How To Pray More Effectively

Have you ever wondered how you’re supposed to pray for ‘all the saints’? Or why you don’t seem to be getting answered prayer? Or why it’s hard to pray for much longer than five minutes? Or why you keep struggling with the same sins and seeing no change?

I have found that having a prayer diary takes care of a lot of these struggles with prayer. I think I first got the idea from reading Amy Carmichael’s biography. I remember how she wrote down the date of a specific prayer she prayed, and then later the date that it was answered. So I started a notebook to do exactly the same thing.

It was great, because for a start it made me pray more specifically. Rather than “Lord please guide me” I would write “Should I do this or that?” God wants us to pray for everything we need – not just general prayers. ‘In all things, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God’ Phil 4:6

It also increased my faith. As I saw prayers being answered I would realise that God is really there, He is listening, and He loves me and cares about all my tiny little, insignificant requests!

I used to struggle with how to pray for people, and felt inadequate because I could never pray for all of them. Then I read Jim Elliot’s biography, ‘Shadow of the Almighty’ and in there it described how he used to take a card with people’s names on and pray for them while queuing for dinner.

So I began keeping a stack of cards and writing people’s names on there. I would have one card for each day of the week and divide all the people that I wanted to pray for between each of the cards. Finally I was actually praying for people like I wanted to!

Then I found that there were things that I really needed to pray for every single day, because they were ongoing struggles. Like for instance, my quiet time with God.

I believe that our time with God is the thing that the Devil most wants to disrupt, because it is the root of our relationship with God, our listening to and obeying Him, and our prayerful dependence on Him for help. So it has always been an ongoing fight, and I committed it to a daily prayer list along with other things that were daily struggles or that I really wanted to see change in.

I now have a notebook which I keep all of these prayer prompts in, and with that notebook I can easily spend half an hour in prayer, and be confident that I have covered the key things I need to.

Of course I still pray for other things beside what is on the list, and also pray spontaneously at other times during the day, but this is the core of my prayer life which really helps me.

I can’t say for sure that this would help everyone, but if you know your prayer life could use some improvement I think it is a really good thing to try! You may also like to read a post I wrote about my devotional basket which has all kinds of things that help me with my time with God.

Do you have any other hints that could be useful for praying effectively? Have you ever tried keeping a diary of your prayer requests and found it helpful?