Prayer

I'm really not one for New Year's Resolutions but I am one who loves setting goals and trying my best to accomplish them. Sometimes it just so happens that these goals come when one year is ending and a new one is starting so call it what you want. I love a good challenge and doing things that are going to stretch me and grow me, especially when it comes to spiritual growth. Towards the end of 2012, I felt as if God was calling me to be more intentional about prayer. I've always loved prayer, I've seen firsthand the power of prayer, I believe with all my heart and soul that God answers prayer, I even get excited about prayer. But lately I've been lacking in the praying faithfully and praying intentionally part of prayer. I feel like my prayers have been lacking in depth and I end up saying the same phrase day in and day out without much thought behind my words, especially in the good night prayers I say with the kids. I was getting bored with prayer and I know that's not what God intended prayer to be like. So this year I've made the decision to become a student of prayer and become more intentional about the prayers that I pray. So here is what I'm doing to spice up my prayer life.

The first thing I decided to do is study prayers throughout the old and new testament by learning how others prayed. I've already studied two prayers, the prayer of Moses in Exodus 15 and Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2. I'm looking forward to studying many more prayers this year and learning what God wants to show me through each one. I'm keeping a journal to record my thoughts as I read the prayers. Writing out my thoughts has always helped me to process things better. 

The next thing I'm doing comes out of a conversation I had with my oldest child. We were talking about how in the Bible we are urged to pray for those in government, for those in authority over us. I have to admit that praying for our president is not something I've done on a regular basis if even at all. So with the inspiration of my son, we have decided to pray for our president and those in our government each night. (Some of the verses we are using to pray for this topic are 1 Timothy 2:1-3, Psalms 122:6, Mark 3:25, Proverbs 2:11, and 1 John 5:14-15). I pulled a prayer offline titled A Prayer for Our Government put out by Kenneth Copeland Ministries. Praying for our president is certainly stretching me!

Something else I feel like God is calling me to do is to pray faithfully and intentionally for my husband. I pulled out my Power of a Praying Wife book by Stormie Omartian to assist me with this. If you're not familiar with this book it reads more like a chapter book with a prayer at the end of each chapter while focusing on a specific area of your husband's life like his work, his finances, his mind, his fears, his purpose, etc... Instead of reading the book over the course of a month (which I've done in the past), I decided to slow it down and spend about a week on each chapter praying daily for what that chapter is about. 

In addition to praying for my husband, I really wanted to find some Bible verses that were relevant to each of our three children and spend the year praying those scriptures over each child. I asked God to lead me to specific verses for each child and I'm so excited about the verses he lead me to.  I have the verses written out on note cards and each night when I have my quiet time I pray the scripture with that child in mind. At some point during the year, as God leads, I plan to share with each child what I'm doing and share with them the verses that God lead me to. I've already had the opportunity to do this with one of our kids and it was a pretty cool moment. Kids are very receptive to their parent's prayers and it makes them feel pretty special knowing that they are being prayed for daily. 

I'm also utilizing a few books I have on hand to aide me in my prayers. My sister had gotten me a book called Praying God's Will for My Daughter by Lee Roberts. It's simply a book divided up by themes with Bible verses that match the theme. I find a character trait that I feel needs some work in my daughter's life and spend the week praying those specific verses for that trait. I love how the book is laid out and it's very user friendly. 

The last resource I have is a book called Praying The Bible For Your Children by David and Heather Kopp. It is very similar to the one I just mentioned and includes 122 prayers on various topics. Each prayer includes Bible verses and is written out in a way where I can just read the prayer while inserting the names of our children.

So this is what I'm working on in 2013, it will be challenging for sure but very rewarding.

I leave you with a funny photo of each of the above mentioned people that I'm praying for. I just downloaded my iPhone photos and these ones made me giggle.

Self portrait from child #2. I always enjoy finding these surprise photos when I download my iPhone photos.

Child #1 during a night game of 007 we played with two other families (adults and kids, it was so fun!), he is standing in the back of a truck with the night air whipping through his hair.

This would be my husband. Eating dinnner while wearing son #2's helmet. This was right after he set the smoke alarm off while making his dinner. Safety first people!

And here is child #3, our sweet daughter teaching herself how to skateboard on a Sunday morning before church. This sums up her personality quite nicely.

I'm so blessed to be praying for these four special people in my life!