The Prayer Box

Want to make people lie? Ask them to pray for you…. especially on social media.

I’m not sayin that all of the countless comments people leave of “prayers”, “praying”, etc, are empty promises to meet someone’s prayer request, I’m just sayin it might be a stretch that they are all actually happening, especially when someone says, “I’ll be praying for you”.

My guess is that unless they will, “be praying for you”, in the next three seconds after reading it, that the request will be long forgotten, and never acted upon, because that’s about how long it takes our mind to move on.

On top of that, how would we ever remember to pray for someone anyway? I mean seriously, its not like we have nothing else going on in our own life

I’ll tell you this straight up and for the record, I’m no prayer warrior. Got it? But I will also say this….

I have recognized that there is power in prayer, and I’m trying to do better.

Looking at the prayer requests that cross my radar, sometimes they come from people I know well, and sometimes they come from people I honestly don’t know at all.

Sometimes the prayer requests are just a generic “Hail Mary” to anyone reading their phone, and sometimes they are a specific, detailed, personal request, sent just to me, from someone I know, that has taken the time to ask me specifically…. to pray for them, because they have a need.

So, what do you do with that? 

Well, if you are like me you say you’ll be glad to do so, maybe you say a quick prayer for them, even a quick sincere prayer, then you remember two weeks later (or never) that you haven’t thought about their request since it was solicited, and you certainly have no idea if their need was ever met.

That pattern began to bother me.

It bothered me because, as I mentioned above, there is power in prayer, I am trying to do better, and I was letting people down. That’s just for starters.

So, I recently took some of my own advice, started “writing it down”, and putting it in a box on my desk. That box is very creatively named…. “My Prayer Box”.

Some days…. I will just pick up the whole box and pray over it, “Lord, you know the name of every person in here and I lift them up to You. You know their needs, you know their battles, send an army, meet their needs, in your way and in your time, and may You be honored and glorified in their life”.

Some days…. I’ll just pull a card out and pray for that person individually. Maybe I have talked to them, or gotten an update on their situation, maybe a new request, and I’ll write that down on their card, along with the date.

Some days…. I’ll lay in bed at night and ask myself if I have prayed at all today, or was I so pre-occupied with “life” that I never got around to it.  As I said, I’m trying to do better.

Here’s the thing…. Pray. Pray for each other, and pray for your self.

Maybe make your own “personal” prayer box, filled with your own personal prayer requests, with categories from your family to finances to fitness to dreams and goals.  It’s your life, so write it down, and pray for it! Start there.

And maybe, make another box for everyone else. So you can remember to pray for them too. Because there is power in prayer.

That box in the background of the photo, the one at full capacity, is just random thoughts, story topics, things I was inspired to write down, and it started with one card.

The box in the front might have plenty of room today, but I have confidence that in time it will fill up also, and pray requests will turn into answered prayers.

For now though…. Steve, Kevin, Mike, Hut, Chuck, Joi, Mark, Larry, Jimmy’s mom, Rachel, R.J., Tim, Tua (yep I added Tua), and a host of others, just know that you are in that box, and in my prayers.

Get In The Boat. Do Your Part.

From Nose To Toes!

Shane / # 16

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