In last Sunday’s sermon, I shared that one of my hopes for us as a church in this season of coronavirus social distancing is a deep and profound spiritual reformation of our souls. With so many excuses of busyness and distraction stripped away, I want to encourage you to really pursue God through prayer right now.
One way to do that is by starting a prayer journal. This is a practice I’ve been using for some time and I want to share with you below how I set up and use mine.
What You Need
All you need to start is a notebook and a pen. I would encourage you to use a separate, dedicated notebook for this rather than including it within a personal journal, a place where you keep sermon notes, etc. My current prayer journal notebook of choice is the Moleskine Subject Cahier XL.
Note: the Moleskine Subject Cahier does not come with pre-numbered pages. To remedy that, I simply go through and number all of odd pages in the top left corner—which is a strangely satisfying exercise for me.
Setup
The following is a page-by-page rundown, organized by sections, for how my prayer journal is set up. The sections will make more sense when I talk about how I use them below. Your implementation will surely differ, I simply offer this to you as an example to spur your own organization.
Passages and Quotes
Page 1 - Here I keep several passages of Scripture (like Acts 6:4; Colossians 4:2; and Psalm 55:2) and some important, motivating quotes on prayer such as this one from Don Carson:
“Much praying is not done because we do not plan to pray… We must self-consciously set aside time to do nothing but pray."
Section 1 - Self and Immediate Family
Page 3 - Self (specific ways I’m praying for God to work in me personally)
Pages 5-12 - Immediate family (two pages each for my wife and three daughters).
Section 2 - Close Friends
Pages 13-25 - two pages each for close friends and their families
Pages 27-32 - open pages
Section 3 - Near-Term Prayers
Pages 33-36 - Near-term prayer needs with some amount of urgency. Stuff coming up in the next month, urgent requests, etc.
Section 4 - Groupings
Pages 37-38 - My Gospel Community (specific prayer requests for members of my GC)
Pages 39-40 - My Gospel Community Cluster (specific prayer requests for the members for my GCC)
Pages 41-42 - Extended family members
Pages 43-44 - Non-Members
Pages 45-46 - Broad prayers for 2 Pillars Church as a whole
Pages 47-48 - Pastors, ministry leaders, and missionaries
Section 5 - Church Members
Page 49ff - One page each for every member of our church (families grouped together, kids listed out too)
Note: I do not include unbelievers that I’m praying for in this journal. I use a separate notebook for that loosely based on a method I’ve learned from Tim Brister which he captures in a blog post titled “Missional Moleskine: Your City Travelogue”.
USING IT
While far from batting 1000, I try to pray through my prayer journal Monday through Saturday. Sundays are different because my prayer rhythms are different on those days.
Each day, I pray through the entirety of Section 1—often varying precisely what I’m praying for with regard to each member of my immediate family, but always praying for each of us individually, daily.
Next, I pray for one person/couple and their family from Section 2 (close friends).
After that, I hit Section 3. Because this is where I keep urgent prayer requests, I hit this section every day.
Then, I pray for one group from Section 4—praying for my GC one day, my GCC the next, extended family the following day, and so on.
Lastly, I spend time in Section 5, praying for a few church members and their families each day.
Within each section I make use of some handy little reusable Post-it tabs, and simply move the tab within that section to the next friend, group, member, etc, marking my place for the next day when I hit that section.
A WORD ON CAPTURE
I don’t carry my prayer journal with me everywhere, which means I’m capturing prayer requests in other places in other ways (in my planner, a smaller notebook I carry, or even my phone). Then, at least weekly (sometimes daily), I transfer those prayer requests to my prayer journal to keep it updated and to keep everything in one place.