Read the following instructions and explain them to the students or to the family, depending on your circumstances. As a class or as a family, make or set up a prayer request container.

As a class or as a family, this activity involves making a container for prayer requests and using it as a tool to reinforce that we can pray with confidence and expect God’s answers. If you are meeting in the classroom, each student can use and decorate a large envelope. Ask the students to write the memory verse somewhere on the envelope. If at home with the family, involve everyone —young and old. Find a container (shoe box, oatmeal box, a big jar, etc.) to decorate or to use as is. You may want to write the memory verse and place it near or on the container.

If working on this in the classroom, invite the students to decide if this is going to be a personal prayer tool or one they will share with their families. If it is personal, the students will write requests as they occur, put them in the envelope, and take them out as daily prayer prompts. If working as a family, family members can write requests on index cards or scrap paper and place requests in the container during the day. Urge your preteens to help younger siblings who are unable to write clearly. As a family, take the requests from the container at a designated time each day/evening, and pray specifically about each one (or a determined number of them, making sure each person’s request is represented).

Be sure to take the requests that have been answered and move them to an answered prayer praise wall. This can be a closet door, a wall in the house, the refrigerator, or whatever works in your home. If there is no space for this, put them in a file folder or notebook that gets opened daily during prayer time. The idea is to see the answers and be reminded that God answers prayer; as you continue to pray, you will know more and more to expect answers. When the family (or the student who chooses to do this alone) prays, take time to thank God for the individual items on the answered prayer wall and thank God that He can be counted on to answer the requests that you are continuing to bring before Him.

Even though we know God answers prayer, sometimes we are very surprised when and how He answers our prayers. Let’s open our hearts to the opportunity to pray with confidence and expect to see God’s answers to our prayers.

Distribute index cards or scrap paper and pens or pencils. Give preteens an opportunity to fill out some prayer request cards to place in their prayer container. If they are having difficulty thinking of things to pray for, you might suggest some of the following.

• What would you like God to help you stop doing?
• What would you like God to help you start doing?
• What would you like God to help you understand about Him?
• Write the names of those who need to know Jesus as Lord and Savior.
• Who needs healing?
• In what way would you like God to make you more like Him?

Put the requests in the container and encourage students or family members to add to the container daily as requests occur to them. Keep the note cards or scrap paper and pens or pencils near the prayer request container, so requests can be added throughout the day.

You may want to use some or all of this music video as a closing prayer [5:56]:
The Lord’s Prayer – Hillsong Worship