gives have made this book very edifying.”
Recently, I received two new releases from Nancy Guthrie, Even Better Than Eden (review coming soon) and What Every Child Should Know About Prayer. The first is an overview of various themes of Scripture, tracing them through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The second and the focus of this review is What Every Child Should Know About Prayer, a book for children to teach them about prayer. I mention the first book because I have found Guthrie’s writing to be a great blessing. The biblical wisdom and attention to Scripture that she gives have made this book very edifying. This ties into her book What Every Child Should Know About Prayer because her biblical knowledge that has no doubt blessed many adults has now taken the form of a children’s book.
What Every Child Should Know About Prayer is divided up into six sections. Each point that Guthrie makes about prayer (in every section) covers 1-2 pages, introduces and develops a thought about prayer, provides a Scripture passage to support the point she is making and provides a sample prayer for children to pray. The first section is, God Wants Us to Talk to Him. This section focuses on the importance of prayer and our ability to pray to God anywhere we are and about anything. The second section, Prayer is More Than Asking God For Things, guides children into the depths of prayer. Children need to learn to praise God in prayer, to repent of sins to God in prayer, and to express their needs and feelings to God in prayer.
The third section, God’s People Have Always Prayed focuses on six people from the Bible, Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Mary, and Paul. This section is such a blessing because it introduces children to the prayers of Biblical figures and then provides them with a prayer modeled after prayers that these people actually prayed to God! The next section, The Psalms Give Us Words to Pray may be my favorite section of this book. The psalms cover such a range of real-life situations, circumstances, and emotions and Guthrie does a wonderful job of helping children to see how this book of the Bible can shape and guide our prayers. The next section, Jesus Teaches Us to Pray, focuses mainly on Jesus’ model prayer that he taught the disciples. This is probably already familiar to many children and is a good addition to this book. The last section, Let’s Pray, focuses on specific topics that children (and adults) need to learn to pray about.
Each page also contains artwork by Jenny Brake. The artwork is very well done and the style and the layout of the entire book are very appealing visually. Here is a short clip of Nancy Guthrie introducing her book.
I highly recommend this book to any parents, grandparents, or anyone else who may spend regular time with young children. This is a theologically rich book to teach children about prayer.
I received a copy of this book from 10 Publishing in exchange for an honest review.
Content originally published November 7, 2018 on Joey Parker’s blog “So Many Books, So Little Time”.