The biggest goal in our third-grade classroom was to honor God with all we did while growing to know Him more and more. We studied the Bible and memorized large sections of scripture as part of our curriculum. We also discussed what we learned about God through our other academic subjects and through our personal experiences. Our science curriculum let us dive into three units for an entire trimester each. I’ll have to confess that I was not a science-enthusiast as a student (maybe because so much of my experience was “read the textbook and answer the questions”), but I grew to love and appreciate rocks, space, and insects more each year as I watched my students wonder at the enormity, complexity, and organization of creation.
My very favorite part of every week was our Friday prayer time. We set aside a longer period of that morning to do ACTS prayer together: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. The students loved to turn off the lights and get cozy. Then we would begin adoring God. They would take turns calling out their current favorites of His attributes…..”You are holy! You are awesome! You have the biggest imagination ever! You are beautiful! You are powerful! You are exciting!”… I would do a corporate confession (because I realized it probably wasn’t wise to have some of those characters calling out their latest sins), and then we would go back to the call-out method for thanksgiving and prayer requests.
What excited me is that the students’ adoration often showed what they were growing to understand about God through our studies. When we studied space or colossal numbers in math, students began to call out “You are infinite! You are bigger than a googolplex!” When we studied Greek mythology (contrasting the Greeks’ beliefs about their gods’ characters with our God’s), they began calling out “You are kind! You are trustworthy! You are merciful!” After studying the book of Judges they called “You are forgiving!” and after Esther, “You are sovereign!” And when we learned new vocabulary words from reading Charlotte’s Web, they added “You are humble! You are radiant!”
Of course, this practice of praying adoration together had to be preceded by instruction. The guidelines were:
1) This time is for God’s glory, not ours. We put the attention on Him, not us. It’s not the time to make someone laugh. Also, when our focus is on God, there’s no such thing as messing up. He will love what we offer.
2) After calling out an adoration, wait until everyone else has had a chance to add one – or at least a big pause – before you call out another.
3) It’s OK to repeat the same thing as someone else if that’s what you also had on your heart to say. After all, if you were God, wouldn’t you love to hear every single person say you were awesome?!
In my final class, just before spring break when self-control was at a traditional low, we switched to a method of going around the room in a pattern with each person saying one adoration each. Students were allowed to say “pass” if they didn’t want to add anything, but that was rarely the case.
Now that nearly all families are homeschooling during this coronavirus quarantine, I encourage you to try group adoration. You might like setting the mood like our class did with dimmed lights and maybe a candle. Make sure to set expectations first and explain why we do this. You could begin with a scripture about praise. In this unsettling time, I’ve personally been echoing David in Psalm 71:14. After he told of all the discouraging and fearful things going on in his life at that time, David said, “But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more.” I hope your experience will be a blessing like our class prayer time was. We were drawn together in humbleness. It was seriously amazing to see both rowdy and shy third-graders basking together in God’s goodness and wanting to hang onto the moment.
In fact, this practice was so profound to us, that in year 6 on the Tuesday morning I received a text that my father-in-law had died and tears began streaming down my face, my class asked if we could stop and do our special prayer together. They instinctively knew that this was how to take care of me and invite God to fill our midst with His presence. I love them so much for that!
If you try this practice, I’d love to know what your family’s favorite words of praise are. Feel free to leave them in the comments. I’d also love to know what other ways you find to naturally foster adoration.
With joy,
Alison
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