A Godly Vision

How do you pray without ceasing and sleep?

When I first decided to try to become a prayer guard (prayer warrior), I heard the phrase, ‘pray without ceasing.’ That sounded like a good idea to me. I made the decision to try to do so.

Then, it hit me… How do you pray without ceasing and sleep?

It took me a while to figure out what that means. I’ll share it with you now so you don’t have to lose sleep.

How do you pray and sleep?:

~ 1. Fall asleep praying. No. It’s not rude. Use it as the ‘drug’ to help you fall asleep.

~ 2. Whenever you roll over, or wake up, pray again until you fall asleep.

~ 3. When your alarm goes off in the morning, pray some more.

~ 4. If God wakes you and tells you to pray, do it.

~ 5. Repeat the next night.

Developing Your Prayer Muscles

So, how do you develop prayer muscles to move from praying a few minutes here and there to praying without ceasing? That’s what this blog post will discuss.

~ 1. First of all, write down to the side, and preferably in your prayer journal how long, in minutes, you think you prayed today.

~ 2. Do NOT beat yourself up for your answer from #1 or #3. We’re just getting a starting point.

~ 3. How many minutes did you pray yesterday?

~ 4. Make it your goal to increase by 5 minutes every day for 5 days. Write down at the end of each and every day how long you prayed that day. Keep the record. Put it in your prayer journal is the most ideal.

~ 5. Review and analyze. How did Days 1-5 go and were you able to increase every day by 5 minutes? If so, good for you! If not, you have every day for the rest of your life to try. So, keep the faith and persevere.

~ 6. Repeat steps 1-5 every 5 days for the rest of your life. In time, you will be praying without ceasing.

~ 7. Practice, practice, practice.

~ Stacy Duplease

Remembering Your Present, LLC

Keep it simple and prayer: the #1 Rule of thumb

Whether we’re talking about prayer or prayer journaling, there is one rule to always, without fail, keep in mind.

KEEP IT SIMPLE.

If you haven’t been praying before for more than a minute here or there, you can’t start off and pray without ceasing. Start off in little chunks.

So, how do you develop prayer muscles to move from praying a few minutes here and there to praying without ceasing? Check out my next blog post.

~ Stacy Duplease

Remembering Your Present, LLC

Prayer Journaling (Notebook) Ideas, Suggestions, and Inspirations (aka pj4life Thoughts to Ponder) #1-

I’ve mentioned in a few blog posts that it’s essential to prayer journal, keep a prayer notebook, keep a record, or whatever else you want to call it.

I’m going to start to give you a few pointers with prayer journaling—starting in this post.

THOUGHTS TO PONDER:

~ 1. Keep it simple.

~ 2. Journal every day—preferably at least morning and night.

~ 3. Journal ANYTHING God puts on your heart.

~ 4. There is no such thing as journaling too much.

~ 5. Tailor a system that works for you. Make it your own. I will give you tips in this blog, but they are just suggestions.

~ 6. Remember that your journal is where you write your prayers and answers to prayers. But, it’s also your record of your walk with God. Therefore, include your memories made through your day.

~ 7. Keep track of what you say to God and what He says to you.

~ 8. Keep sermon notes and Bible study notes here.

~ 9. Keep track of your prayer requests.

~ 10. Use it to WRITE. (See earlier blog posts today for this definition.)

~ 11. There are two types of journals: paper and digital (one you put on the computer).

~ 12. If you keep a paper journal, switch it over sometime to the digital kind. The digital kind lasts forever and never loses quality.

~ 13. If you do a paper journal, consider using mainly black ink. Blue fades faster over time.

~ 14. If you do a digital journal, save it in several different ways. Save one copy that you email to yourself, keep a memory stick (or 2 or 3 just to be safe) copy, keep a copy on your computer, keep a copy on an eternal hard drive. Then, it will last forever. You may even want to write an online journal or blog in which you are the only one who has access to it, or a select few—but not the public (unless you don’t write names and use numbers instead for confidentiality reasons and protect privacy).

I will add more thoughts to ponder every now and then and will continue with the numbering.

~ Stacy Duplease