Prayer: how often? about what?

This is the third article in our series on prayer. Each day we are looking at a particular aspect of prayer and examining what the Bible has to say about it. Today we will examine how often and about what kinds of things we should be praying. We will also look at some practical applications.

The Bible gives several specific things about which we should pray. I would encourage you to do a word study on prayer to find these specifics. However, I found that in summary, we are commanded to pray always about everything.

Ephesians 6:16-18 says, "In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints."

1 Thessalonians 5:17 sums things up by saying, "Pray without ceasing."

That's a pretty big order! So where do we start? Here are some practical applications I have found helpful.

Begin by making it a habit to talk to God. The most important thing is to just start. I am giving you some ideas to help take your prayer life deeper, but do not be intimidated by them. Especially if you are not in the habit of praying, don’t worry about formulas or guidelines. Just begin by getting into a habit of talking to God regularly. Once you are doing that, you may or may not choose to implement some of my suggestions. These are just ideas of things that have really helped me.

Find a way to help organize your prayer life. Currently I have found it easiest to use The Busy Mom’s Guide to Prayer: A Guided Prayer Journal by Lisa Whelchel for my long-term requests and a separate sheet for short-term requests and answers. What I love about Lisa Whelchel's prayer guide is that it includes several topics about which all moms want to be praying: praising God, praying for our husbands, our children, ourselves, etc. For each category, she has done a lot of the work for you breaking each category down into specific requests and listing a Bible verse and prayer prompt to go with each request. For example, in praying for my children, I pray for their future spouse, sibling relationships, respect for authority, walk with God, obedience, holiness, purity, self-control, schooling, heart attitudes, and 10 other things. The book is set up in a 20 day rotation. This way if you pray 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, you will pray through all your requests each month. There is also plenty of room for you to add your own categories and specific prayer requests. For example, I have added "missionaries" as a category, then chosen 20 specific requests to pray for the missionaries we support. This book has been such a help to me. I can't recommend it highly enough!

I've already hit on this, but another suggestion is to use Scripture to guide your prayers. I was originally challenged in this when I heard of a Sunday School class who would take prayer requests, but before praying for them, would find a specific Scripture verse pertaining to each so that they could be sure they were praying according to God's will. What an example! I am sure that class saw many requests answered in the affirmative! The Busy Mom's Guide already includes some Scripture prompts for you. My favorite on-line prayer resources containing many Scripture prayer prompts are http://www.kindompraying.com/ and http://www.prayerclosetministries.org/. He also has some excellent Bible studies on prayer. My husband and I recently went through "Standing In The Gap: Developing Intercessory Prayer Power" by him and were greatly mutually challenged by it.

Tomorrow we will examine how the outline ACTS can be helpful in our prayer lives.