Short prayers: A small change to power your life (Updated)

pocket watch at 3:55

I love instigating things. It can be dangerous if I am daring my brother-in-law to climb through the McDonalds play land, but at the same time simple changes can make a big impact on our lives. This is true of short prayers. Short prayers become the punctuation of our life and the space that fills our moments with power. We can even make it a little game. Missionary Frank Laubach made the challenge to have a “Game with minutes.” The goal was to see if he could turn his thoughts to God even one second for every minute of the day. Do you think you could do that? Here are 3 quick ways to improve your score.

  • Shoot your prayers up.

Nehemiah was about to have an important meeting with the king and so he shot a prayer to heaven. As you go through your day try to bring every challenge that you face and launch it heavenward.

  • Shoot your prayers through people.

Author Mark Batterson in speaking of Frank Laubach brought up an idea I really like. He suggested as you go through your day shooting people with prayer in your mind as if they were arrows. Next time at the Wal-Mart checkout line send short arrows of prayer through the people in front of you or the person helping you check out. It might be the prayer that pushes them over the edge to run to Jesus.

  • Shoot Bible prayers inward.

In church history we read about what I like to call “breath prayers”. The idea is simply holding some scripture in your heart all day long as a source of prayer. For example I could pray the prayer Jesus taught, “Have mercy on me a sinner.” As often as it comes to mind pray that simple sentence over your life. Pick short prayers from the Bible or come up with your own like: “Lord help me to live today as if it was the Super bowl of my life.”

Each time you steal moments with God in prayer you are connecting to the source of true power. Today, how many minutes could you give God at least one second? Tomorrow you can try to beat your score from today. And I bet that if you ever get to a full day of minutes you would write to me to say thanks. Are you game?

Posted in Prayer.