Use this children’s Sunday School lesson to teach kids the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer.
Needed: Bibles, various items, a loaf of store-bought bread
Intro Game: How Did God Make It?
Divide students into groups of two or three. Give each group an item from your home, from around the church, or from your classroom. Tell each group that they have to come up with the steps God used to make that item. Ask them to be as detailed as possible.
Two common steps, for example, would be that God created the raw materials to make the item and gave humans the intelligence and creativity to use those raw materials to make something new.
Give each group approximately 10 minutes to come up with an answer. Then, have each group share what they think. Discuss the steps as a class and see if you can name any other steps God used to make the item or if you can trace item back to God more directly.
Lesson
Introduce the lesson with a short review. Say something like, Last week, we started talking about prayer, and we said that we can always talk to God, can’t we? He’s always listening, and we can talk to Him about anything we want. But there are some things that Jesus told us we should pray about. Jesus taught us how to pray these things in the Lord’s Prayer.
Let’s take some time saying the Lord’s Prayer together again.
Prayer Exercise: The Lord’s Prayer
Say the Lord’s Prayer phrase by phrase with your students a few times in order to help them begin to memorize it.
Lesson continues…
Last week, we learned that we call God “our Father” because He loves us and takes care of us just as our human parents do. And God made us, just like our human parents make us so that we can be born.
We also learned that we call God’s name “holy” or “hallowed” because God is special, and we want to respect Him.
Last, we learned that we pray for God’s Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it in Heaven to show that we want to do God’s will. We want to listen to God and do what He says. And we want to tell other people about God so that they can believe in and listen to Him too. Then, everyone will listen to God on Earth just as everyone listens to Him in Heaven.
Today, we’re going to learn about the rest of what Jesus said in the Lord’s Prayer.
(Read Matthew 6:11.)
“Give us today our daily bread.”
(Show students a loaf of bread.) Where did this bread come from? (The store.)
Where did the store get it? (The bakery that made it.)
Where did the bakery get the wheat and the other ingredients to bake it? (A farmer.)
And who made the wheat grow in the farmer’s field? (God.)
The farmer planted the seed and did his work, but God is the only one who can make something grow. So, I got the bread from the store, the store got it from the bakery, the bakery got the ingredients from a farmer, and the farmer got his ingredients because God made his plants grow.
So, when we pray for God to give us our daily bread, we’re asking God and trusting Him to give us what we need every day because everything we get originally comes from God, just as the ingredients for the bread originally came from God when He made the farmer’s plants grow. Jesus is telling us that we should ask God and trust Him to give us everything we need every day.
(Read Matthew 6:12.)
“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Jesus says that we should ask God to forgive us for our debts, or sins, or transgressions. If you do something wrong, do you want God to forgive you for that wrong thing you did or do you want Him always to stay angry about it?
You want Him to forgive you. And God wants to forgive you for those things. He doesn’t want to stay mad. So, when you do something wrong, Jesus says that we should ask God to forgive us, and He will. It’s as simple as that.
But Jesus also says that we should forgive other people when they do something wrong to us.
(Read Matthew 6:14-15.)
“For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
What does Jesus say we have to do if we want God to forgive us? (We have to forgive other people.)
Why does Jesus say that we should forgive other people when they do something wrong to us?
If God is nice enough to forgive us when we do something wrong, we should be nice enough to forgive other people when they do something wrong. Jesus says that if we don’t forgive other people, God won’t forgive us. We have to be willing to forgive others just as God forgives us.
(Read Matthew 6:13.)
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
The last thing Jesus says we should pray for is that God would “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” Who is the evil one? (The devil.)
And what is the devil always trying to get us to do?
The devil is always trying to make us do wrong things or to not believe in God. The devil wants to make it so that we go to Hell when we die and not Heaven.
But when we pray for God to “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one,” we’re asking God to help us not do the wrong things that the devil wants us to do. God can give us the strength to say no to the devil and to do the right things. God is much stronger than the devil.
So, remember, we ask God to give us our daily bread because everything we need originally comes from God. We ask God to forgive us for our sins and remember that God wants us to forgive other people when they sin against us. And we pray for God to help us stand up against the devil and to do the right things instead of the wrong things.
Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer a few more times together and see how well we can all remember it.
Prayer Exercise: The Lord’s Prayer
Say the Lord’s Prayer phrase by phrase with your students a few times in order to help them begin to memorize it.
Activity: Acting It Out
Divide students into groups of two or three. Have each group decide on and act out a scene in which someone does something wrong to another person, but the person they wronged forgives them instead of trying to get back at them or get them in trouble.
Game: Resisting Temptation
Divide students into two teams for a slightly modified game of Red Rover. The teams line up facing each other on either side of your play area. They link hands with the students next to them.
You’ll call the name of one of the students on Team A. That student must then break away from his team and try to break through the linked hands of two members of Team B. If that student breaks through, they get a point for their team. If Team B resists the charging student, Team B gets a point.
Next, call a student from Team B to try to break through Team A’s line.
Play as long as time permits, alternating which team is charging and which is defending.
At the end, explain to students that a member of the opposite team is like a temptation trying to get into our hearts. The devil sends temptations toward us all the time because he wants us to do something wrong. But we have to pray for God to make us strong that we can resist those temptations. We can’t let them break through.
You can also find this lesson for Kindle or in print in my book, Jesus Teaches on the Mountain.