Interceding for people: digital and/or analogue

#1

How do you pray for people in your community or church?

Whether you are in leadership or not, you are often asked (or often offer) to pray for individuals. My question for discussion is how do we do that and what balance is there between digital and analogue?

FWIW I used to use a prayer note on Logos Bible software, and did my round of readings and so on with the weekly list. I mean I prayers for these ten people in Monday, these ones on Friday, and different teams, say, on other days.

The problem was the gap between my focus On getting through a list, and actually spending time with the people on my mind as I prayed.

Recently I have reverted to an analogue list, we used to call it paper, and this has helped my prayers though the number prayed for is greatly reduced. Used daily, mostly, it helps me fulfil my hasty promise ”I will pray for you”!

A colleague uses a wunderlist and keeps it digital. Ideas?

For what it is worth, here is how my double sided cards look before use.

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#2

@sch1ck, thank you for sharing these templates.

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#3

@Shl1ck I tried digital methods and they don’t seem to stick. Something like you provided may be helpful. Thank you for sharing

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#4

Thanks for these templates. I have a couple digital lists I keep in Drafts and I have a reminder in my daily review to look at them but it’s not perfect and I still forget about things a lot of times.

Having a paper template that is always in my face is a great way to handle this I think.

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#5

@Shl1ck thank you for sharing.

#6

I lead a small group at my church of guys that I disciple, and we use a shared group inside of the Echo app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/echo-prayer/id880759027?mt=8

It’s a paid feature now, but it was free when we signed up. There’s a couple things I like about this:

  1. You can send notifications when you’re done praying to the people in your group so they get a note that someone just prayed for them
  2. You can mark prayer requests as answered which gives you a growing log of the prayers that God has answered over time
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#7

Thanks @mikeschmitz.

I tried that app recently but its current price of $20/yr was more than our small group was willing to pay. Honestly it didn’t do enough for me to warrant that price when Drafts is working well enough for me by myself. :man_shrugging:t2:

I also tried PrayerMate which is free but it’s a bit of a UX mess.

#8

Thanks for these… very cool. More organized than what I do- keep a daily journal in DayOne which captures morning prayers, often for others.

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#9

Thanks for sharing this method. The general idea of being more intentional with this is something I am working on this year.

#10

Following this thread with interest. I’m very guilty of enthusiastically exclaiming, “I’ll keep you in my prayers!” and then never getting around to it. PrayerMate is such a good idea, but as @kennonb says, the UX is pretty average.

#11

I hated doing that too, so now when someone asks me to pray for them I usually respond with “absolutely, let’s pray right now!”

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#12

I am very interested in this topic.
I have a system but it is not executed well.
I made a prayer list in Omnifocus that is a repeating task
but it kept growing and growing. now I am afraid to open it
my intention is that answered prayer go to a different project called [answered] that stops them repeating and allows me to journal about answered prayers

#13

Thanks for your comments, Tim. Opening up OmniFocus and Spending time in prayer are two such different activities that I would find that the technology frustrates any spiritual mood. I have tried prayer lists on Logos software from FaithLife, but these have, at times, been a tick box exercise more than a real prayer event.
The plus point of my paper method is that repetition is either weekly or monthly, and after a few months you can start again. Today two people asked me to pray for them and I can now say yes, and add their names to one of the vacant boxes on my prayer card.
I need to be quite “hard” to omit the person when I next re write the cards, but often their presenting need has passed anyway. I am sure the same process could be adapted to OF.