Prayer Journaling: The In-Depth Method

A number of years ago I had the chance to attend a Sunday School class based on a book called The Hour That Changes the World by Dick Eastman. In it Eastman explains a method you can use to guide your prayers so you can easily spend an hour in prayer. He uses the motivation of the example of the disciples in the garden and how Jesus kept coming back and finding them asleep.  And he asks them, “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” to urge us on to extended times of prayer.

Extended prayer is a bit daunting, yes? For some of us, praying for 10 minutes seems like a long time. Especially if your prayer time happens after you’ve placed your head on your pillow at the end of a long day. Then do you find yourself falling asleep in mid-sentence to God? You know, “God, thank you for a wonderful day. I pray for Janine as she struggles with her kids. May You give her wisdom to know what…..zzzzzzzzzz”

Or maybe you get distracted in your prayers.
Distraction can be bad if it dominates your prayers, but it is okay to go off on tangents now and then. Sometimes we forget that prayer is a CONVERSATION with God and not a one-sided one where WE do all the talking.
God may use a tangent to get our attention. He may call to mind a name of someone you are to pray for. Or He may call to mind an incident that happened during the day that you need to confess or need to apologize to the person about. So follow the thoughts God may bring up when you are listening to Him but don’t let them take over the rest of your prayer time. You know, like when this has happened: “God, thank you for a wonderful day. The weather was beautiful for the picnic. And thank you for keeping everyone safe. Especially with all the bees around. Hmmm I wonder if Aunt Clara got her cookies along with her? Oh, and I forgot to tell her about the program at school next week. Oh good grief. I need to get some shoes for Sarah to wear. I wonder what size she wears now. Did I turn on the dishwasher? Ooops, sorry God. Ummm please forgive me for skipping my devotions this morning when I was getting ready for the reunion. Please be with my hubby tomorrow on his business trip. Protect him and bring him home safely. I wonder if he packed his cell phone charger? He always forgets that.”



Below is a prayer sheet I created using the information laid out in Eastman’s book.  I also created a description sheet to use to remind myself what each segment of the prayer time was to consist of.  For a better understanding of this method of prayer, I would strongly recommend reading the book. Especially if you are serious about learning this method. I will say that I experienced my most meaningful times of prayer when I used this method habitually. So, yes, by saying that I guess you can tell that I do not use this method all the time. When I was nursing my third child I completely fell off the prayer journaling wagon! I didn’t have time to journal at all. Now that he is a bit older and a bit easier to care for, I have added this method into my prayer routine again here and there.

Using this guide, you CAN pray for an hour or more!  Please feel free to post questions. 

Blessings,
Amy


Click on the picture to enlarge and print:

Prayer Sheet





Description Sheet

Prayer Journaling: Starting to Pray

If you missed the previous post, click here.


Now that you have your prayer journal set up, it should look like this:
Prayer Schedule
loose-leaf paper
daily pockets w/prayer cards or other prayer starters


The simplest way to begin learning how to pray for an extended period of time and/or for many people is to use the ACTS acronym to help you remember the parts of prayer Jesus taught us in the Lord’s Prayer. I will discuss a more in-depth method later.

In case you’re not familiar with ACTS, we are talking about Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. (I printed out the information listed right below here on a sheet for my 10 yr old so he wouldn’t have to be embarrassed if he had to keep asking what these words meant).



A

Adoration = profound love, admiration, or regard
‘to adore’ means to love

God I love you because… (pick 1 to start prayer)
You are ________________________
You have _______________________
You promised to _____________________


C

Confession = to admit wrongdoing
‘to confess’ means to say yes, I did this (whatever ‘this’ is for the day) wrong

God, I’m sorry I…(pick 1 to start prayer)
didn’t obey when _________________________
didn’t help when __________________________
did this __________________________________


T

Thanksgiving = to express thanks, thankfulness, give thanks
‘to give thanks’ means to say all the things you’re thankful for from the day

God, thank You…(pick 1 to start prayer)
for ________________________
that _______________________
when ______________________


S

Supplication = to humbly ask for help
‘to supplicate’ means to ask in a humble way for help or assistance

God, please help _______________ in this way…




What to do with all this:

Each day you pray you will use a new sheet of loose-leaf paper.

Write the date at the top of the page.

Write the A-C-T-S over in the left margin. My guess is you will find you probably won’t need very much room for A, a little more for C, even more for T and lots for S.

Then write out your ‘prayers’ for each step as you go through them.

When you get to the 'S', use your Prayer Schedule to determine who you're supplicating for that day.



An example prayer sheet could look like this:

A God Almighty you are powerful beyond what I can imagine. You can create winds of hundreds of miles an hour. You can shake the earth to a magnitude of total destruction. You can create whatever You want.

C Lord, I am sorry for spending too much time on the computer today. (had to put this in here – haha) Please forgive me for neglecting my kids and not being a good steward and taking care of all that you have given me. Please forgive me for not using my mouth today to bring glory to you.

T Father, thank you for: a washing machine that works, for friends who care enough to call/write, for living close to family, for eyes that can see Your beauty in everything around me, for a godly husband.

S I lift up my friends who are having troubled marriages. May You draw them closer to You through their pain. I pray for the health of a teacher who is battling breast cancer. Please give the doctors wisdom to treat the cancer and strength to her to get through the chemo.



The biggest thing about prayer is to not give up if you miss a day (or two or three). The devil would just LOVE if you started prayer journaling and then after missing a week, you gave up on it completely because it wasn’t perfect. The reason I have loose-leaf paper and not preprinted paper in there is because then you can write whatever the date happens to be when you come before God in prayer. Then you don’t get all stressed out when you miss a few days because you feel ‘behind’ (like you would when you missed a few days in a bible-reading plan).

This is a sress-free way to record your conversations with God. WHEN YOU ARE ABLE, sit down and record your thoughts/concerns/worries. And then as the weeks and months go by, you can look back and see what you have been praying about. You can see how God has answered your prayers. Or you can see that you still need to be patient because God has not answered a prayer yet.

Prayer journaling is a wonderful way to record your walk with God. Sometimes we get so focused on how much further we have to climb that we forget how far we’ve already climbed. Your prayer journal isn’t for anyone else but you and God. And He doesn’t expect you to do it perfectly. He just expects you to pray. Period.



May your conversations with God have renewed purpose and clarity now that you have a plan and something to guide your thoughts as you spend time with your Father in prayer.

Glory to God!
Amy

Prayer Journaling: So Easy a Kid Could Do It!

Is it bad to laugh at your own post title? Because, seriously, I will explain a way to do prayer journaling below that IS easy enough for a kid to do. I actually designed it for my 10 year old. But we all know that a spiritual discipline like prayer REALLY isn't that easy, is it? And I don't want you to be offended or think that I think you're a doof if it doesn't end up being easy for you all the time.

Because I can already tell you that it won't always be a piece of cake and that I most certainly won't think you're a doof.  Prayer, like any spiritual discipline, takes the help of the Spirit in order to be at all succesful.  And by successful, I don't mean you're winning the Nobel Prize or Pulitzer Prize because of your journaling expertise.  I mean that you're growing closer to God and better at knowing His will for you through the conversation and connectedness of prayer.

But, getting to the subject at hand. If you have never tried prayer journaling before, I have an easy way for you to get started with it. Or, if you have been journaling for awhile and need new ideas, scan below and use what you can. I love reading others' ideas about a topic and taking what I can, what works for me, and adapting it to fit my personality and my strengths. I encourage you to do that with these suggestions as well.  Fit them into YOU and who you are. 

So what has kept you from prayer journaling? Weren't sure where to start? Weren't sure what you should pray for? Didn't know how it should be different from a regular journal, or even a diary?  The idea in this post is for a basic prayer journal. Something that could be used for starting a junior high or high school student on journaling.  Or for someone who has been intimidated by prayer journaling.  Or even to refresh journaling for someone who has been walking with Christ for many years but has maybe grown a bit stale in their discipline.

Supplies needed:
3-ring binder (yeah, you binder-lovers just let out a shout of joy, didn't you??)
loose-leaf paper
page protectors (1, maybe 3)
binder pockets, tabbed (7-8)
Bible
pen
other prayer resources

1.  Prepare your prayer keeper.  Choose/purchase a 3-ring binder (at least 1" or 1-1/2" as it will eventually get pretty full) and label it as your prayer journal.  For those who are more creative, you can get one of those fancy binders that have the option of inserting a paper on the front of the binder...giving you the opportunity to add some flare to your journal by showcasing your artistic skills to inspire yourself each time you look at the binder.

2.  Prepare a prayer schedule.  Make a list of everyone you are going to pray for...you will organize them all in a bit.  Just get them written down.  Your immediate family, parents, siblings (& their families), cousins, work colleagues, church ministries, friends, political people, etc.  Once you have everyone listed, then start organizing them into days of the week.  Your immediate family should be listed every day.  Try to spread out people over all the days of the week so you don't have one night that has a bunch of people and other nights that don't hardly have anyone.  Or, if that is what would work for your schedule, then do that.  Whatever works best for you right now is what we're shooting for.  Not for perfection.  A perfect prayer list doesn't do anyone any good if it's not used because too much time was spent trying to get it perfect.
Here is the list for my 10 year old once we organized it into days (I removed names and generalized for anonymity on here, but on his list everyone is listed by name so he can pray for them by NAME):

Monday
Mom, Dad, sister, brother, myself
Grandparents (listed individually)
Uncle & Aunt 1, cousin 1, cousin 2, cousin 3
Uncle & Aunt 2, cousin 4, cousin 5, cousin 6, cousin 7
Uncle & Aunt 3, cousin 8, cousin 9
Tuesday
Mom, Dad, sister, brother, myself
teacher at school, principal at school
teacher for Sunday School, AWANA leader
pastors at church
Wednesday
Mom, Dad, sister, brother, myself
(Wednesday is a short night as we have AWANA and later bedtimes on that night)
Thursday
Mom, Dad, sister, brother, myself
President Obama
Senators John Thune & Tim Johnson
Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
Mayor Mike Heuther
city council, police department, fire department, etc.
Friday
Mom, Dad, sister, brother, myself
friends
missionaries
world problems

An adult version of this could look like:

Monday
Husband, kid 1, kid 2, kid 3, myself
Parents (listed individually)
Grandparents (listed individually)
Sibling 1 & Wife, neices and nephew
Sibling 2 & Wife, nephews and neice
Sibling 3 & Wife, nephews
Tuesday
Husband, kid 1, kid 2, kid 3, myself
teachers at kids' school, principal at school
teachers for Sunday School, AWANA leaders
pastors at church (we pray for pastors on Tuesday, especially as Head Pastor starts preparations for Sunday's sermon)
Wednesday
Husband, kid 1, kid 2, kid 3, myself
Business, employees, tenants
Church ministries involved in or that need prayer
Thursday
Husband, kid 1, kid 2, kid 3, myself
President Obama
Senators John Thune & Tim Johnson
Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
Mayor Mike Heuther
city council, police department, fire department, etc.
Friday
Husband, kid 1, kid 2, kid 3, myself
friends
missionaries
world problems
Saturday
Husband, kid 1, kid 2, kid 3, myself
Worship service on Sunday
Anything else left from week


Now this is just a plan of who to pray for and when so you don't habitually miss someone every week.  This is not to say that you couldn't pray for things on different days if a situation arose that warranted prayer!  If we'd had this in place back in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit on Monday, August 29th we would NOT have waited until Friday to pray for those in New Orleans and the Gulf who were affected by the hurricane just because 'world problems' were scheduled for Fridays.  Flexibility is the key to this plan as it is to any plan.  The plan is supposed to help you be as consistent as you can be and to help you remember to pray for everyone who is important to you.  The plan is not there to make you feel guilty when you get behind or to be something you get held up on.  You are the one controlling who you're praying for!  So if you find yourself getting overwhelmed quite a bit, break your schedule down into a 2 week rotation.  Then you can eventually build up to the every week layout once you get the hang of it.

Once you have your prayer schedule determined, type it up on the computer, write it out in calligraphy.  Whatever you need to do to satisfy your Type A or creative personality - but make a copy of it, put it in a page protector and put it in the front of your binder.


3.  Prepare your resources.  Grab your binder pockets and label them for each day of your prayer schedule.  Also label one as 'Every Day'.  Then, gather various prayer resources to use as you pray for all these people on your list.  The Navigators (or Navpress) has many prayer cards for different topics that are useful.  Voice of the Martyrs is a good resource for praying for those being martyred for their beliefs around the world.  Does your church support missionaries?  They usually have letters from the missionaries - or, you can get email updates directly from the missionaries to be up-to-date on their prayer needs.  Above all, there are MANY prayer resources out there.  Use them.  And, when you grow tired of them, find new ones.

Or, you can create your own prayer resources by writing Scripture in a notebook, organized by subject to refer to.  For example, a friend of yours is struggling on being a godly wife to her husband who is not a believer.  If you had all the Scriptures on 'struggle' and 'wife' organized, you could refer to those and pray those for your friend.  Some people also call this a 'Concordance' and if you would like the immediate organization of all Scripture by topic, I would suggest getting one that corresponds with whatever version of the bible you have.  I have copies of my own Navigators cards in my son's binder for him to use as he prays. 

Once you have your prayer resources gathered, put them in the corresponding pocket so you can find them easily on the day you need them.


4.  Prepare your writing tools.  Add the loose-leaf paper sheets between your schedule and your pockets.  Put your journaling pen in the front pocket (or wherever else you want to).  I really don't care where you put the pen, as long as you know you have a pen to use when you journal.  You'd hate to spoil all this hard work with the excuse "I don't have a pen handy" now, would you?? 


Your prayer journal is almost ready...