10 Commandments interactive prayers

One of my goals for my Sunday School class is for them to be able to pray for all sorts of things when they leave my class. One way to do that is to design prayer stations that go along with the story. Prayer stations are a big hit right now because it gives your kids an interactive way to work on praying for others.

The 10 Commandments Prayers

This past week our Sunday School lesson was the 10 Commandments, and because we’d covered the topic somewhat recently, and I wanted them to work on a different aspect of the 10 Commandments, we didn’t do our usual 10 Commandments craft, instead we had 10 Commandments prayers. Our church is using the Gospel Project and they split their 10 Commandments lesson into two weeks: Love God and Love Others. So we split the 10 Commandments prayer stations into two weeks along those lines.

10 Commandments prayer stations supplies

10 Commandments prayer stations printable (get this when you subscribe to my newsletter along with dozens of other printables), wall maps* (this is the best option if you’re going to buy) of the United States, Africa, Asia (go here to make your own), etc…, fabric rectangles, crayons, markers*, salt* (I keep this in a separate marked container so I don’t accidentally use it in cooking, since kids will be touching it), container to hold salt (or see below for alternative), lots of pieces of paper (I cut copy paper* into fourths)

10 Commandments Prayers: Love God

For the first week, we focused on praying for people to love God like no other.

You shall have no other Gods

The kids took turns drawing a state using state cards from the printable, and they pray for the state they drew.

• Pray for the people to have a revival and to become disciples.
• Pray for the leaders of each state to make wise decisions that will be good for their whole state.
• Pray for the churches in the state to reach out to the community around them and to have an impact.

When the kids were done praying for their state, they would color in the state with a marker.

Do not worship false idols

Pray for those in other religions, that they would come to know God, and worship Him. I gave them pages from the Open Doors persecution list to choose the countries they were praying for.

• Pray for Christians to rise up in those countries to lead.
• Pray for those who are worshipping false idols to come to the knowledge of the true God.
• Pray for the Christians in closed countries to be strong and be encouraged.

When they were done, they colored in the map of the country they had prayed for.

Respect God’s Name

This is a challenge in today’s society. It’s also one we’ve talked with our kids about and our expectations, in our family we don’t use the phrase OMG or “Oh my God,” because those phrases are not treating God with respect. I challenged the kids to talk with their parents about what they think about those phrases. I talked about how some of my friends are comfortable with that phrase.

With all of that being said, for this prayer station, they were drawing a name of God and taking the time to draw or write a prayer in response to that name.

Remember the Sabbath and Keep it Holy

In our world, it is sooooo easy for us to step back and forget to rest. We are all about the GO!  So for this 10 Commandment prayer station, they got a slip of fabric and drew a way to rest. If we had been in a real classroom, I would have brought my iron and melted the crayon wax into the fabric, but we were at the YMCA, so that wasn’t happening.  Instead, we just talked about how challenging it can be to stop and rest as we colored their fabric. They took this home to remind them to rest every week.

10 Commandments Prayer Stations: Love Others

This section is a bit more tricky because it’s hard to think of concrete ways to pray for some of these for kids.

Honor your parents

This was easy, they all have parents of some sort, and a few of the kids are living with their grandparents, but the idea is still the same.  Each child was challenged to draw a picture of their parents and as they did pray for themselves.

• Pray they can be respectful in words and actions to their parents. You might say “Yes ma’am,” but if you’re rolling your eyes, you are not being respectful.
• Pray they can obey with a happy heart. that’s a hard one for me to this day when I deal with someone in authority over me (speed limit signs, anyone else?).
• Pray for their parents to have wisdom and patience with their kids. It’s not just kids who need those prayers, the parents do too.

Do not murder

We all agreed we had not murdered anyone, but then I brought up what Jesus said, “When you are angry towards a person and think murderous thoughts, you have committed murder in your heart.” I asked everyone if they’d ever gotten mad at someone and plotted a way to get revenge. I know I have. They all agreed they had, so we all agreed we had someone we needed to forgive.

When they got to the station they were to think of someone they were mad at right now, and write that person’s name in the salt (this time because of class size, we wrote the names on paper). After they had prayed and forgiven the person they were to erase the name in the salt just as God has erased their sins.

Now we had a giant class and not enough teachers, so instead we had them write the person’s name and tear the name up into little bitty pieces to simulate how God had forgotten their sin just as much.

Be true to your spouse

Pray for marriages. It is hard to make a marriage work in this day and age. It is easy to stray, it is easy to decide it’s not worth it, and it is easy to just give up.  So we prayed for marriages, their parents, and the people they knew.

• We prayed for marriages to be strengthened.
• We prayed for spouses to put a priority on date night.
• We prayed for parents to be unified in front of their kids.
• We prayed for kind words when the couple is angry.

For this one I did not have a concrete plan, so we drew pictures as we prayed.

Do not steal

We all agreed we don’t really steal from stores, but after a bit of coaxing from me, we talked about how we steal time. We waste time, and we put off things we are supposed to do.

I gave each person a picture of a clock, and on the back, they drew ways they waste time. As an example for me, I get distracted by Facebook and spend way too much time on Facebook when I should be doing other things. I also get lost in a good book and have been known to not get work done because I’m reading. That is irresponsible of me. We all confessed the areas we struggle with, and prayed for God to help us use our time better.

Do not lie about your neighbor

My understanding of this particular verse is mainly in reference to lieing in a court. Obviously, these kids are not likely to be in court anytime soon. However, there are good odds they’ve lied about a brother or sister to their parents. Maybe to get themselves out of trouble, or maybe to get their brother or sister into trouble.

Either way, it is something that needs to be confessed.

They were each given a sheet of paper and encouraged to confess what they had done to the person. I told them they did not have to give the letter to the person if they did not feel comfortable, but I encouraged them to do so.

Do not be envious of others.

This idea also was based on a slip of paper. Every kid knows someone who has something they want, whether it’s as big as an X-Box or as small as the GI Joe toy they really want.  Either way, they really want it. On the one side they drew a picture of the item they really wanted. After drawing that item, they were challenged to confess their jealousy and envy.

Then they flipped over the paper and drew what it was they already had, and took the time to thank God for what they’d been given.

And that is my 10 Commandments Prayer stations

Where I got some of my inspiration for these 10 Commandments interactive prayers

• How to pray the 10 Commandments
• Prayers based on the 10 Commandments