Prayer Thoughts for the Heart

Archive for April, 2009

Quite often I have heard people say that they enjoy keeping a prayer journal and I do too.

There are many reasons for keeping a prayer journal. For me, the first one is that when I write my prayers, it keeps me more focused and my mind doesn’t wonder.

Another reason is that I can look back through my prayer journal and see that my prayers have been answered. Some are not as I might have wanted, but still God did answer. We forget that sometimes God says no and that is an answer.

A prayer journal can also be a diary, or a record of a very specific prayer request that included names, places and dates. This information can be helpful at times should we like to know the date of the passing of a friend, birth records of grandchildren, marriages of friends and family and changing of jobs or children off to college.

All these things we are praying about have been to ask God to put His loving, protective, merciful, comforting, and healing hands upon20each one prayed for.

It amazes me some times when I go back and read part of my prayer journal and I can see God’s hand in it and too it sounds much more mature than I think I am, when I wrote it. The Holy Spirit is our teacher and in these instances it shows.

Start your prayer journal today; however I don’t write in it every day. But there are times when I write in it for weeks at a time. Some days are a quick prayer before I get up, praying while I am driving my car and a quick prayer before I go to sleep at night. However, our whole day should be an attitude of prayer. Talking to God off and on all day when we hear or think of a prayer need.

Celia Milam

A commitment is something we make every day and we are to continue to carry out previous commitments we have made. We make a very important commitment when we accept Jesus Christ into our heart and life. Other commitments we make in our life time, are when we get married, have children, take a job, buy a house, and on and on we could go with this list.

Our commitment to Jesus is how we will show others that we are Believers. Our commitment is what will hold our marriage together, when we are falling in and out of love, because love will have its ups and downs. Our commitments, our honesty, and our caring about others will help to keep our friendships intact.

Most commitments are for a life time and some of them are easy and some are very hard at times. We must commit our commitments to the Lord and seek His help in keeping them. He has promised that His commitments to us are forever and will never change.

He said that He would never leave us or forsake us and His Spirit lives in us. The Holy Spirit is our teacher when we are studying the Scriptures. We will also need help from others, so we can be faithful to the commitments we have made.

If we don’t have a certain level of commitment to all that we do, we are a failure to ourselves and to others and to God.

“Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established”
Proverbs 16:3 RSV).

Celia Milam

We all know that exercise is good for us and Paul reminds us in the Scriptures that we are to RUN with perseverance. To RUN the RACE that is set before us and RUN it so we can look back and be proud of the way we accomplished it.

The following are some ideas to remind us of things NOT to do while RUNNING our race of life.

Don’t go JOGGING with Satan or JUMPING to conclusions about the least little thing. RUNNING up your phone bill to RUN-DOWN your friends and neighbors or SIDESTEPPING your responsibilities at church, work, or at home. Don’t PUSH your luck as you drive the streets and interstates or SKIPPING off to the park to exercise on Sunday morning on God’s time. Quit WRESTLING with yourself about what to watch on television.

Don’t go SURFING the web and stopping on an unhealthy website to SWIM in a cesspool. BICYCLING without your partner, Jesus Christ, or ROWING your boat without a life jacket.

If you fall down, call the heavenly rescue squad to BOUNCE you back to common sense, horse sense, and God sense, so you can continue to RUN on the godly highway of life with success.

Also, remind yourself to RUN your fingers through the Living Word each day to receive words of wisdom from God.

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day-and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:7-8 NIV).

Celia Milam