Our family prayer day for London

Now that Esther, Eli and Jemimah were part of the journey with us, we wanted to find ways to make sure they were fully involved. We felt that it was important for them to 'own' the move as well as us and not feel like we were imposing this on them, though I am sure there are moments when they feel like that.

We decided to devote a day in the Easter Holidays to fast and pray as a family.

This is how it went...

We floated the idea past the kids and they were all up for it. We talked about fasting, what it meant and agreed that they would each fast from a particular thing during the day. Esther wanted to try fasting from breakfast and lunch, despite my best efforts to explain how she might feel as a result! Eli and Jemimah fasted from any 'screen time' and Tim and I fasted from food during the day.

We planned the day beforehand, knowing that the kids tend to respond better to a bit of structure and divided up the day so that everyone had a turn to lead something.

Eli and I had the morning slot to look at 'worries and fears.'

Tim and Jemimah took the lunchtime slot and covered praying for a house.

Esther had the evening slot and had requested to look at 'hearing from God'

So that was the plan! And it went pretty well.

Eli and I had sat the night before and planned what we were going to do. The five of us sat in a circle on the floor in the lounge. Eli had made a poster about London, which he put in the middle. We then asked each person to write on post-it notes anything they felt worried or fearful about to do with moving to London. All of us wrote the post-its and placed them in the middle. We then went round and read them out - we discovered that we all felt the same sorts of things. So, all of us had written that we were worried about making new friends. It helped the kids to see that we understood how they felt. Eli and I had printed out some Bible verses on bits of paper that we placed around the circle to help us pray. So we each took a Bible verse and used to it to pray for one of the worries. To end this part, we flipped the post-its and wrote anything we could think of that was positive about moving to London, so we had everything from; being closer to Nanny and Grandad to being able to spot more super-cars to might see an Arsenal football player!!

A bit later on, Tim and Jemimah asked us to sit round the dining room table. They had planned what they were going to do and then Jemimah wanted to do her own thing...which is the prerogative of a 6 year old! So Tim had a large piece of paper in the centre of the table and he had drawn a house on it. Jemimah had her own piece of paper and drew her own house! Tim got us all to write things around the house that were important to us about a new house. Things like; a bedroom for each child, a garden to play football in or close to a park, somewhere for Tim's tools (he's a self-employed builder), close to someone else from Rev Church, not on main road so Yoda the cat is safe, a room for guests to stay in, large downstairs space to have meetings in our home as well as a games room! We then prayed for each thing and asked God for a house in London together.

We then went out bowling...(I won...though because we had the sides up apparently it 'didn't count'...tut!!)

To update on how the fasting was going....Esther was pretty grumpy, Jemimah forgot that she was fasting from screen and by the end of the bowling I was ready to eat one of the children! We headed to McDonalds to break the fast and all was well.

Back home, Esther had prepared the lounge atmospherically with mood lighting, cushions on the floor, etc ready for her 'Hearing from God' session. She had also put some pens and paper out for Jemimah as we weren't sure how much she would engage with, but wanted her to feel part of it. This was a good move! So, we assembled and Esther led us through a 12 page PowerPoint presentation... it was great :) She explained what hearing from God was and different ways that this happens. She then played a worship song and asked us to write or draw anything we felt we wanted to. We then shared what we'd drawn. Tim had drawn a set of footprints and felt that God was saying 'I go with you wherever you go.' I wrote a poem (unheard of and definitely not sharing it on here!) and Eli drew a house. Esther then explained that we would be praying for three things; Schools, Friends, House and we would take each one in turn, listen to a worship song and pray in our heads then share any words, phrases or pictures we felt God was saying to us.

Can I just say that this was SUCH a fun thing to do with the kids. Helping them learn in simple ways how to tune their ears and hearts into what God is saying is such a good thing to do. And we were so proud of how Esther led us in this.

Esther collated all of the things we shared together as a result of praying. I'll give you an example of each thing;

Schools: Tim and I both felt that there would be something noticeable about the railings.

Friends: I had a picture of Jemimah in a garden of flowers and felt that God was preparing friends for her who shared their names with flowers.

House: Eli saw the name 'George' and wondered if it was a road name or something else.

Now with anything like this, we pray about them and hold them lightly at the same time - we are entirely fallible and get things wrong, etc. It was more about creating some space to listen to God together as a family.

Though if we end up on George Street that would be very cool....!!

Next Blog Post: The call back