January 23, 2006--Praying more

A couple of weeks ago, our pastor challenged us to pray more. I decided to take him up on that challenge. I know the power of prayer, have been there, done that, but it's so easy to forget sometimes and not pray as much. He said if it was just three minutes a day, to pray daily, and I figured I can handle that. I've heard some great teaching on prayer lately, and I'm ready to improve my prayer life.

These are some of the things I'm working on:

1. To pray everyday--set aside, prayer with God. This is apart from the pray-through-the-day type of prayers. I do those kind all the time. But it's hard to set aside a block of time and say, "Okay, now I'm going to pray." In the past, I've used my devotional time with mostly Bible reading, and then said a prayer along with it, but the bulk of the time I'm not praying, I'm just reading the Bible. I'm not wanting to minimize Bible reading, but I want to have more quality, daily prayer time.

2. To pray for others. It's really easy to get self-centered in prayer. "Lord, bless me. Lord, give me a good day. Lord, help me." These are all good, but there are so many other people who need my prayers! Since I've started praying more for others on a regular basis, I have seen so many of my prayers answered. God has also brought about other opportunities to minister to people that I may have been missing out of before.

3. To pray specifically. I don't mean praying arrogantly, by telling God want to do (instead of the other way around) but sometimes our prayers are so general and vague, it's hard to know when God has answered. I have some very specific things I'm praying for now. There are some things I desire to happen in my life, and I'm asking God for it. I know that He will answer my prayers as He sees fit.