Susan's Homeschool Blog

Organizing your prayer life is important so that you can grow in the area of prayer. Set aside a consistent time each day to pray. It can be any time:

• Early morning
• During a lunch break
• While exercising
• In the evening before bed

Different systems you can use to organize your prayer requests: How do you want to organize your prayer requests for people? My favorite is visual prayer, but let me explain a few different systems to help you keep track of the people you pray for.

1. Prayer journal: Spiral notebook, leather-bound book, binder with dividers for different categories of people in your life.
2. Picture journal: Photos of people you pray for, glued to the top of each page in a binder, with their requests underneath.
3. Recipe Box with 3 by 5 cards: Each card is a different person with requests for each person, with dividers for categories like family, friends, church, missionaries.
4. Printed list: Typed up prayer requests of different people, or handwritten paper with everyone’s requests.
5. Visual prayer: My favorite type of prayer, where you picture each person in your mind with their prayer requests pictured around them. You write nothing down. Each category has its own circle. For example, I picture the people from my Bible study sitting around a room, and I picture each person as I pray for them. I usually pray for people in the same order so I don’t forget them. It’s like mind mapping. I explain this more in the audio.

This is the way most of my personal prayers are structured:

• Silence: Open my heart to God and be still for at least a minute.
• Confess all known sin. Ask God for unknown sin.
• Intercession interspersed with thanksgiving. This takes the majority of the time, where I intercede for other people, thanking God for answered requests when I get to those people in my prayers.
• Praise and adoration: I usually do this through song, separately, unless it comes out spontaneously at the beginning when I have rested in silence before the Lord.

Here is the half-hour workshop on how to organize your prayer life:

• Organizing Your Prayer Life (Download this audio to your desktop by choosing “Save as,” then “Desktop.”)

For more prayer posts, follow my prayer page on Facebook.

So many Christians give excuses for not praying. They think that they are too busy, that their prayers won’t change anything, or that God doesn’t command us to pray. They don’t realize that they are walking in disobedience to God, and that they will not walk in victory over sin unless they are people of prayer.

My women’s prayer Bible study brainstormed a list of reasons why people don’t pray. After each reason, I debunk each of these excuses, and giving true reasons that you should pray. Afterwards I give you an audio workshop on prayer, giving examples and bringing to life how we are to avoid excuses in our lives.

Excuses for Not Praying

1. Not enough time. Rebuttal: God gives our time back and helps us to prioritize what is truly important. God energizes us to accomplish what we need to do.
2. Mind wanders aimlessly. Rebuttal: Take control over your mind. You don’t have to be ruled by aimless thoughts. Praying out loud or writing down a stray thought can help to keep your mind focused.
3. Apathy, not caring about people. Rebuttal: Praying causes you to love others, so pray anyway, and the love will come. Ask God to help you care. God will change your heart if you ask Him.
4. Selfishness, obsessed with our own lives. Rebuttal: Repent of the sin of selfishness.
5. Fear of having sin exposed. Rebuttal: You must have your sin exposed and confessed for God to get rid of it, to have a real relationship with God. God will not hear our prayers when we are walking in overt sin. (Psalm 66:18)
6. Angry at God. Rebuttal: If you are angry at God for allowing your child to die or allowing you to go through other horrendous pain, be honest with God, and ask Him to remove your rage, and He will. God is not out to harm you, but to draw you closer to Himself. (Jeremiah 29:11)
7. Guilt. Rebuttal: Learn the difference between true guilt and false guilt. True guilt is from something specific you haven’t repented of yet. False guilt is a general feeling of defeat from the enemy.
8. God is silent; He is not answering my prayers. Rebuttal: Maybe God is answering in a different way than you expected.
9. Belief that it doesn’t change things. Rebuttal: Repent of not believing God. James 1:6-8 says a double-minded man gets nothing. Ask God for more faith to believe that He is powerful enough (and loves you enough) to answer your prayers.
10. Laziness, too much of a burden. Rebuttal: Repent of the sin of laziness.
11. Boredom. Rebuttal: Wow… you’re talking with the Creator of the universe, the All-Powerful, and you are bored? Ask God to reveal Himself to you, and you will never be the same. Get to know Him through Scripture, and you will be amazed by Him!
12. Improper understanding of God as Father. Rebuttal: Unconsciously we relate to God the Father with the same patterns that we saw in our earthly fathers. If your earthly father was distant, you feel distant. If your earthly father was abusive, you think God is out to get you. If your earthly father was hard to please, you always feel like you have to perform for God. Get to know God for who He is through Scripture.
13. Tired, exhaustion. Rebuttal: God gives inward strength. Are we spending our strength on things that don’t matter for eternity?

Here is the audio workshop, where I explain how to overcome each of these excuses:

• Excuses for Not Praying

To keep up with prayer posts, here is my Prayer Facebook Page.