Struggles with Personal Prayer Time

One of my biggest struggles has always been personal prayer time. I always seem to go through the same process. Let’s say I have a friend named Bob. Bob has been my friend for many years, but we don’t live in the same area. This means that I do a lot of checking in on my friend Bob, but sometimes we go through long periods of time without really going into depth in our conversations. I want to pray for friends, so my week praying for Bob usually goes something like this:

Sunday – Dear God, thank you for putting Bob in my life.

Monday – Dear God, please help Bob have a good week at work.

Tuesday – Dear God, please be with Bob and his family.

Wednesday – Dear God, please be with my friends.

Thursday – Dear God, please help me to be a good friend.

Friday – Dear God, I hope Bob had a good week.

Saturday – Dear God, please help all my friends to have a good weekend and get some rest.

Obviously, this isn’t exactly how it goes every single week. But I am worried that it’s closer than I want to admit. I have people in my life that I care about, but my prayers for them become very vague. Sometimes I even group people together, God knows what I mean. After doing this for a while, I begin to just skip names sometimes. Do I really need to pray for Bob every single day? Here is where my biggest struggle happens. I spend a few months praying for Bob off and on, then one day I get a text. The text is from Bob, and he is telling me about something that came up about a month ago that he is struggling with. Maybe something with work or a health issue of some kind with someone in his family. I quickly text back and ask if I can do anything. Then I spend the next week feeling guilty about my horrible prayer life.

So, what can I do to get better about these situations? I’m not sure if I have ever mentioned this before, but I heard it a long time ago and I try and think about it whenever I’m struggling with praying for people. I heard that at every single moment everyone is in one of three stages. They are either recovering from something, preparing for something or going through something. Hearing that really changed me. I’m still not great at it, but it’s a work in progress. Whenever I think of the name of someone that I have been struggling to think about what to pray for, I pray that God helps in whatever season they are in. If they are going through something, please give them wisdom and comfort. Please put people around them to support them and get them through this tough time. If they are recovering, please give them rest. Please help them to heal and get stronger. If they are preparing, this one can be very tough. This is my biggest challenge. Some people are preparing for a flat tire on the way to work, some people are preparing to hear a medical diagnosis that will completely knock them over. I have to remember that no matter what they are preparing for, I pray that they turn to God right away. I pray that God puts relationships in their life that will help them get through the tough times ahead. I also pray that God puts names on my mind so that hopefully I can send a text to people, so they know that I am here for them when they start to go through something.

I also learned another valuable lesson in all of this, I’m also in one of those seasons all the time. Why does that matter? The biggest thing that I have noticed is that if I am currently not going through something and I feel like I’m not in recovery mode, that must mean that I am preparing for something. That changes the way I pray. I still try and be thankful for as many things as possible, but I also pray to be responsive to whatever God needs me to learn right now. I pray that I have the right attitude. I pray that when I am reading scripture I am not distracted, and I am focused on anything God may want to show me at that time. I would love to tell you that I am really good at doing all of this, but what I am really doing is trying to create accountability. I don’t do this as much as I should, I need to do better. But, I also know that this has really helped, so I wanted to share.