How long should Teenagers Pray

Aladeloba Babatunde
4 min readNov 28, 2018

I have interacted with a lot of Teenagers, especially in church and what most teenagers don’t like to hear is prayers.

Teenagers enjoy worship sessions, High praise, church games and sometimes Bible activities. They want to know if Abraham consulted Sarah before going to offer Isaac as an offering and who Cain got married to. Teenagers would ask if they can be in a relationship, with kisses and hugs, but not sex.

However, when you introduce the subject of prayers, it feels like you want to hassle them. They are very okay, with you telling them, why to pray and the benefits of prayers, and better still would have you pray for them.

One Teenager, Daniella said prayer becomes boring and stressful to her, and that her mother should fill that role for her.

So I asked about her personal prayer life, and she says it’s about 30 minutes per week. Well, it’s not bad I responded in a bid to encourage her, that the time spent praying could increase to about an hour weekly.

She abruptly said to me, that God would understand she is a Teenager if she doesn’t pray for long.

Prayer is simply communicating with God. It is expressing yourself to God with words and thoughts.

Prayer doesn’t necessarily need you to scream at the top of your voice or stamping your feet on the ground.

Prayer is having conversations with God and not complaining to him.

As a Teenager, you can talk to God about your academics, choice of career, your father’s finances and your high school crush.

Prayer helps you establish the desired paternal relationship between you and God.

Prayer sets you apart from your high school or college mates. While they see God as a being that only the pastors talk to. You have access to God as a father.

Most teens don’t actually dislike the idea of prayers, but the perception that prayers should take longer time than the other spiritual modules.

How can the Pastor ask us to pray for two hours, Daniella asked? That’s a long time and I can go out of words and petitions, she concluded.

The Duration we spend in prayers influences our relationship with God.

You see it’s like the time we spend hanging out with our college friends. We sit next to them in the shuttle, hold their hands in the hallway and have lunch together at the cafeteria. More time with them affects our conversations and relationship positively.

Likewise, the more time we spend praying, increases the godlike relationship.

However, Teenagers can always start from short minutes to longer duration.

Increased time in prayers, influences the desire to remain in God’s presence.

The nature and importance of the conversation also require how long you spend praying.

There are petitions that need you to spend 30 minutes, some two hours and other requires conversations on-the-go, where you can be in prayers for about two days

There are no time limits

The teenage prayer life is without limits in duration, just because you are a young person.

Most teenagers would say that God does not need them to pray long, because they are still rather young and He would not want to stress them.

They claim God would rather have them spend more time with their academics, learning domestic and social skills as a defense to avoid the prayer time.

God, however, proposes that you spend more time with Him during your Teenage years.

David and Joseph were Teenagers when the presence of God was already abiding with them. It’s a testimony that they were already in communion with God.

The more time spent with God, not only creates a relationship and his presence around you.

Prayer allows you access into what your future will look like and the roadmap to get there. This was the secret of Joseph that he saw his future at seventeen, and could not contain his excitement.

I guess we all want to know what our future will look like, so we don’t go in a circle — and how we will get there. God can tell you if you would be a chef, a business owner, or a queen Like Esther, and more time in prayers would let you know the approach.

It’s exciting to know ahead how glorious you future is right?

Like the first days, with your best friend, when it took a few weeks for you guys to hit off. There are also baby steps in hanging out with God, but consistency will see the Holy Spirit help you remain in God’s company.

You can start today, even from the hallway.

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