Fri Mar 21

Listen up, little ones

Especially for the littles in your household.

Listen for the words son and hear and listen.

Reading

1 Kings 8:22-53—Hear, Lord, from Heaven, Your Dwelling Place

Keys for kids

Also for the littles. Young households might choose, after Keys for Kids, to go directly to praise and prayer.

God can’t be enclosed in his house—or even in all of heaven.
God hears his people’s prayers from heaven.
We should pray to God about all sorts of things.

Questions

(some read these before notes, then ask them after)

What do we want God to do when we pray?
What sort of things might we ask God to do when we pray?
Why pray?

Notes

Solomon prays a long prayer at the dedication of God’s temple. This prayer, which takes over 5 minutes to read is a heartfelt plea to God to hear. Solomon asks the Lord God to see, to listen, and to hear his plea. Ellsworth states that Solomon’s adoration of God abounds with meaning for us. It tells us that great praying is born in great awareness of the greatness of God. Such awareness is produced by feasting on the Word of God.

In our morning worship at SRC we pray the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray. In the prayers of invocation and intercession the elders often pray the words or the themes of the Bible. So, we can, having feasted on the Word of God, pray the word of God and the themes of the word of God.

Over and over in this prayer, Solomon asks God to hear. To hear when his people pray. To hear and judge. To hear and forgive. To hear and teach. To hear and save. To hear and protect. To hear and restore. God has promised to do those things. So, why pray? In fact, if God is the sovereign God who controls all things according to his will, why pray?

The answer, Ellsworth says, is that God is the Father of his people and he delights, as any good father does, in his children coming to him and asking him for what he has promised. It gives him pleasure to hear the prayers of his children and to answer those prayers according to his unsearchable wisdom and his unfailing promises.

Swedish Method questions

See the Sunday reading for meaning of the symbols.

Praise

Psalm 86a, 133a

Prayer

Ask God to hear as you pray for what you want him to do.
Pray for the hearing of God’s word preached this Sunday.
Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.