Good morning my lovelies!

Today, I’d like to talk with you about your prayer life. I know, prayer is a very personal thing and most of the time it isn’t something you share with others. Rest at ease. I’m not going to ask you to share personal prayers, although I’m always interested in prayer requests you may have. I would LOVE to pray for you.

In a few minutes, I’m going to share a wonderful resource with you that can enhance your prayer life and help keep you focused during prayer time.

I’ve always prayed. From the time I was a wee little thing, I can remember saying mealtime prayers and bedtime prayers.

Do you remember this bedtime prayer?

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

Angels watch me through the night

and wake me with the morning light.

                                                         Amen

There are several versions of this same prayer, but I adopted this version when my kids were little. I never liked the whole “if I die before I wake” portion I learned as a child. How the heck did I go to sleep after saying that?

Our mealtime prayers were simple.

Father,

Thank you for the blessing of this food and for providing for our family. Bless it to our bodies. Amen

Of course my dad, always the jokester, used this one on occasion;

Yes ma’am, no ma’am, thank you, ma’am, please. Open up the turkey’s ass and pass me the peas. 

This prayer always brought a peel of laughter from us girls and then that mealtime was fun from there on out.

My mama prays over her meals with this prayer

Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord.  Amen

All good prayers. One’s I’ve said and used for many, many years.

Growing In Prayer

As I got older, I learned to pray differently.  I learned the Lord’s Pray from Matthew 6: 9-13. I memorized it and to this day can still say it. It’s the prayer Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him how to pray.

Our Father, which art in heaven

Hallowed be thy name

Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven

Give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil

For thine is the kingdom and power and the glory forever. Amen

Those prayers are near and dear to my heart and I still say them. Probably not as often as I should, but they’re still there.

Then I stepped into adulthood and grew as a Christian and I realized there was more to prayer than I had known. I realized that prayer went deeper, stronger, and more relational than all I knew.

Prayer is personal. Prayer is communication with God. Prayer is a means of being in a relationship with God. Prayer is intercessory. Prayer is more, more than I ever believed or was taught.

The problem I face is distraction. I can have the best of intentions, find a quiet place, prepare my heart, think about those I want to pray for and begin praying. Within minutes, my mind has drifted and I’m suddenly thinking about everything I need to accomplish in this day. The grocery list, the cleaning, the work projects, what’s for dinner, and on the list goes and before I realize it, I’m no longer praying. I’m simply wandering through my mind. UGH!

Does that ever happen to you? (I hope I’m not alone here! LOL)

I tried several methods to ‘cure’ my distracted mind so I could stay focused as I prayed. Journaling, pre-written prayers, writing my prayer list, but all of it flopped, BIG TIME!

Then the hunt began for a method that would work for me. I method that would allow me to pray without getting distracted, without wandering around inside my own head.

I know God knows what I’m thinking. I know He understands my inability, I mean, after all, the men who followed him through his travels and spent the most time with him struggled to stay awake when he asked them to pray. Let’s not forget they even asked him HOW to pray. So he knows I’m not going to be good at it. He also knows I’m going to try and try again.

I prayed about my prayer life. I prayed for a way to stay focused and I prayed for forgiveness for my human-ness and lack of focus during prayer.

I don’t mind telling you, I talk to God all day most days. People think I’m talking to myself (yes, sometimes I speak out loud, as crazy as that may sound), but usually, I’m talking to God in those insane moments.

Eventually, my journey brought me to one of the greatest things that ever happened to my prayer life.

An App to the Rescue

I.found.an.app.

YES, there’s an app for that. 😁

Allow me to introduce to the Echo app. (just for the record, I am not in anyway affiliated with Echo, nor am I being compensated for sharing this with you. I just really like this app and wanted to share)

 

It’s available on both Google Play and Apple App Store. So there’s that. Nice, right?!

So, what does it do?

The long and the short of it is this;

• you add what you want to pray about
• then you use the ‘pray’ button to go through those prayers one at a time.

Easy-peasy lemon squeezy, right?

It has other options as well. Things like sharing with others, getting reminders to pray and keeping all of your prayers right in front of you while you pray.

 

It has been a life-saver for me. I’m not nearly as distracted when I pray and since it’s an app when I run into something or someone that needs prayer, I simply open the app and add it to my prayer list. Then it’s there when I open the Echo app to pray and those prayers are there so I don’t forget. How often have you heard or said yourself, “I’ll pray for you” and then you forget to actually do it? Yep, me too! More often than I care to admit.

Well, with the Echo app, that doesn’t happen (okay as long as you remember to add it as a prayer on the app it doesn’t happen…LOL)

I hope you’ll give it try!

YOUR TURN!

What does your prayer time look like? Do you have a special place? Do you use a certain tool to keep you focused? SHARE, SHARE, SHARE! 😊