Our Prayer Sticks

This has been the best thing we have done to encourage our family to take time to pray together and also the best way we've found to remember many other people to pray for. It's an idea that has already been 'borrowed' a few times so feel free to borrow the idea and make it your own! I got it from this blog and she got it from somewhere on Pinterest and I didn't bother tracking it back from there!

The tin is just a washed baked bean tin, lined inside and out with pretty scrapbooking paper. I finally found tongue depressors for the sticks (instead of icypole sticks that are all too easy to find) via Ebay - there's 50 in our tin but I got a box of 100 so we may add more.

Each stick has written on it someone or something to pray for. Missionaries, friends, family, neighbours both known and unknown. Church elders and deacons, our pastors. A baby for a few someones, red tape to be sped up for another, and so on.

After dinner or after lunch and sometimes both and possibly breakfast soon too, each person takes a stick and we go around the table taking it in turns to pray. Just one or two sentences of prayer for the person/people/family/area of concern on the stick. Timothy (4yo) copies a prayer after me and then says the whole prayer by himself. Everyone else picks their own words.

Once a stick has been used it gets bundled up with the other used ones and tied up with a rubber band till all sticks are 'used' and then we loosen them all and start again. This makes sure we pray for all the people etc and no one gets left out before we repeat.

We're praying
Together
As a family
Daily - or more!
The kids love it and ask for it.
Blessings all around

Give it a go - and remember to keep it simple!