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Developing A Personal Prayer Time

Writer's picture: Zachary AcostaZachary Acosta

If you want to sustain a life of prayer it's increadibly important to develop a plan for your personal prayer time. When you have a plan in place it will help you to be consistent long-term. Growing in deep intimacy with God is not something that happens suddenly, but it happens over years of continually drawing near to His heart in the secret place. In the swirl of our business, if we don't schedule and plan out our prayer times it's likely that we won't pray at all. Proverbs 21:5 says, "The plans of the diligent certainly lead to advantage (profit), But everyone who is in a hurry certainly comes to poverty". Growing in the knowledge of God begins with being diligent about having a practical plan for prayer.


Prayer is so simple that anybody can do it, but it's that same simplicity that causes many to undervalue it's importance, thus leading them not to pray. Having a secret place is more important than the amount of bible studies you lead, sermons you preach, or souls you try to bring into the Kingdom. Maintaining a personal prayer time is one of the most foundational practices of being a beleiver in Christ. My goal in this post isn't to give you the "one and only way" to develop a prayer time with God, but to give you simple ideas that will launch and encourage you to develop a personal prayer time that you can sustain for decades to come.


Three Main Types of Prayer


There are three main types of prayer that we engage in regularly. The first is intercession. Intercession is when you pray for a person, place, organization, or situation that is not you. Very simply put, intercession is when you pray for others. The word "intercession" means to intervene on behalf of another. The purest form of intercession is seen through what Jesus did for humanity, by intervening on our behalf on the cross. Intercession is the primary means which we extend Jesus' intercessory work on the cross. through prayers of intercession we agree with His desires for the people we're praying for and we confidently speak those desires back to Him. We grow in intercession as we study His heart and allow our hearts to come into greater alignment with His.


The second type of prayer is personal petition. Personal petition is essentially intercession for yourself (or things that you are directly related to). Did you know that you don’t have to wait for somebody else to contend for God’s power and blessing in your life; You can pray for yourself and God will respond. It is profoundly powerful to ask God what He thinks about you and what He wants for you life and then to agree with the things He says (even if you don't beleive it at first). The Father has deposited His Son’s inheritance in you, so every time you pray for yourself to walk in the fullness of what He has for you it’s an eternal investment into the inheritance of Jesus.


The third type of prayer is devotional prayer. Devotional prayer is uniquely different than intercession and personal petition. Devotional prayer is the relational type of prayer that is mostly related tour spiritual growth. Through devotional prayer we aim at growing in the experiential knowledge of God (intimacy). Here, is where we engage in deep and intimate conversations centered around His Word which lead us to discover the vastness of His splendor. Devotional prayer is what produces endurance to run the race of effective ministry.



Scheduling Your prayer time


A simple fact is that we will prioritize and make time for the things we value the most. We easily justify spending 8-12 hours a day working a job so that we can make money to support our lives and our families. We also often justify hours spent a day on personal entertainment. However, I think it’s tragic that 2 hours of prayer a day feels extravagant and often unreachable. I heard a preacher once say, "what ever we give our time to is what we value most. What ever we value most is what consumes us. What consumes us will conform us. And what conforms us will determine our future". The "screen time" function on the iPhone is scary. It will quickly reveal where most of your time is being spent and it can be convicting at times. If we value Him and His voice we'll do it what takes to create space in our schedules specifically for Him.


Scheduling your time to pray is essential. Through experience I can confidently say that you'll likely pray more often if you put it in your daily schedule than if you didn't. If that means waking up 30 minutes earlier or going to bed 30 minutes later, or not watching another episode of "The Office", I promise you, its worth it. Think about it, if you had an important job interview for the job of your life you would easily cancel everything else that day to make sure you were on time for your interview. Or if you had a date with the person of your dreams, you probably wouldn't find many exuses to stand them up. Prayerlesses in our culture isn't really a "lack of time" problem, it's a "lack of fascination" problem. I encourage you to put your prayer time on your daily schedule and stick to it.


What unlocked a new level of consistency in prayer for me was when I began to separate my devotional prayer time from intercession and personal petition. There are certainly times when devotional prayer personal petition cross over, but I would highly reccomend setting aside specific time for devotional prayer. When you pray devotionally you should find a quiet place at a time where you can be undistracted. It's also helpful to turn your phone off, take your Apple Watch off and give God your undisctracted attention. Open your bible and begin to have conversation with Jesus.


Paul, in his writings taught to continually pray or to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17, Phillipians 4:6, Colossians 4:2). That seems like a impossible task right? How could you have a job or family if 100% of your time was devoted only to prayer? Well, heres a few things to consider: First we must remember that Paul is writing to communities of faith not just to individuals, so His admonition to “pray without ceasing”, is meant to be understood in the context of community. Continual prayer should be a normal occorance among communities of faith. It's quite amazing at how much corporate prayer is mentioned throughout the book of Acts. It's seems as though prayer was a priority almost every time the apostles gathered.


Paul also demonstrated continual prayer in His personal prayer life. In most of his letters he worte about how he was always praying for the believers we was writing to. His prayer life goes to show that it is possible to pray without ceasing on a personal level. Consider these scriptures:

Ephesians 1:16, "I do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers"
Colossians 1:9, "For this reason we also, since the day we heard about it, have not ceased praying for you and asking...".
1 Thessalonians 3:10, "as we keep praying most earnestly night and day.."

Having a continual prayer life doesn't exatly mean we only talk to God and do nothing else. It means we speak with God not just at our appointed times, but continually throughout the day. There is so much value in the 30-second prayers and short conversations that we have with God all throughout our day. Prayer should be apart of our lives not only apart of our schedules.



Organizing Your Prayer Times


Planning and organizing your prayer times will help you maintain consistency. I encourage you to develop some type of prayer list that will help you organize your prayer time. The purpose of a prayer list isn’t so that you pray the same prayers every single day, but to have launching points into conversation with God. There are many ways you can develop a prayer list but a very simple way to create a prayer list is to divide it into two main lists. A Personal List and a People & Places List.


A Personal List is where you pray for things that are directly related to you. In this list I include:

  • My personal needs for spiritual growth, spiritual breakthrough, healing, etc…

  • Family members (My wife, kids, & Family members closest to me) for spiritual growth, spiritual breakthrough, healing, etc…

  • My ministry

  • My workplace

A People & Places List is where you pray for other people and/or places. In this list I include:

  • Friends or others in your sphere of interaction – Salvation, spiritual growth, spiritual breakthrough, healing, etc…

  • You local church / small group / house of prayer and the leaders

  • Different people, places, ministries, businesses, or governments that God has put on your heart.

Using scripture as you move through your prayer list will help you pray effectively. I've often heard that when you use scripture to guide your prayers it’s like God has given you a blank check and you write in the amount and who it’s for. The Bible is the most foundational way to engage with the language of God’s heart. God gave us the written word to lead us into conversation with The Living Word. As I pray through my prayer list, I love using the “Apostolic Prayers List” as a guide for my prayers. I also ask God to highlight specific scriptures to pray for specific people.


When I’m praying devotionally I keep particular bible passages at the center of my conversations with God. A really easy way to start is simply to read a passage of scripture and then begin to ask God questions about that scripture. Highlight those scriptures in your Bible, write them down, turn them into a song, etc.. I also use a few different resources to help launch me into conversations with God. I encourage you to look into them and give them a try.


Last but not least I encourage you to take notes or learn to journal as you pray. There are many ways to journal and take notes so for many it will look much different the way others might do it but the important thing is that you find a way that works for you. Taking notes will help your mind not to wander as you pray and keep your heart engaged. Also you can save your notes to look back at so that when you walk through similar seasons of life you can refer to a time before that was similar and remember what God spoke to you. As you journal or take notes I would reccomend that you include:

  • Key scriptures that your praying through or that God highlights

  • Key phrases that you pray to God

  • The Questions that you ask God

  • Things God is saying to you (or that you think He is saying).

  • What you’re feeling, thinking, or expressing as you pray


I hope that some of these practical details have been helpful for you to start or refine your prayer times. I pray for grace to enter into the secret place and for a spirit of prayer on your life!



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