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Thursday, October 1, 2015

Praying for Your Family - 1. Why?

Welcome!

31DaysPray

Why should you pray for your family?

If you believe in the power of prayer, that God truly does act and intervene in our lives based upon our prayers, then why would you not want to pray for those you love the most?  If the God who created your spouse and your kids could possibly improve their lives more based upon the way you call out and ask Him to, then why would you not ask? I will be writing from the perspective of a wife and mom, but single people - you can be praying for your family, too! Parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, grandparents, and future spouses are all your family, in need of your prayers! This does not have to be limited to the people in your house.

Could it be all the millions of distractions in our world make it hard to remember to pray?

The "world wide web" complete with social media and google, and e-mail, on our laptops, desktops, and phones, permeates a good deal of our time.  All the people on your devices though, cannot compare with all the people living under your roof.  Stop letting them compete.  Allow your family to win.

The concept of this 31 Day series is based on making mental connections with common, everyday events/things/occurrences in your life that will naturally remind you to pray.  Please hear this: The goal is not to make you feel overwhelmed by possible prayers, but to give you plenty of day-to-day life events that will remind you to lift your heart, your eyes, your mind, and your voice toward God on behalf of your loved ones. If this overwhelms you, stop reading.  I don't want to be one more thing on your to-do list that stresses you out.  These posts will be rather short and include some scripture images to support the prayer as well as an example of the prayer in my own words.  I highly suggest you try to pray in your own words, just using the basic word connections I provide (i.e.  Mondays - Mates).

Are you still on the fence about joining me in praying for your family?

Could it be that maybe, sometimes, just possibly, you don't really like them all that much?

I know you love them.  I also know sometimes we choose to love even when we don't really like. I mean, none of us married Prince Charming, because he's just as much a fairy tale as the rodents and other talking creatures who can help you clean your house, cook, and sew amazing dresses.  No one has perfect children who are well behaved 100 percent of the time in public and at home, unless they're the imaginary kind.  So, I do understand if you are stuck here on a day when you feel like, "I just don't want to pray for these people today!" I feel ya.  I get that.  I have a lot of those days, too, if I'm being totally honest.  Then we feel guilty about it because we know there are millions of widows who would love to have one more conversation with their husband and parents who have lost their children who would be thankful to hear their whining.  We can't guilt ourselves into love, though.  We can surrender to God and let Him change us. It's those days, that our prayers can soften our hearts and open our eyes the most, and reignite love for the irrational spouse, the embarrassing child.

The Bible is very clear on the amount we should attempt to pray:



These prayers will be a tool to help you remember to pray specifically for your family in a wider variety of ways than you may have previously attempted. I do not claim to be an expert an anything.  However, I know without a doubt that the only way to improve at anything is to practice.  If we want to get better at praying - we must practice! This series is a way for me to practice more intentional prayer and I hope it may also help someone else.

This will be the 'landing page' for this series.  On the side bar to the right is the 'button' you can feel free to grab and share, and will bring everyone back to this page, because it will also contain links below to every day as it is posted. This is a blogger challenge to write for every day of October, so there should naturally be 31 days of this at the completion. If you'd like to see the wide variety of other Write 31 Days, I encourage you to check it out! I have several that I am following along reading daily, or catching up on weekly.

I pray this helps you to remember to pray for your family more often, and more specifically! Start today by simply asking God to help you to remember to pray for your family more.

This Oswald Chamber's "The Purpose of Prayer" piece puts this into perspective as well:

Prayer is not a normal part of the life of the natural man. We hear it said that a person’s life will suffer if he doesn’t pray, but I question that. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God in him, which is nourished not by food, but by prayer. When a person is born again from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve or nourish that life. Prayer is the way that the life of God in us is nourished. Our common ideas regarding prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
“Ask, and you will receive…” (John 16:24). We complain before God, and sometimes we are apologetic or indifferent to Him, but we actually ask Him for very few things. Yet a child exhibits a magnificent boldness to ask! Our Lord said, “…unless you…become as little children…” (Matthew 18:3). Ask and God will do. Give Jesus Christ the opportunity and the room to work. The problem is that no one will ever do this until he is at his wits’ end. When a person is at his wits’ end, it no longer seems to be a cowardly thing to pray; in fact, it is the only way he can get in touch with the truth and the reality of God Himself. Be yourself before God and present Him with your problems— the very things that have brought you to your wits’ end. But as long as you think you are self-sufficient, you do not need to ask God for anything.
To say that “prayer changes things” is not as close to the truth as saying, “Prayer changes me and then I change things.” God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things. Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person’s inner nature.
Links for Every Day of this Challenge:

October 2 - Praying for Your Family: By Yourself

October 3 - Praying for Your Family: Week at a Glance

October 4 -Praying for Your Family: Sunday

October 5 - Praying for Your Family: Monday

October 6 - Praying for Your Family: Tuesday

October 7 - Praying for Your Family: Wednesday

October 8 - Praying for Your Family: Thursday

October 9 - Praying for Your Family: Friday

October 10 -Praying for Your Family: Saturday

October 11 - Praying for Your Family: Dishes

October 12 - Praying for Your Family: Laundry

October 13 - Praying for Your Family: Trash/Garbage

October 14 - Praying for Your Family: Floors

October 15 - Praying for Your Family: Bathrooms

October 16 - Praying for Your Family: Pick-Up Time

October 17 - Praying for Your Family: Tired

October 18 - Praying for Your Family: Breakfast

October 19 - Praying for Your Family: Lunch

October 20 - Praying for Your Family: Dinner/Supper

October 21 - Praying for Your Family: Gorgeous Days

October 22 - Praying for Your Family: Cold Days

October 23 - Praying for Your Family: Warm Days 

October 24 - Praying for Your Family: Rainy Days

October 25 - Praying for Your Family: Snow Days

October 26 - Praying for Your Family: Seat-Belts

October 27 - Praying for Your Family: Television

October 28 - Praying for Your Family: Road Rage

October 29 - Praying for Your Family: Waiting

October 30 - Praying for Your Family: Cooking

2 comments:

  1. Great post. I'm really trying to pray for my family a lot too. A prayer tip that I read in several different books about how great men and women made time for prayer was to write a list of all your chores and assign a person to each chore, eg I pray for my husband whilst sorting, hanging washing, my Mum when washing up, my Dad when sweeping floors, my toddler while cleaning bathrooms, etc. I've posted a few of these lists around the house to remind me. Another of my favourite quick prayers is: I Declare that ( ........) will become a mighty man/woman of God and will not miss their destiny. Very powerful. http://lizzyainsworthbooks.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-prayer-tip-thats-changing-my-life.html

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    1. Thank you so much for that idea and link! I already have something in mind for chores this month, but I think it's a great way to pray more. :)

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