Teach Us to Pray
Explore the Shema, Jesus Creed, and Lord's Prayer with your family this year.
Dear fellow Story-dwellers,
The most frequent email question I’ve received the past six months has been…
(drum roll please)
When will Teach Us to Pray be available on the new website?
You saw Teach Us to Pray on learn.Bible, and it was all queued up to use with your family this year. And then you saw the fatal words: “This site can’t be reached.”
Then you browsed our new PDF library, and it wasn’t there, either. This morning, I am so thankful to tell you that if you check our library again, you’ll see something special.
Yes, Story-dwellers, Teach Us to Pray is available for download! Teach Us to Pray helps families explore the biblical story through the Shema, the Jesus Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. And like all of our downloadable resources, it is free.
We are so thankful for our friends at BibleProject who helped us convert it to PDF. I’m amazed by the attention to detail that goes into a project like this. So many details. If you happen to spot details we missed, would you please email me at amber@onestoryfamily.org? The great thing about digital resources is how easy they are to update.
Not Just for Homeschool Families
Yes, Nicole Howe and I designed Teach Us to Pray as a homeschool curriculum. But that doesn’t mean it’s just for “homeschool families.” Rather, it’s a curriculum designed for use in the home, particularly for families with 3rd-8th graders.
That being said, teachers have modified Teach Us to Pray for their Christian school classes, Sunday School Bible studies, and after-school programs. We love hearing stories about how you are using it in your context!
Why Teach Us to Pray?
“Teach us to pray.” This famous request to Jesus didn’t come from disciples who had never breathed a prayer in their lives. Rather, they most likely prayed at least three times a day and had been doing so the entirety of their lives. It was part of their story. And their story was interwoven with God’s. They recognized that as they learned to pray, they learned to act out their part in the story of how God continues to invite humans to partner with Him toward “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Jesus answered that famous request with the words of the Lord’s Prayer. A call to love and action, these well-known words are Jesus’s greatest commandment breathed out in prayer: an agreement to love God with heart, soul, and strength and love neighbors as ourselves. It’s fitting that Jesus’ greatest commandment (which we’ll refer to as the Jesus Creed) contains an even more ancient prayer, the Prayer of Shema.
Jesus’ disciples memorized The Lord’s Prayer and continued teaching it to others. In fact, they instructed early Christians to pray this prayer three times a day. Does this mean they never prayed with their own words? Of course not! But they were very comfortable praying words that had been given to them by someone else. In fact, it was one of the ways in which they were trained in the practice of prayer.
During this course, we explore how the Lord’s Prayer invites us into a new partnership with God, made possible by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Your students will discover how learning to pray this prayer with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength will prepare them to submit to the power of the Holy Spirit and act out their part in God’s epic story of uniting heaven and earth.
A Blessing from Teach Us to Pray
As you take the hands of your students, it is our hope that God will meet you intimately in this space. Children often teach us as much as we teach them—if we let them. May the eyes of your heart be open to what God can show you through their eyes.
In grace and peace,
Amber
