One of our top goals as Bible teachers working with young people should be to encourage them to participate in spiritual disciplines outside of class. In particular, helping them develop strong prayer and Bible study routines outside of class, which will make it easier for them to be who God created them to be.
One of the problems when creating a new habit is remembering to do the thing you want to add to your day. Who hasn’t made a goal of exercising daily only to forget until bedtime that you had planned to exercise earlier in the day? Prayer and Bible reading are no different. Without some sort of reminder or prompt, your Bible students will easily forget their commitment to daily time with God for days in a row. And we all know the tendency to give up a goal is strong when we have already forgotten to do it for several days.
So what are some prompts you can encourage your Bible students to use to remind themselves to read the Bible and pray each day? Here are a few of our favorites.
- Common daily objects. Have students identify something they see at least once a day to remind them to read the Bible and multiple times a day for prayer. Have them attach these two objects to the goal as prompts. So, for example, if the student always eats cereal for breakfast, a box of cereal would be the reminder to read the Bible. If the student sees the cereal box at other times, encourage him or her to read a few verses then, too. For prayer, they might choose their toothbrush if they brush their teeth multiple times a day or some other frequent, regularly seen object.
- Sticky notes. Give each student a pack of sticky notes. Encourage them to place reminders where they are sure they will see them. They might choose the headboard of their bed, the bathroom mirror and their locker at school.
- Alarms. This won’t work as well at school, but can they set the alarm on their phone for a specific time each day they want to read the Bible and pray?
- Texts. This works well if they want some encouragement to follow through on their goals. Agree to text them at a specific time each day when they will be in a place that makes it easy to read the Bible and pray. Sending a sweet reminder text and perhaps adding a bit of encouragement may work better in the beginning than self reminders.
- Paper Bibles and prayer rocks. It’s hard to ignore a Bible or a rock with the word “pray” painted on it when it’s on top of your pillow or at your place at the breakfast table. Sometimes old school, obvious reminders work the best.
Helping your Bible students find effective prompts can make it much more likely they will read the Bible and pray independently. It’s worth a little extra time and effort to help them find the prompts that work best for them.