Walk and Talk

Published on July 14, 2008 by Ryan Suzuki

    Like many of you, I’ve been trying to figure out how to put our Year of Prayer into practice every day.  I always thought that I prayed a lot, but this whole prayer focus thing has made me realize that I don’t do it nearly enough.  It seemed to me that my main problem was that I didn’t pray for others enough.  My prayers seemed to always focus on me and only on me and I felt convicted about that.  Over the last few months, I’ve tried to include more and more prayers about people who weren’t me.  I prayed for 20/20 students, for my family, for the lost, for missionaries, and many others.  Doing this has expanded the scope of my prayers and has also helped me think of others more in all areas of my life, not just in prayer.

Another aspect of my prayer life that I found lacking, was that I had no system for recording how God had answered my prayers.  I knew that He was working in my life and answering my prayers, but if you asked me, I could never give you an example.  So I started taking walks in the morning where I would bring my prayers before God and keep them in a little journal.  Every request that would come to mind, I would write down in the journal and pray about it as I walked.  As God answered them, I would write it down, and keep a record of all the amazing things that God was doing.  Let me tell you, praying for others and remembering how He answers prayers has changed my life.  It makes me excited about my time talking to God and it shows me again and again how much He is working through my prayers.