Prayer Book Guidelines

If I taught you as a freshman then you kept this Prayer Book. I thought the least I could do was keep one right along with you. Just in case you might want to keep it again, I'm posting the guidelines. Happy Praying!


Prayer Book Guidelines

We keep this prayerbook to serve as our telephone to God. Every time we use
it we are making a connection with Him. Just as it is one thing to learn
all about celebrities, we know it is quite another to know them personally.
So it is with God. It is not enough just to learn all about Him. It is very
important that we we get to know Him enough to have a real relationship
with Him.

1. Get a notebook where you will write your prayers.

2. There will be 10 different ways of praying we will go into. We can do
all 10 in one day or take turns using each one once a day.

a) Praise
b) Repentance
c) Petitions
d) Thanksgiving
e) Listening
f) Quotes
g) New Testament
h) Old Testament
i) Proverbs
j) Loveletters

3. What each kind of prayer means:

a) PRAISE - In this prayer, we praise God for Himself not for what He
does. “Lord, you are so good and wonderful! Everything about You is about
kindness, love and compassion. I want to love you more.” Praising Him for
what He does comes under Thanksgiving. If you want to get the hang of
Praise, check out the psalms of Praise and model your prayers after them.
Praising God opens up a whole new world of wonder.

b) REPENTANCE - In this prayer, reflect on all the things you have been
or done that were less than loving and consider how that affects your
relationship with God and others. “Lord, today, I was very unkind to
someone and I really hurt her feelings. I am very sorry for having done
that. Please teach me to be as kind as You.” When we keep track of the
times we refuse to love (which is what sin is) it helps us to love more and
refuse less..

c) PETITIONS - This is the prayer we all know how to say. “Lord, please
help my grandmother to get well. Please help me to have better grades.
Please help me to get along with my parents. Please help the homeless and
the hungry. Please help me as I deal with this overwhelming grief.” This
prayer helps us to remember how much we need God’s help and how eager He is
to help us.

d) THANKSGIVING - This is simply thanking God for everything in our
lives: “Lord, thank you for my health and well-being. Thank you for my
family and friends who love me. Thank you even for my problems because they
help me to grow.” The habit of being thankful will make us happier people
because it helps us to see all the good things we have.

e) LISTENING - Prayer is much more than just saying things to God. It
is also listening to what He says to us. This is not easy to do. It
involves being very quiet, focusing, reading a Gospel story, placing
ourselves in the scene of that Gospel story, interacting with Jesus as if we
were right there with Him and hearing what He may have to say. This takes a
while to learn but practice does make perfect.

f) QUOTES - This involves loooking for and writing down significant
quotes that will help us become wiser people. Example “All that has to
happen for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” (Edmund
Burke) You then add why you consider this significant.

g) NEW TESTAMENT - Read the New Testament and copy a quote you find
particularly meaningful. Example - “I can do all things in Christ Who
strengthens me.” (Philippians 4: 13). Going through the New Testament will
familiarize you with Jesus’ mindset.

h) OLD TESTAMENT - Now, read the Old Testament and find a significant
quote to copy. The Psalms and Isaiah are particularly good sources. Here’s
one: “Let rejoicing in the Lord be your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10) Looking
through the Old Testament will help you see how God always wanted human
beings to be in a close relationship with Him.

i) PROVERBS - Go through the Book of Proverbs and copy the wise sayings
you find meaningful. For example, “Hatred stirs up disputes, but love
covers all offenses.” Chapter 10, verse 12. These last three prayers will
teach you how to pray with the Bible.

j) LOVELETTERS - Think on what has happened to you most recently that
made you feel very loved by God. Example: “I have been feeling very
discouraged lately and today I got a letter from a friend I hadn’t heard
from in a long time telling me how my presence in her life had made her a
better person and she wanted me to know that.” This prayer teaches us to
always look for and find all the wonderful things God is constantly sending
us. “Earth’s crammed with heaven and every common bush is afire with God.”
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

YOU CAN DO A PRAYER A NIGHT FOLLOWED BY A BRIEF REFLECTION ON YOUR DAY.
THIS GIVES YOU A BITE-SIZE PRAYER TIME THAT WILL KEEP YOUR PRAYER LIFE IN
TOP FORM FROM DAY TO DAY. YOU WILL BE SURPRISED HOW MUCH IT WILL DE-STRESS
YOU.









REFLECTION QUESTIONS:

1. What do you want most from life?

2. How are you going to achieve in a foll-proof way?

3. What are the variable that could keep you from achieving them?

4. What are you going to do with these variables?

5. On a scale of 0 to 10, how much does God figure in your life?

6. How much do you want Him to figure in your life?

7. If your answers to 5 and 6 don’t match, how come?