Original: October 16, 2020
Updated November 2021
You’re discouraged, surrounded by people who have it together. They manage everything. And your “things” are slipping through the cracks. Especially prayer. There just isn’t time. What if there is? Here’s how to get it together.
(This is #3 in a series about Prayer. Links to the rest are at the end.)
HOW CAN YOU ADD PRAYER TO YOUR BUSY DAY?
Friends, it is possible. It can happen, can start right now. It won’t change your schedule, won’t make you forsake your commitments. It takes no more time than a text message or a Facebook scroll.
Today you can receive just a small thing to read and pray.
Wait — Were you here last week for How To Jump Start Your Prayer Life? If not, take a look at that topic. You’ll find a printable prayer prompt for each day of the week.
That was the “less-than-five-minutes-a-day-jump-start”, more concisely called Prayer Plan — Week One. It takes less than five minutes to read that post, and less than a minute to print the page.
This week’s printable will build on that plan, still respecting your commitments and your time. I promise.
BECAUSE YOU’RE BUSY.
Does anyone really get that?
I see you. The minute your feet hit the floor in the morning, you’re responding to the people around you. Your spouse, your children, and others. Then your work people and your customers and clients. Every hour brings a new group of phone calls, e-mails, and unexpected tasks.
And the worst part: Someone made you feel bad. Has someone suggested a lengthy time each day of meditation, Bible reading, and prayer?
Someone told you what you were lacking?
I’m asking because she said it to me. When I was right where you are. She told me that everything wrong in my life was because I wasn’t doing that. Maybe she tried to make me feel bad because I “chose to work” instead of stay home.
Not maybe. She did.
So at the busiest, most demanding, most discouraged, and maybe the most important time in my life, someone criticized me for being in the struggle.
Here’s the thing: She loved Jesus. And she wanted to help me.
But she didn’t get what it was like to be me.
Anyway, this isn’t about her. This is about you and me.
Living in every moment with needs that are constantly threatening to overtake us. Our “responders” are always on, knowing the buck stops with us for many things, and feeling like we never quite meet all the demands.
I’m trying to see what it feels like to be “you.”
WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE TO BE YOU?
You’re in a room with others, hearing their conversations, and knowing you don’t measure up. You know that your prayer life is terribly anemic. That you’ve been able to come to a brief stop just a few times this week as you suddenly remember you promised to pray for something.
In fact, the most time you spend thinking about prayer is the time realizing that you haven’t done it.
Here’s a question for you right now:
Do you say that out loud? That you’ve been lacking?
No. And neither do they.
I’m not saying they are in the same boat. I’m saying you don’t know how much people struggle with prayer. You don’t know because they don’t tell you.
I promise, they do. The big secret of Christians, right?
You know who does talk about it? The one who acknowledged the problem and conquered it. Those are the people who have helped us.
But once again, today isn’t about other people. It’s about you and me. 
HOW TO ADD PRAYER TO YOUR BUSY DAY.
You need last weeks printable. It’s the prayer guide to seven days of prayer.
And you also need this new one, Prayer Plan — Week 2. You can print it down below. Just click the image to get it. (No sign-up is required.)
Remember that last week’s prayer prompts consisted of
- a brief prayer (a different one for every day),
- 30 seconds of silence,
- and then other brief prayers at certain times during the remainder of the day
This week’s page will show you a brief passage of Scripture to review before your first prayer.
This will add less than one minute to your “assignment” so you are probably still at 5 minutes daily or less.
That’s it.
The point of this series is to begin the habit of daily prayer. If you’re wishing for a war room, or a garden hour, or a beach sunrise, or a mountain meditation, you’re not alone. I can’t promise you that. God doesn’t promise us that. He does promise to provide. And 5 minutes a day is absolutely possible.
Want to hear something kinda funny? This prayer topic was going to be a single post. On prayer. One topic, one day. This is actually the third “installment”, and the fourth is already started. 😯
PLEASE DO THIS WITH ME
If you’re serious about prayer, please stick with me for the four (or five, or six) sessions that it takes to build up our habit.
I’m your buddy if you need a partner to do this. Or if you have someone in mind, please invite them to join you. Because I’m doing this with you, to reclaim my time with the One I Love. As we build up our habit, we will find ways to add prayer to our lives in new ways.
Click this image to print
(“Prayer Plan Week 2”)
PRAYER AT GRAMMYE’S FRONT PORCH
Did you know that I have a prayer posted on the blog all the time? I posted one quite some time ago with the intention of changing it after a month or so. Each time I return to it, I can’t change it. It’s still my prayer. I have some music videos on that page too. So if you want a quiet minute at any time, and you’d like to pray something that’s already prepared, just visit the page and do that.
OTHER HELPS
If you want to have a collection of beautiful prayers at your disposal, there is no better book for you than The Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan Prayers.
If you’d like to cruise through a huge collection of Scriptures about prayer, go to Open Bible’s topic on this.
And one more that really helped me today: A site called One Thing Alone, with 31 verses to strengthen your prayer life.
In the next 1-2 weeks we will have more resources to get our prayer life back on track, things you can really use.
For now, please challenge yourself to spend five minutes each morning praying, and remember: No drinking 11 cups of coffee! 😉 (That’s covered in last week’s post!)
Our Prayer Series So Far:
How To Pray When You Can’t Focus
How to Jump Start Your Prayer Life
And now, this post, Adding Prayer to your Busy Day.
The next post gives you Six Prayer Methods to use for prayer time.
Then a topic we can all use: How To Pray in Public without being nervous.
There’s another post, with a printable list of prayers focusing on our Nation and the Church: How To Pray For The Election.
And remember this: You don’t have to sign up for this series. Just read the posts, and print the pages. But become a subscriber at anytime if you want to. There are more resources for subscribers that are still free. And thank you for coming here, for reading, and hanging out for a bit.
Please read the first two parts of this series, and come back for the next.
And visit the blog archive if you want to see the other stuff here.
If any of you lacks wisdom,
let him ask God,
who gives generously to all
without reproach,
and it will be given him.
James 1:5
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-Grammye
I’m Grammye, and I’m collecting and sharing ideas that can help you embrace the life you have.
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This is for me.
“At the judgment seat the most embarrassing thing the believer will face will be the smallness of his praying.”
Leonard Ravenhill
Emily, Wow. So well said. Why is it the most important relationship we have is the one we ignore the most? Thank you for contributing to the conversation! I am so glad to see you here.