What Helium and Prayer Have in Common

One of my favorite things to teach kids is prayer. When it comes to prayer, it is SO much more important to have the right beliefs about prayer than it is to have the right words. 

I use helium balloons to illustrate this. We all know if we breathe in helium, our voices change. Kids always laugh when their teacher or parent speaks after taking a deep breath of helium, and you can use that to show them a good belief system about prayer.

When the Holy Spirit came into our life, we breathed Him in (the word “spirit” in both Hebrew and Greek is also the word for breath and wind). When we breathed Him in, He changed our voice. We don't sound like chipmunks, though, we sound like Jesus. God now treats our prayers as if Jesus prayed them. The Holy Spirit inside us has made our prayers just as powerful as His.

Another thing our kids need to know about prayer is the answers they can expect from God. So many people teach that God sometimes says "yes," but sometimes "no," and sometimes He even says "wait." This is not accurate when it comes to His promises and will build a faulty foundation for prayer. 

2 Corinthians 1:20 says that all His promises are yes and amen. That means God won't say "no" if He promised it. The promise of protection, the promise of provision, the promise of healing, etc. When we pray for these we can only get one answer...yes! Another verse on this is 1 John 5:14-15, which says, "This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him."

It's important we remember that Jesus never taught on what to do if our prayers aren’t answered. That's because He never expected us to believe they wouldn’t (after all, if we pray believing He won't answer, we aren't praying with faith). He wants His disciples to pray the way He did, always knowing our prayers are heard (see John 11:42).

As we teach our children, these three thoughts will help them grow up praying with tremendous faith, and seeing God do incredible things through their lives.