What Every Child Should Know About Prayer

What Every Child Should Know About Prayer — Introducing Children to the Gift of Speaking with Father God

Every child has questions about prayer.

What is it exactly? Is it just saying words before meals and bedtime? Does God actually hear it? Does he actually answer? What should you say? And what do you do when you have run out of words — or when you are not sure whether prayer actually works?

These are genuine questions. And they deserve genuine, biblically grounded, age-appropriate answers — not vague reassurances or simplified formulas, but real engagement with what prayer actually is, why it matters, and how to do it in a way that is honest, joyful, and genuinely connected to the God who invites his children to speak with him.

What Every Child Should Know About Prayer by bestselling author Nancy Guthrie, beautifully illustrated by Jenny Brake, is exactly the kind of resource that answers those questions — clearly, warmly, and with the kind of child-friendly accessibility that makes deep theological truth genuinely available to young readers.

Part of the A Child Should Know series, this book introduces children to one of the greatest privileges and one of the greatest gifts that belonging to God makes possible: the gift of speaking to their Father God.

What Prayer Actually Is

One of the most important things this book does is help children understand what prayer genuinely is — not just as a religious duty or a ritual to be performed, but as a real, personal, genuinely significant act of communication between a child of God and the Father who loves them.

Prayer is not magic. It is not a formula for getting what you want. It is not a performance designed to impress God or to fulfil a religious obligation. It is something far more personal, far more relational, and far more extraordinary than any of those things:

It is a child speaking to their Father.

That simple, profound description — the one that Jesus himself gave when he taught his disciples to pray — is the foundation on which everything in this book is built. Children who understand prayer as speaking to their Father God are children who have the right framework for everything else about prayer: why they should do it, how they should do it, what they can say, and why it matters that God hears every word.

What the Book Covers

Nancy Guthrie opens up the gift of prayer for children through a series of carefully structured topics — each one explained in child-friendly language, anchored to a specific Bible verse, and completed with a sample prayer that children can make their own:

What prayer is A clear, accessible explanation of what prayer actually is — not a religious ritual but a real conversation with the God who made us and loves us, made possible by the relationship with him that Jesus opened up for everyone who trusts in him.

How to pray Practical, accessible guidance on how to approach God in prayer — not a rigid formula to be followed, but the kind of natural, honest, personal communication that a child has with a parent who is genuinely interested in everything they have to say.

Why we should pray The theological and personal reasons why prayer matters — why God invites his children to speak with him, what it means for their relationship with him, and why a life of prayer is one of the most important and most rewarding habits any Christian can develop.

What we can pray about One of the most liberating truths about prayer that any child can learn: that there is nothing too big and nothing too small to bring to Father God in prayer. Worries and hopes, big fears and small frustrations, thankfulness and sadness, requests for others and requests for themselves — all of it is welcome in the presence of the Father who loves to hear from his children.

Bible verses and sample prayers Each topic in the book is anchored to a specific Bible verse — grounding the teaching in the Word of God and giving children a memorable, repeatable summary of each truth. And each section closes with a sample prayer — not a prayer to be recited mechanically, but a model that shows children the kind of honest, natural, personal language that speaking with Father God actually involves, and that invites them to adapt it and make it genuinely their own.

What This Book Will Help Your Child Do

• Understand clearly what prayer is — not a religious duty but a real, personal conversation with the Father who loves them
• Learn how and why to pray — developing the confidence and the habit of genuine, honest, personal communication with God from the earliest years
• Discover that they can bring anything to Father God in prayer — that there is nothing too big or too small, nothing too serious or too ordinary, for the God who invites his children to speak with him
• Build a genuine, sustainable, joyful habit of prayer — not a reluctant religious obligation but a treasured daily conversation with the God who always hears
• Engage with a Bible verse for each aspect of prayer — building biblical literacy alongside the practice of prayer
• Use the sample prayers as starting points for their own genuine, personal conversations with God — learning the language of prayer by encountering real examples of it
• Develop from the earliest years the conviction that Father God is genuinely interested in them — that his attention is not conditional on the quality of their prayers but is the steady, loving attention of a Father who delights in hearing from his children

Who Should Use This Book?

What Every Child Should Know About Prayer is ideal for:

• Parents wanting to introduce their children to the gift of prayer in a way that is biblically grounded, practically helpful, and genuinely accessible for young readers
• Families wanting a resource that establishes a habit of prayer in their children from the earliest years — through a book that makes prayer understandable, approachable, and genuinely joyful
• Grandparents looking for a meaningful, faith-forming gift that introduces grandchildren to one of the most important practices of the Christian life
• Sunday school teachers and children's ministry workers wanting a high-quality, biblically grounded resource on prayer for use in teaching or as a class gift
• Home-educating families wanting to incorporate biblical teaching on prayer into their curriculum through beautifully illustrated, child-friendly, theologically faithful children's literature
• Churches wanting to resource families with a warm, accessible, biblically serious introduction to prayer for the youngest members of their congregation
• Any family in India wanting to help their young children understand that Father God invites them to speak with him — and that prayer is not a religious duty but the greatest privilege and the greatest gift that belonging to him makes possible

About the Authors

Nancy Guthrie is a bestselling author and Bible teacher whose books have helped thousands of believers engage more deeply with Scripture and with the God who speaks through it. She is known for her ability to make biblical truth genuinely accessible without losing its depth or its personal significance — and What Every Child Should Know About Prayer reflects all of those gifts in a format perfectly suited to young children.

Jenny Brake is a widely loved children's illustrator whose warm, accessible, and beautifully crafted artwork has graced numerous children's Christian books. Her illustrations in this book bring the world of prayer to life for young readers in ways that are visually delightful and genuinely supportive of the theological content they accompany.

Together, Guthrie and Brake have created a resource that is both theologically serious and genuinely beautiful — worthy of the extraordinary subject it introduces children to.

About the A Child Should Know Series

What Every Child Should Know About Prayer is part of the A Child Should Know series — a collection of resources designed to introduce children to the essential people, ideas, and practices of the Christian faith in an accessible, engaging, and age-appropriate way.

Other titles in the A Child Should Know series available at forthetruth.in include:

• Everything a Child Should Know About God — Kenneth Taylor
• Everyone a Child Should Know — 52 heroes of faith

The Gift That Never Runs Out

There are many gifts parents can give their children. But few are more valuable — or more lasting — than the gift of knowing how to pray. Because prayer is the gift that opens every other gift. It is the practice that keeps a child connected to the Father who made them and loves them through every season of their life — through the easy times and the hard ones, through childhood and adulthood and everything in between.

A child who knows how to pray — who has learned from the earliest years that Father God invites them to speak with him about anything and everything, that he always hears, that he always cares, and that no prayer offered in genuine faith ever goes unheard — is a child who has been given one of the most precious and most durable foundations that any human life can be built on.

What Every Child Should Know About Prayer is a beautiful, warm, and genuinely helpful introduction to that gift — and an invitation to every child who reads it to begin the conversation with Father God that can last a lifetime.