The JV Year of Prayer
Even now we are actively preparing for it. God's given us a creative idea for how to be more effective and deliberate with our prayers, and we're praying it will have extraordinary impact on what God is doing here in Central and Eastern Europe. I am beyond myself with joy and anticipation about what God wants to do in, through, around and for us as we press into him in 2017!
And you, dear friends and family of JV, will have a part in this too. Oh how I can't wait for the day I can roll out what's coming!
In the meantime ... I have something to share along the lines of prayer that was introduced to me by a teammate (thanks Jonathan!) at our JV spring conference a few weeks ago. It is truly revolutionizing my prayer life.
Introducing: PrayerMate. This is an absolutely amazing, powerful app for your smart phone that I guarantee will be a game changer for your prayer life. Developed in 2011 by a man in Great Britain, it is a powerful tool for helping you consistently pray for all the people and causes you care about.
When you download the app (it's available for iPhones, Android and Google) you'll be given the template for beginning your own personalization of what you want to pray for.
You then create your own lists, such as what I have done above. Once you've created your lists, you go into each list and make a virtual "card" of something you want to pray for in that list. For instance, in my Josiah Venture list, I have a card for each of our countries.
On each card you can write whatever specifics you want to pray for, such as what I wrote for our JV team in Croatia.
Hang in there with me! There's more cool stuff!
One of the features of this app that I really love is the emphasis on praying Scripture.
Right inside the app is the ability to access Bible verses and biblical Promises of God that you can add to any card so you can pray Scripture, along with specific requests (it's called the Prayer Builder). Of course you can change the verses at any time, depending on what the need is for the person or situation you're praying for.
How do you actually access the cards? The app AUTOMATICALLY chooses a selection of "cards" from your lists each time you click "pray" at the bottom of the app. Depending on how many "cards" you want to choose to pray for at one time, it will bring them up for you, rolling through all of them before it starts over again.
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| I pray for 8 items at a time, but only selected one to show you since many are private and personal |
I'm still adding new lists and constantly adding new cards onto those lists. But for now, this is my list index, if it helps you to have some ideas of how to create your own categories of lists.
Another great feature is that you can "archive" prayer requests yet still have access to them at any time. I'm using this feature as a way to track answers to prayer.
Can you tell I'm excited about this app?! It's been a joy to have such a well designed, easy system for praying about much of what is on my heart. It helps me stay focused and leads me to seek God for his will and way in my life and the lives of those I care about.
Oh, one last thing! You might want to know what my "Everything Prayers" list is about.
Philippians 4:6 says "Do not be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayers and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."
So that's my list where I throw any and all requests that come to my mind or are given to me.
Sometimes a request only stays on the list for a day before I archive it (because it was answered in some way). Other times it might stay there for longer. But it's been super helpful to have a place to jot down something, especially when someone asks me to pray for a specific request.
It's taken me some hours to build my prayers lists and fill in the cards, but even that has been a wonderful, worshipful experience. Once you invest the initial time, then it won't take long to add more things along the way.
I know this was a long post. But I hope you'll try the PrayerMate app and see how it works for you!
You can read more about PrayerMate HERE as I'm sure I haven't covered everything! But hopefully you'll be spurred on to increase the fruitfulness of your prayer life through this creative method.
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