Let me ask an easy question? Do you care about your friends and family? The answer, of course, is yes!  Let me ask the question another way? Do you care enough about your friends and family to pray over them? Most of us will answer again with a yes. At least, we care about them enough to intend to pray about them. But do we actually do it? Most of us are well intentioned but overcommitted, sometimes unorganized, and forgetful by nature. We often don’t get to non-emergency prayer because it seems to be an easy thing to push off.  Here is an idea how you might be able to change that.

You are about create a book. Not just any old book to sit on a shelf to gather dust with the millions of titles in the bookstores today, but you are going to write a wonderful book—A Wonderful Book of People. This is a book about the people in your life that you can go through and pray over daily or weekly. You are going to be what the enemy of God deeply desires you would not be— an intercessor making a delightful aroma to God.

Here are two simple ways to get started…

1. Don’t throw away those Christmas cards or old photos. The simplest, old fashioned way to start, is just to take pictures (old Christmas cards work great) and tape or glue onto paper, three hole punch them and put them in a binder. Alternatively, download your picture right on a word document or web page writing some notes about each person. (Email me at doug@aquietwater.com and I will send you very basic template for this.)

2. Buy a journal. Go through your address book or and on each page write the person’s name down on the top page and keep doing this until you run out of pages or people. If you are creative, draw a picture of the people you are praying for.

Some things to consider for your book.

1. This doesn’t have to be time consuming though it is worth the time. Designate as little as two days a week (Tuesday and Thursday) to create a new page.  At a minimum, in one year you will have 104 pages of wonderful people in your life to pray over.

2. They don’t have to all be friends or family. A favorite pastor of mine once said that after he had been in a dispute with a particular person or ministry he would donate money to their cause. This would make him soften toward them. Jesus tells us to love our enemies. One of the best things we can do when there is need for reconciliation is regularly pray for those who need reconciliation with.  At the least, it will soften our own hearts. At best, God may answer our prayer as we most desire.

3. Include those you may want to know better. Do you feel that you could use more friends? Maybe include people that are acquaintances at this moment that you would like to make friends.

4. Don’t forget to include those closest to you! We should never take for granted our spouse and children. They need our prayers daily or maybe even hourly. You will probably want to make a special section just for them that is referred to every day.

Let us know how this works for you. We will pass on your good ideas to others.

Doug

The words of British poet Robert Abrahams say it well, “For some men die by shrapnel, And some go down in flames, But most men perish inch by inch, In play at little games.”  Our goal is to identify the little games and put a stop to them and put the right weight on the right things.