How to Make a Prayer Diary

Following on from my post on how to pray more effectively by using a prayer diary, I thought I would share how I made mine so you have an example to use if you’re interested in starting one. And I know it’s not Christmas, but I thought this little angel was too sweet 🙂

Make a daily page

At the front of my prayer diary is a page that I use every single day. Here are my personal prayer points, and a section for my husband’s. I think praying for your spouse is so important, and I have really noticed change from praying persistently about the same thing.

For the personal section I write things I struggle with every day, like getting up early, going to bed on time, patience and discipline. Then I also add things I really want to grow in such as a gentle and quiet spirit (that’s been on there for years!!), abiding in Christ and teaching the children about God.

In Clint’s section I write things that I know he struggles with so that he can have added prayer support, as well as praying for him as a pastor.

I have also added our children to this section, though I will probably add a second daily page soon in order to do that in more depth.

Make people pages

I still remember reading in a biography of a missionary, James Fraser, how he was struck that the new Christians that lived further away always seemed to do better.

Then he realised the reason – which was that he prayed for them more than the ones close to him! This has always stuck in my head and made me determined to pray for people, because it really works!

When I was at university I divided the people I knew into groups and prayed for each on a different day. For instance it might have been missionaries on Sunday, church people on Monday, students on Tuesday and so on.

Now that there are so many people at church to pray for I divide them all up into different days and then add others, so that on each day I have around 6 people or couples that I pray for.

Once I prayed for a man for months because he had been on my heart ever since I met him, though I then didn’t see him again for quite some time. A few years later this prayer was answered in an amazing way, so I knew it was God that had put him on my heart to pray for.

You can also make these pages portable by putting them on little cards to carry around with you.

Add weekly virtues

This is a fun idea I got from seeing Frances Ridley Havergal’s prayer schedule. She had divided up the fruit of the spirit into different days of the week to pray for them. So I now add these to my weekly people pages.

I go through all the fruit of the spirit, then the characteristics of love in 1 Cor 13, and anything else I feel like! Each page of the week has a few different characteristics that I pray for, like kindness, perseverance and godliness.

Make a specific prayer section

At the back of my notebook I have a specific prayer section. What I do here is write down the date and prayer request on the left page, then on the right page I write down the date and how it was answered. You could also leave a line under each prayer to fill this in. This is great to read back through and increase your faith.

A warning

I do want to say that like many good things, there are also dangers. I think the primary danger with this is that you can end up just praying a list, and not really talking to God properly.

So while I use this method to make sure I cover most of what I want to pray about, I try to not be a slave to it, and I also talk to God about the different things on there, not just list them out loud! I also pray spontaneously at other times during the day. And I will try to turn what I read in the Bible into prayer. Some days I abandon the list.

Of course you may have your own way, or you may hate the whole idea of a prayer diary which is fine too! I do find that it helps me to pray far more effectively though.

Do you have any other ways of making a prayer diary which might be useful? Someone commented on my last post that they have a notebook by their computer for prayer requests, which is a great idea too.