Prayer Bonus: 8 Tips for Building a Habit of Prayer Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Emily: Hey there, Emily here. I am popping in with a very special bonus episode today because we wanted to help equip you guys as we have this whole series on prayer for building this as a habit in your daily life. Now, we know that you can go on to Pinterest, go online, look for different hacks and tips and tricks, but sometimes it's nice to have them all together and get motivated and realize, "Yes, this is something I actually want to do intentionally, and I need a few ideas to get started," because, boy, I'm tired, or I don't really want to go look that up right now. We're going to package them together for you.
I'm just going to run through them really quickly. Here are eight ways to really develop a habit of prayer in your life. First, just start small, like exercise. You're probably not going to go from being sedentary on the couch to suddenly being able to run a 5K overnight. If you did that, you'd be super sore and tired, and you would probably quit right away. It's probably not a realistic expectation to think that tomorrow morning, you're going to be able to get up and suddenly just pray for hours and hours on end every single day. Instead, consider just setting a daily timer for three minutes at the same time of day. Have an alarm go off on your phone and then stop whatever you're doing and pray for three minutes. Then, after you master that, consider adding on a minute or two here and there or starting to do your timers at other parts of the day. Start small, do something super sustainable, and keep doing it over and over again.
The second thing is: pull all of your prayer supplies together in one place. You're not sure what to pray about, you maybe really want to journal your prayers, you really like having little prayer prompts, you want your Bible there… Whenever you desire to pray, if you don't have all those things in one spot, you're going to have a great excuse just to not do it. Take 20 minutes and walk around your house and pull all the things together. My guess is that you have a basket or a Tupperware container or an old shoebox, and you can stick it all in there and put it in a really visible spot in your house so that you have it all ready to go.
The third thing is just to put up some roadblocks. Maybe you're wanting to defer to a really traditional habit. Instead, you need to put up a little guardrail there so that you don't go past until you pray. I know, earlier this year, my husband and I were wanting to pray together more as a couple. We made this silly rule that we could not have any screen time or read any books at night until we pray together for five minutes. It actually worked! We found ourselves getting ready to pull the remote up or getting ready to pull our books out, and one of us would stop and say, "No, we can't do that until we've prayed together." Sometimes things like that can help you get started.
The fourth thing is to get accountability. This is sometimes not something we can do alone. We need to get in a prayer group, we need to have some friends that we talk to about it, or maybe you do this at a regular time of the day, and then you can check in with someone. Maybe you're praying with a spouse. There are so many different options. I often will think about something like a monastery where, certainly, because there was a bell ringing and people all praying at the same time, you would not want to be the one who is just standing there not praying. That accountability would cause you to engage in that practice regularly. See what that looks like for you.
The fifth thing is to consider habit stacking. This was made popular by a secular book called Atomic Habits. In fact, a lot of these concepts came out of that book. Essentially, this is where you would consider adding prayer onto something that you are already doing. Instead of trying to figure out a whole new part of your day or a whole new thing, just expand what it is you're already doing. Perhaps this is driving your kids to school. Pray while you're driving them to school. Another really common one is to pray before meals. Pray before bed. Find just common times of the day, things that you're already doing, and add prayer to it.
The sixth thing is to consider a fast. In Scripture, fasting and prayer are very closely linked together. Most of the time, we think about fasting from food. That's a really important thing to consider, but you can also fast from other things. You can fast from screens; you can fast from certain things that you might be addicted to or things that you do really regularly in your life and that maybe you even crutch on and turn to instead of God. Consider cutting those things out of your life for a season and feeling that emptiness and allowing that to be a reminder that, "Oh, I want to go to the Lord in prayer."
The seventh idea is to record your prayers. This doesn't mean you have to become a really big journaler or that you have to write every single thing down, but it does mean that if you keep a record of the specific things that you're asking God for that day, that week, that month, you can come back over time and see how God answered that prayer or see what happened as a result of that prayer. That in and of itself can motivate our habits and cause us to want to keep going because we've written it down.
Number eight is don't give up. Don't give up because I think that's one of the most common things with new habits that I've experienced is just thinking, "Oh, because I fell off the wagon on day five, that's it. I give up. I quit." No, failure is normal. Having a hard time is normal. Don't give up. Don't harden your heart. Don't think because you couldn't become the prayer warrior you wanted to be after five days or 30 days or one year that you should just quit. Keep restarting. Keep trying new things in your life. If one habit becomes hard or falls away, regroup, start small again, and develop a new rhythm of prayer.
