Prayer Ideas: What Has God Put Directly In Front Of You?

Sometimes I find it hard to know what to pray about, the world is so vast and there are so many needs, it can be hard to know where to start. Or sometimes with my fatigue I struggle to think of anything to pray for. In these situations one thing I find helpful is to think about what God has put directly in front of me. By doing this it has also helped prayer to become a more natural and frequent part of my day. Here are some of my prayer ideas:

• Pray the Bible. I find it difficult to read the Bible and not to end up praying as God encourages and challenges me through it. When my energy is low I often focus on familiar verses/ passages and think about them (more on that here). The other day I found myself feeling stressed and anxious, God reminded me of Psalm 23. As each verse came to mind I prayed it and it helped quiet my soul and gave me peace. I’m grateful it’s a passage I know as it helps me often. As a side note I would really recommend memorising verses if you are able to;
• Think of someone you know and pray for them. If you know any details about what is going on in their life pray about that. If not pray God would give them peace, wisdom, strength and that he would meet with them today;
• Pray about something in the news. It is easy to feel powerless when seeing things in the news, but we can always pray for situations and prayer is powerful (James 5:16). In fact we are called to pray for those who govern us and who are in authority (1 Timothy 2:1-2) and not to be anxious but to pray (Philippians 4:6);
• Pray for revival in your community! Pray that God would pour out his spirit on your community and that lives would be transformed by the power of his love (Colossians 1:9-13). As it says in the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:10: ‘your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’

These ideas may have left you thinking how do you pray at all as someone who is chronically ill or has low capacity? This is certainly how I felt for a while, God has encouraged me using the widow’s offering (see Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4). The widow gives the little she has to God and Jesus says she had given more than those who had much more and gave just a small portion of it. So it’s not about the quantity or length of prayers but about meeting with God for the time we can manage however short. This is also shown in Matthew 6:7 when Jesus said: ‘and when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words’.

So in summary, even if your capacity is low your prayers are powerful and effective (James 5:16). In fact you can be a prayer warrior for God. One tip is to say bullet prayers focused on what is around you. We can only give God what we have and with that he is pleased.

For more on prayer see the Prayer and Worship section of my blog, I specifically write about how I have seen many answers to bullet prayers in my post: Ideas for how to be salt and light when really unwell.