Baptists need not resort to the covenantal argument of paedobaptists for light in regards to teaching our children to pray but nor should we react against it declaring it inappropriate to teach them to pray. The later is a more grievous error than ever was paedobaptism.
While we may not confess with our Presbyterian brethren that our children are members of the Covenant of Grace, we should confess them to be children of great privilege and blessing as they have been born into a home wherein Christ is nigh. Furthermore, Christian parents are enjoined in the word of God with obligations in regards to the rearing our children.
We are to raise our children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Teaching them to pray to God our Father through Christ the Son is an important part of that nurture.
That the efficacy of prayers are dependent upon Christ’s mediation is not mutually exclusive to this duty. Rather, as we teach children to pray in Christ to the Father, we bear upon their consciences by the power of the Holy Spirit with all the more efficacy the reality of and the need for Christ.
The one raised in prayer from an early age has the realities of the gospel brought ever closer to him by this contemplation as he matures to the fact that these prayers are only as good as their object and, to some degree, his hold upon it. I say “to some degree” regarding the later because while efficacious prayer requires faith, none pray with perfect faith before glory.
It is hyper-Calvinism that would separate such means of the gospel in the Christian home from the means of grace.
Two questions….
1. Is the Lord pleased with the prayers of the unrepentant? Aren’t they an offence to Him?
2. Isn’t there a danger of giving children a false sense of spiritual security, by training them to pray without being saved? They might regard themselves as “half-Christians” (just like those who are sprinkled as infants, but never go beyond living a decent life and attending church faithfully).