Day 15: Date Your Prayers

And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan.He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.”
Joshua 4:20-24

Week three we get to bump up our prayer game one more time. Hopefully, you are beginning to see your habit of prayer being built up, as well as your endurance praying. Keep praying throughout the day, keep getting up a little bit earlier to pray. Keep using a variety of praying tools, and keep combining them using a timer. The prayer times you will enjoy in the future will not have to be so structured or formal, but for this training, keep doing the routines as described. Feel free to add to them, but don’t subtract from them yet.

Now that we’ve started to understand the how of prayer, we want to start building the relationship with God in prayer. I recommend finding a place to begin recording your prayers. Buy a notebook, start a digital journal, Instagram your prayers, etc. Today we begin placing a time stamp on our prayer requests. We’ll be able to go back to those unanswered prayers frequently, and pray for God to answer them again and again.

This habit is just adding to a prayer tool to some we have already started using on day thirteen. Now, we write the names or prayers again, and add a date to when we started praying for them.

One of my greatest reminders of God answering prayer arrived in my prayer journal. In this journal I wrote out a prayer for God to restore a broken relationship between a father and a son. And I wrote the date when I started praying for them. I would pray for their relationship to be restored off and on for a little over a year. What a day when I went back and wrote in the date when God answered my prayer because they were reconciled! Praise God!

I still praise God when I remember the answer to that particular prayer.

The Israelites built altars for these types of reminders. Stacks of stones located in key places where they wanted to remember what God accomplished. Noah built an altar when he and his family exited the ark. Jacob built an altar after seeing the stairway to heaven. Joshua built an altar after crossing the Jordan. I imagine the sight of the altars boosted their faith whenever they saw them. I love how they would tell others who saw the stone altars, “Look and see what God did for us because He is so gracious, good, and powerful!”

Likewise, I like telling the story about how God answered my prayer for a father and his son, and I have the journal entry and the date to help illustrate my testimony. Imagine, in the not-too-distant future, you bragging to your friends about what God created, accomplished, or graced you with, when He answered your prayers.

Prayerwork, Part 1: In the spaces below write down some people or events where you need God’s favor, but He hasn’t yet given you a clear answer. Put a date beside your prayer and leave space to write out how God answers. Just one note, God always answers our prayers, but we don’t always hear or understand straight away. Sometimes, we only understand God’s answers after reflection. But when that happens, we want to record it and tell others about our wonderful, good, and gracious God!

Prayerwork, Part 2: Find something more permanent in which to record your prayers. I recommend experimenting with different journals to write in until you find the one you like. Or carve out space digitally on your phone to type in the date and prayer requests. Make it easy to get to, or part of a routine, so that you’ll record prayer requests at least once a week. Just remember to date when you started praying the request.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.
John 15:16