Yesterday I happened to go to a post that was about prayer baskets and hence I thought I would share about my own. 

What is a Prayer Basket you may be wondering? This can be any kind of basket you choose to put in tools such as your bible, notelets, a pen/pencil, memory verses, your devotional and basically anything that you want to add which will help you (a) in your devotions (b) pray for those around you (c) a reminder to meditate on His Word and so on.

Having a prayer basket does help to keep one on track and believe you me, I do need nudging from time to time regarding my prayer/devotional life and hence this prayer basket now sits by my bed (it does help that I have a bedside cabinet by my bed now as I had practically no room before - and hence this was sitting on one of my bookshelves in the lounge for awhile - not good!).

So by my bed on the wall, I have a daily prayer list of whom I am praying for on what days - which is not totally set in stone as other situations may come up. I also have a list of guidelines underneath the daily prayer list.

Monday            Damaris

Tuesday         Family

Wednesday     Church

Thursday        Friends

Friday             Government etc

Saturday         Personal Concerns and

Sunday          Going over Sermon Notes..............

Guidelines:

v     Read a brief inspiration message or prayer

v     Open my Bible and read a chapter or more (if time is short then read a Bible verse)

v     Turn to Prayer Planner

v     Write down my praise, confession, my thanks and my requests

v     Give the Lord my hurts, pain from the past, disappointments and all the questions I can think of writing. Write down convictions of what I hear from the Lord saying to me.

v     I am able to verbalise things I’ve held in my heart but never spoken about. The act of writing somehow seems to bring up my thoughts, feelings and desires and to expose them to the light of God’s love

v     Writing out my confessions helps me get honest with the Lord. Somehow a confession feels more real when it’s down there in black and white. But this means that God’s forgiveness feels more real too.

v     I can see concrete evidence of my spiritual life – and my spiritual growth – when I read back over past prayers.

v     My faith grows as I see God’s answers more clearly – God’s yeses and no’s and “waits”.

v     Writing down the answers I think I hear helps me discern which ones really are of God.

v     My obedience is strengthened. Once again, written promises are harder to ignore than mental ones. Once I have written down my sense of what God wants me to do, I am more likely to follow through.

v      Often when praying, the Lord will bring someone to mind who needs my love or care (that's what the note cards are for). When He brings someone to mind, try to stop right there and drop that person a line, assuring him or her of God's love and my prayers.

Here is what the outside of my Prayer Basket looks like:

    A quick glance of what is inside. In the pocket on the right, I have some tissues in case I need them at any time - trust me these come in very handy!

Now to the contents of what is inside my Prayer Basket:

 First are the devotionals I use (along with others), these sit by the Prayer Basket as these won't fit in!

 I have on hand a variety of different cards, notelets and stickers to put on envelopes - these are great especially when the Lord brings someone to mind to drop a card or note too!

I have my prayer journal and a regular journal which are used whenever I feel led to make notes, add personal prayers, testimonies, praise reports and so on. You can pick up journals from most Christian bookstores and/or some major supermarkets/regular stores....

    These are a couple of booklets that I picked up from a Christian Healing weekend that I attended in October 2003. These booklets contain truths from God's Word followed up by Scripture.......exellent little guide-books to return to time and time again....

 Prayer Handkerchief, which is something that my old church give and/or send out with a card with the verse from Acts: 19-11 which explains about handkerchiefs being used to heal the sick etc. The person who is sick is prayed for before these are handed out....

 My address book and a plastic wallet which contains a pen/pencil, eraser, spare envelopes, airmail stickers, different coloured post it notes, some more stickers and so on - the plastic wallet just helps keep the smaller items more in place....

Two little booklets for me personally to use. One is a little book on Friendship and the other is called 101 Ways to Lif Your Spirits - both of which have and continue to be valuable personal tools for me as and when needed!

  And Finally....my Bible which is far too big to fit into my Prayer Basket, so this sits on the shelf underneath and I do remember that this is there :)

 One more tool I have in my basket, which I did not take a photo of - is a Prayer Request List, this is on sheets of paper at present (I am in the process of re-organising a new Prayer Planner). This list is divided into the following columns: Dae, Request, Scripture, Update/Answer and date (of when change and/or when prayer was answered).

So, here is a glimpse inside my Prayer Basket. This will be added to especially as I will be including the Prayer Planner and also memory cards, a few of which I have in the lounge - but I am going to put some more together.

I really do thoroughly recommend having a Prayer Basket as this certainly does help in your every day walk with the Lord and if you are/do put one together, again, I would recommend that you have this in the place where you have your quiet times with the Lord, this not only makes life easier but this is also helps to remind you to use it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

******By the way, if this page does not view properly, please let me know - I am using a laptop so the screen is wider than most desktop screens .........