Day 23: Build Your Prayer Life. Today’s challenge was to begin working towards spending an hour in prayer every day. Today I spent 20 minutes in one chunk, plus other times throughout the day. I would like to get to where I am praying for 15-30 minutes in the morning during a time set aside specifically for prayer, praying throughout my day while I am doing other things (working, snuggling babies, doing laundry, driving, etc.), and then spending 30-45 minutes at the end of the day in prayer during a time set aside specifically for that purpose.
I tend to spend a lot of time in prayer anyway. I have always loved to pray and spend time with my God in this way. I am a prayer journaler. I love to write my prayers down because it keeps me focused. Sometimes I will be too lazy to write and I try to simply pray just in my head, and I find myself getting very off track. I become unfocused and day dreamy. Also, I love to have the ability to read back through my prayers and see how God has answered them. It is cool to see the way that God is working in my life and the lives of those I pray for. I love to use a journal, but I also love to pray while I am doing other things such as driving, cooking, rocking my kids, etc. I think that both are important, and they kind of touched on this in the video. You need times of direct, specific, intentional prayer to spend a large amount of time praising and petitioning God. But you also need the times where you are simply conversing with God throughout your day. It is those little prayers that help us stay focused on the Lord during our whole day.
Nicole, you do such a good job helping us see into your life.