When my husband and I first started dating, he gave me a notebook. Inside, he wrote a little note about how he thought we should put down our thoughts to each other and hand it back and forth as we felt like it. We stayed pretty consistent with it and it really helped us communicate thoughts to each other that we felt we couldn’t share in person. I was pretty shy back then. 🙂

By communicating consistently through the notebook, we were able to get closer to one another pretty quickly and our relationship was great! But what if he had written that first note asking me to communicate with him, but I decided to keep that book and never return it with my words? What if I had not only never returned that notebook to him, but also stopped calling or texting him? Do you think our brand new relationship would gotten to marriage? Very unlikely!

But don’t we try that with God? He’s written us a love note in His Word and desires a relationship with us, but if we never respond to Him, how will our relationship every grow? Answer: we don’t. If we want to develop a real, lasting, loving relationship with Jesus, we have to talk to Him on a consistent basis. But do we? Nowhere near enough. Especially in our busy seasons. 

So, how do we keep our prayer life going when our lives get bogged down with an overloaded schedule?

1. Think short & possible. We get this idea that our prayer life needs to be complicated and lengthy in order to be effective. We hear about those incredible women who pray for hours at a time and think to ourselves, “I don’t even get to sleep hours at a time. How am I supposed to pray like that?”  Just because we don’t have hours doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t give God our minutes. Do you need to commute to work? For me, that’s 15 minutes that I can pray. Are you waiting in line at the DMV? That’s at least an hour you can talk to Jesus in. Do you watch 3 episodes of TV each night? Why not make it 2 and use that extra 3rd space to pray? It’s not about trying to find hours in your schedule that’s available to pray: it’s about finding the moments when you can pray.
2. Plan for morning, noon, & night. Psalms 55:17 tells us, “Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and He shall hear my voice.” The psalmist understood that prayer was necessary throughout the day, not just in the morning. If you look for times when you can consistently pray at the same time every day in the morning, noon, and night, you’re most definitely more likely to pray consistently. Planning is often all it takes to take an I-want-to-pray to an I-do-pray. This also allows for a missed time: if you missed your morning prayer, there’s still your noon and evening prayers; if you missed your noon prayers, there’s still your morning and evening prayers. It increases your chances for success.
3. Make a list. That’s right make a prayer list with things that you want to pray about throughout your day. Maybe you only have time to pray about one thing in the morning, but you’ll have ten minutes of downtime mid-day and a good half hour of time while you’re cooking dinner, but if you know what you’re aiming for in your prayers each day, you’ll know how much farther you need to go. Bring your list with you wherever you go. I’ve read about a girl recently who keeps her prayer list on a note card in her pocket. I recently did a project with our teen girl bible study class where we used note cards & mini-photo albums to create a prayer list that would fit in a purse. Most phones have an app already installed where you can keeps notes and lists. The more accessible and easy you make it to keep a list with you, the more likely you are to use that list throughout your day.
4. Speak love if you can’t say anything else. If you get to the end of today and find that even though you thought small with your prayers and even though you made a plan and even though you kept your list with you, you still didn’t manage to pray, then at least say, “I love you, Jesus” at night before you close your eyes. If my husband’s on a trip for the church and I’m at home, I don’t expect him to text me ten times a day. But I do expect an “I love you” at the end of the night. This keeps our line of communication open, asks for forgiveness for distraction, and reminds the other person that they’re still a priority. If you really couldn’t find a way to talk to God through your day, then at least tell Him “I love you” at the end of the night. Then, wake up knowing that yesterday’s failure to pray does not determine today’s prayer life. God wants you to talk to Him today even if you didn’t yesterday.

We cannot develop a real relationship with our Savior without praying to Him and it’s time to stop making excuses as to why we’re not doing it. God wants you to talk to Him! He doesn’t require lengthy, eloquent, repetitious prayers: He just wants that five minute “phone call” from you. Ultimately, the only person who can determine to use their time to connect with God is you. Is it a priority? Then it’s time to make it happen. You can do it! 🙂

Love, Meghan