God loves

[The theme of ‘God loves’ is not as simple as it seems. Does God love sinners? If so, does that mean he accepts them? What sort of love is it? How do Jesus and faith fit it? And how does all this relate to young children? To read more discussion about these issues, please read the God loves? page.]

Here are some ideas for each page of the book:

1. God made me and God loves me.

2. God made these babies and God loves them.

3. God loves every baby.

4. God loves this girl.

5. And God loves this boy. God loves every girl and every boy.

6. God loves my friends.

7. God loves all my family and all the people I know.

8. God loves this man. (What do you think is in the boxes?)

9. God loves this lady. She sells fruit and vegetables.

10. God loves all these people. (What do you think some of them do?)

11. God loves all the people who live in my street. God loves all people everywhere.

12. God’s book, the Bible, tells us that God loves me and God loves everyone in the world! He showed us he loves us by sending Jesus.

13. John 3, verse 16, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son.” Thank you God for your Son, Jesus.”

14. Thank you God that you love us so much.

Making your own pictorial prayer diary

Take photos of, or your child (or an older sibling) could draw, your child and other family members (including extended family) as well as friends. You might have one or two people (or one family) per photo.

You could put the photos in a mini album or a book.

Using mini album:

When praying with your child at a special time in the day, you could use your photo album book, and turn to one (for a really little one) or a few photos and pray for that person/those people. Here are some ideas of what you could pray. For the really little ones you might pray just one sentence:

Dear God…
…Thank for Aunty Jess.
…Thank you that you love Aunty Jess.
…Please help Aunty Jess to know how much you love her.
Amen

Using a book:

Older ones could be encouraged to pray more specifically for the people in their book. So, if your photos are digital, you could print one page for each photo (with the photo at the top of the page). Put the pages in a book or folder. Or paste printed photos into a book.

Decide how many people you will pray for each time you pray (it might be one, or it might be more).

You could talk about (and then write down under the photo) a specific prayer point for each person. So you might want to pray for Aunty Jess and her sore leg, or a cousin might be starting school, or a friend might be moving to a new home a long way away.

As well as praying a special prayer point for each person, continue to pray general prayer points.

By way of encouragement, I’d like to share a personal story of our little friend Hannah. Just 2 days before her 2nd birthday, my husband Ian was admitted to hospital (for about a week). For the first few days he was too sick to have visitors, but once he was starting to improve, Hannah’s family came to the hospital to visit. For quite a while after that visit Hannah prayed for Ian (she called him ‘Eee’) and her prayer consisted of ‘Eee bed’. It was very special to know that she was praying for ‘Eee’ and her way of expressing the fact that he was sick was by saying ‘bed’—she knew he wasn’t supposed to be there in that bed. We were very grateful that God did help Ian to be well enough to get out of his hospital bed and come home and fully recover.

Song

‘God loves the Postman’ from A very, very big God.

Back to top