Prayer

The stewardship of prayer is a vital topic to the life of a Christian. Personally, it is a topic that I write about out of weakness and not strength. God has wired me to enjoy reading, study and research. But prayer has always been a labor for me. Hopefully, through the power of God's spirit this will change over time.

I am preparing a sermon to deliver at Graystone Church in Georgia on Luke 15:8-10. It is the story of a woman who loses a coin and searches diligently until the coin is found. The story paints a picture of how the church needs to be committed to the ongoing pursuit of praying for lost souls. We need to persistently seek others until they are found by Christ. God can do amazing things through His means of grace- preaching of the gospel, works of service, giving and prayer to name a few.

James 5:16 tells us that "the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." We are commanded to "pray continually" in I Thessolonians 5:17. If you struggle in praying for others like I do, I have some suggestions for how to structure your prayer life. This structure has helped me focus on the critical discipline of daily prayer:

1. Pray as the first business of every day. I concentrate on listing four things that I am thankful for that come from God. Cultivating a spirit of gratitude each morning for me is a critical exercise. I then list four sins that I am actively going to war against during the day and ask for God's power to help me in the battle to suppress all sin. I also concentrate on four specific prayer needs for the day. I keep this prayer journal in a computer file and every Thanksgiving, I review the year's worth of gratitude entries. I review on January 1st the year's worth of daily prayer requests and record God's faithful answers for the year. Seeing God work through the prayers of such a weak person as myself is inspiration to persevere in daily prayer.
2. I have a system to pray for specific people during the week. The system that I use is to pray for: family on Sunday; out of state friends on Monday; Texas friendships on Tuesday; suppliers/vendors to my business and home on Wednesdays; clients on Thursdays; ministries around DFW on Friday; souls of those I am concerned about on Saturdays. This system helps me remember to pray consistently for others at least on a weekly basis. I supplement this by keeping a one page prayer list. On this list, I pray for conversions, neighbors, children of friends/neighbors/clients/family, healing, marriages, ministries, financial needs and also those who have expressed the desire to be accountable for stewardship goals.
3. I keep a journal where I write prayers to my son on a weekly basis. I did this on a daily basis during the first year of his life, but plan on doing it on a weekly basis from here on out. This reminds me weekly to pray for specific areas of character development in the life of my son. It reminds me of the stewardship of his soul that has been entrusted to me.

If you have other ideas that are helpful to you in staying focused on prayer throughout the day, I would love to hear them. I also attempt to make my time in the car by myself to be prayer and Scripture memorization time. Quiet moments around the house are rare and this allows me to re-focus my thoughts on God. The struggle of every day is to abide in Christ and not to be distracted by the cares and snares of this life in the flesh. I relate to the hymn writer's words, "prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love."

For God's glory,

Ashley Hodge