Wednesday 28 November 2007

WFMW - Prayer Book

I should spend more time in prayer than I do. But I used to spend far less. For a while I had the "And God bless Mummy and Daddy and XYZ" prayers, where you name everyone you can think of just before you go to sleep, but don't actually pray for anything in particular. These prayers were short but rambling, and certainly were not helping my spiritual growth.

Well, on quite a few blogs I read about people making prayer walls or cork boards, where they had prayer points and reminders of different people that they wanted to pray for. So I did that. It worked all right... sort of.

You see, my wall is not often where I am. I spend between 2 adn 5 nights a week at people's houses other than my own. When you consider that I then have work, church, and various other activities, there are times when I'm barely home. And that is where my wall is (you know, holding up my house).

So I needed a new solution. In the end I decided to make a book of all of my prayer points, with a page for each major prayer point, and post-its signifying each major area.

My areas include:
1. Me
2. My future husband and family
3. Non-Christian family and friends
4. The church and Christian friends
5. Other

Each section has a variety of sub-headings (one per page), with specific prayer points and scriptural references in dot points. For example:

In the "Me" section, the pages are headed as follows:
- Spiritual growth
- Work
- Finances
- Health

My future husband and family section has the following subheadings:
- Husband
- Future sons
- Future daughters
- All future decendants

This book has been hugely helpful in my prayer life. Firstly, it goes where I go. Secondally, I can fit way more in it than I could on my wall. Third, because it is broken into sections I can pray for one section one day, the next the next, etc. I know where I am up to. Fourth, I know I am not missing anyone or anything. And finally, and most importantly, it means that I pray more regularly.

And that definitely Works For Me!

3 comments:

The Proverbs Wife said...

This is wonderful. Prayer is a very important part of my life as well. I was just talking to my daughter yesterday about praying for her future spouse. She's only 14 and wants to date. I told her that instead of focusing on what you can't do focus on what you can. I said "instead of spending your energy wanting to have a boyfriend to fit in spend that time praying for him"

Anonymous said...

I like the idea. It sounds similar to a journal in some ways.
I think a simple one would work great for children too, because they sometimes forget who or what to pray for. Thanks, that's definitely something I can customize for myself.

Ronnica said...

I like your ideas, and I'll probably incorporate some of them into my own. I just got a get $10 off a $20 purchase at Office Max, so I think I'll use it to get cute stuff to make a prayer journal. Thanks for the tips!