How can I explain to my children what prayer is?

Polls conducted in North America by various groups over the last five years show that there's a surprising amount of prayer going on.

88% of us pray
78% describe prayer as an important part of daily life.
63% pray often.
25% pray occasionally.
65% believe that they've had specific answers to prayer.
79% believe that praying helps speed physical recovery.
24% believe that they've been cured through prayer.

An amazing this about prayer is how universal it is. It seems to be a natural response and activity of the human heart. No matter where you search in the world or in history, it's impossible to find a society that doesn't have some concept of prayer.

God created us as his children, and since our relationship with him was intended to be not merely a great and wonderful part of our lives but the very foundation on which we would grow, learn, and accomplish, he wired us for prayer. He not only created us with all the built-in hardware and software for communication with him, so that we could talk with him on a regular basis, but he also created all of life to work in harmony with prayer.

God created everything in harmony with the foundational idea of our communicating with him as our Father. Prayer is a natural part of who we are and how we were created, and it's part of the structure that makes our lives work.

Over the years, the whole idea of prayer and what prayer is and does has gotten comlicated and confused. As society's ideas of who God is were "fuzzified," so were our ideas about prayer. If we want to teach our children about prayer- what it is and how to go about it- we need to bring it back to its most basic and simple level: prayer is talking with God, just as conversation is communicating with other people.

Prayer isn't a goal unto itself, or a religious activity that we do to get on God's good side. Prayer is simply talking and communicating with our loving Heavenly Father, who wants to teach us, guide us, provide for us, protect us, care for us, and help us have a full life and be all that he created us to be. We must be careful that we don't teach our children about prayer as if it were some mysterious activity. It should be no more complicated for them than communicating with us as their parents.