It is my firm belief that children who learn early on about prayer, and can point to specific times in their life of divine provision and answered prayer, will carry those lessons with them into adulthood as a foundation for their own personal prayer lives. ~ Rosilind Juric

I clearly recall the morning we all gathered in the living room for our morning devotions. Daddy in his plush, brown easy chair, mom on the couch with us girls on either side, and my brother across from us on the love seat. The need daddy shared with us didn’t seem odd at all.  We were used to praying for needs of the home, so our hearts were not anxious as daddy shared that the mortgage payment was due the next day.  He shared with us the exact amount that he needed to pay the payment on time. We prayed together that the Lord would provide, and then went about our day.

Somewhere around noon my father burst into the house yelling and wildly waving an envelope about in the air! For a moment I thought he had completely taken leave of his senses; that is until he called us all together to show us a check that someone had sent us in the mail for the exact amount we had prayed for that morning.  What is amazing is that the person who sent the check had to have sent the check before  we prayed for it to have arrived the same day.

I can recount many such stories from my childhood.  And while we knew God as our provider, we were also encouraged to cultivate a life of relational prayer.  This was modeled for us so well in my daddy’s life. I knew that on any given morning I could wake up and find him kneeling at his easy chair with his head buried in the cushions, praying and weeping before God. This picture is a comfort to me even today.

It is my firm belief that children who learn early on about prayer, and can point to specific times in their life of divine provision and answered prayer, will carry those lessons with them into adulthood as a foundation for their own personal prayer lives.  When they face their own crises of faith, these times stand out for them as stone markers, pointing them back to the times when God was faithful.

It is for this reason that the Good Morning Girls Children’s Resources Team not only wanted to provide you with a top-notch companion children’s manual filled with activities and resources that reinforce the tender relationship God longs to have with them.  We have also designed a prayer journal for both women and children!  There are two kinds of children’s manuals: one for boys and one for girls.  These journals provide a daily prayer focus, spaces each week for personal requests, and more.

The Anything Children’s Manual correlates with our SOAP studies, so that you can use the daily verses in your family devotions, as well as reinforce them with the daily observations and activities provided in the children’s manual.  We even have alternative activities for mothers of toddlers.

Additionally, we have provided memory verse cards for each week for you to print off and use with your children. They are sized so you can attach them to index cards (Hint: there is a special activity in the first manual for this). To help with memorization, we have provided a number of tips and activities that aid in memorizing the weekly verses.

These manuals are packed full of helpful advice, fun projects, and colorful graphics. But best of all, they are FREE! I can guarantee that you will find them useful, not only for this study; you will certainly refer back to them over and over again.

I pray that these materials will be a blessing to you and your children as this summer we travel together on a deeper journey of prayer.

Serving with a passion for children to know God more,

Rosilind Juric

GMG Children’s Resources Team

Note: If you are a GMG subscriber, these children’s resources are listed at the bottom of your email. Look for: 1. Anything for Kids, 2. Dear God for Boys, 3. Dear God for Girls, 4. Dear God for Women

Not a GMG subscriber? Subscribe today and you will receive these documents Friday morning in your inbox, along with our 1. Study
Guide-Anything: Online Bible Study with GMG 2. Reading Plan-Anything: Online Bible Study GMG

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I would like to send out a special thanks to the GMG Children’s Resources Team, as well as Amanda Buhler, for pouring their passion, time and talents into making these wonderful resources for our children! ~ Whitney

GMG Children’s Resources Team

Rosilind Jukic

Edurne Mencia

Linda Wells-Harr

Bethany Grove

Catina Klinzmann Pendleton

Nikki Rosenzweig Hinkle

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**For more info on our upcoming Online Summer Study , click here.

**Still need to enroll for the GMG Summer Bible/Book Study?  You can find all of the direct links here.

{On our third official day of summer break, this is just one example of how we’ve been spending our time - making homemade swords out of water noodles, PVC pipe and duct tape.  Haha!}

Aaahhh, welcome summer!  We’ve been waiting for you…

I don’t know about you, but our family has been counting down the days, longing for this day to arrive. I adore the much less structured schedule that no school brings – ok, let’s be honest - for about the first week. Ha. While we absolutely love being together with far fewer responsibilities, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s tricky having varying ages of kids in the house all day every day with no certain plan. Eleven, ten, seven and four… that’s quite a range of interests, abilities, concentration levels, and ideas on what’s entertaining.

And we haven’t even talked about four different sets of emotions yet. Oh, dear. Wait, make that six.

So, the longer we venture into this parenting thing, the more we learn about how our children work best. Every child is different, but this much I know – every kid needs some amount of structure. Some thrive on more and some on less, but their worlds run much more smoothly when there is some predictability involved. So instead of leaving our summer to chance (within God’s sovereign plan, obviously…), I must plan enough structure in each day to set them up for the best possible scenario for success. Because when I skip the intentional part, all that’s left to show for our special time together are way too many wasted days, and not nearly enough love. Enough said.

I’ve jotted down my summer ideas and have somewhat of a master plan in place, but I’m still working on tweaking the fine details. We have bigger events scheduled each month, weekly activities that we’ll revisit, all the way down to daily time slots set aside for reading, chores, service projects and honing spiritual disciplines. Not scheduled so much that we can’t change it up if necessary, but scheduled enough so we won’t all completely loose our minds by week two.  Heh.

And at the top of our list?

Bible reading.

As fun activities begin to fill in our days, it would be easy to take the lazy summer approach and let this habit – both for me and my kids – slip a bit over the next few weeks. You and I both know that it’s tempting.   But recently more than ever, we’ve come to the realization that we need to intentionally invest in the ministry before us while we still have the opportunity: training all of our children (not forgetting the little ones, who are especially eager to know more and more of God’s Word), and encouraging our older boys, who need to be honing some of these spiritual disciplines for themselves, in the hopes of establishing some beautiful lifelong habits.

Before it sounds like we have it all together…  only the Lord knows what the four year old is retaining while she squirms and goes off on a thousand tangents and distracts her brothers and hangs off of the couch upside down during our Bible readings.  Haha.

No matter. We’re not perfect. But we’re giving it our best shot, and we’re begging God to do the rest.

To work in our kids’ hearts. To change them to be more like Him. Then to empower them to make an impact for Christ in their own little worlds.

But guess who’s usually the one who ends up being challenged and changed and blessed the most?  You got it…

Me.

Oh, and don’t you worry.  Being intentional means that there will still be plenty of time to play. We’ll fit in nights at the ball field, popsicles for no reason, water fights, cookouts with friends, firefly catching, picnics, star gazing, mugs at the local root beer stand, and fires in the fire pit. And that’s just getting started, ya’ll…

It is summer, after all.

At His feet,

**Stay tuned THIS WEEK for the exciting release of Good Morning Girls’ Children’s Resources to accompany our upcoming Online Summer Study (a perfect way for both you AND your kids to intentionally pursue Bible reading this summer!)!

**For more info on our upcoming Online Summer Study , click here.

**Still need to enroll for the GMG Summer Bible/Book Study?  You can find all of the direct links here.

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**ANNOUNCING OUR GIVEAWAY WINNERS!!!*** 

Get excited!!  Thomas Nelson (thanks Debbie & Emily!) has been so generous and has given us 15 paperback copies and 15 digital copies of Jennie Allen’s book, Anything.

And the winners are…

Paperback Winners:

Ebook winners:

Congratulations! You will be receiving an email tomorrow requesting your address for those who won a paperback copy of Anything!

THANK YOU to everyone who entered in our giveaway!!!