If there is one area of a Christian’s life that most people want to improve upon, I think their prayer time would be a top contender. The desired improvement usually centers on two areas – praying more consistently and praying more substantively. This post is focused on the first of those two aims. How can we who desire to improve our prayer life pray more frequently? Here are some suggestions:
Use An App – If you are like most American adults, you probably have your phone with you constantly. Much of our lives tend to be managed by that little electronic devise. Therefore, they are handy tools to help us remember what we are praying for even when we may not be sitting down at our favorite quiet time spot. Personally, I use the Echo Prayer App, and I also hear good things about PrayerMate. Whichever option you chose, know that having your prayer list with you wherever you go makes it easy to pray in the “down time” when you are waiting for your next activity or commitment. I also like to add a widget from the app to one of my home screens so that when I look down at the phone, one of the prayer needs automatically pops up, and I am prompted to pray then and there. A prayer app also makes it easy to maintain your prayer list because whenever someone mentions a prayer need to you, you can quickly add it to the app and be prompted to pray when you open the app next.
Set a Reminder – Another reason I like using a prayer app is because I can set a reminder to pray. If I know someone in our church is having a surgery at a specific time, I can have a notification on my prayer app pop up at the time of their surgery, or at a specific time in the days leading up to it. However, you don’t have to use a prayer app to do this. A friend sets a clock alarm at a set time in the middle of the day to remind her to pray through a list that she keeps in the notes app on her phone. You can also use a set a reminder using a To-Do list app, or have reminders on Post-It notes in places you frequent (different places in your home, on your car dashboard, etc.) If you see a reminder to pray, you are more likely to do it.
Pray When You First Hear a Request – Often someone shares a need or concern with us, and we promise to pray. However, as we go about our day that promise may slip our minds and we may not remember it until we see them again. One of the ways we can not only help make sure that we are a person who keeps our prayer commitments, but that we spend more time in prayer is if we pray when we immediately hear a request. You can pray with the person (which is wonderful if you are afforded that opportunity) or you can pray right after the conversation ends. Either way, if you find yourselves uttering the words “I’ll pray for you,” do it as soon as you are able. Even if the prayer is short and lacks detail, it will be to your benefit and the benefit of the person you are praying for that you brought their petition before the throne room of God.
Pray at Regular Milestones – One of the ways that we have increased the amount of time we spend praying as a family is that we pray at specific daily or weekly milestones. In all likelihood, you are doing some version of this already when you sit down with your family for dinner and pray before you eat. We have tried to find other, regularly occurring events that can be used as “triggers” to remind us to pray. For example – we pray as we drive to school each morning and we pray before a sporting practice or event. We pray before we go to church, and we pray before play dates. If you aren’t praying with your family at all, and you decided to start praying every morning when your family was awake, every evening before you go to bed, and before every family meal, you will have substantially increased the time you spend in family prayer. You can similarly use regularly occurring situations to prompt you to pray individually. A friend shared she prayed for the person whose clothes she was folding as she did the laundry. Obviously, each prayer was likely not very long (it doesn’t take a substantial amount of time to fold a shirt), but instead of just being a chore, laundry became an opportunity to purposefully pray for those in her house.
Pray the Bible – When you read the Bible, pray what you read. There are, of course, some passages of Scripture where it is easy to do this than others. (A significant portion of Numbers, for example, may present a challenge in this regard.) However, every portion of Scripture teaches us something about God and if we aren’t sure what else we can pray from what we read, we can thank God for what we have learned about His character, or what His Word teaches about His work in history or in our lives. If you want more on this, Praying the Bible by Donald S. Whitney is worth checking out.
Pray with Your Church – If your church has a prayer team, sign up for it! And commit to pray through the requests as well as any updates. If your church holds a prayer meeting, either as a regular part of their ministry offerings or for specific events, plan on attending. If you take part of these opportunities to pray with your church family, you will not only increase your frequency of prayer, but you will also likely have a better perspective on the challenges you face in comparison to what others are enduring. Additionally, you will probably be more readily able to love and serve your brothers and sisters in Christ.
The quality of a person’s prayer life is not the sum total of the minutes that someone spends in prayer. However, it does tend to be true that the people who pray more tend to have a deeper life of prayer. This makes sense, because generally speaking, the more time you spend in conversation with someone the greater depth there is to your relationship. If you struggle to pray frequently or you simply just wish to increase how often you pray, it is my hope that the suggestions above may help you in that endeavor.
