For many people, the turn of year is a time of reflection. A time to look back over the year, evaluate losses, learn from them and cherish meaningful moments. For many, it’s a time to make New Year Resolutions, hoping they’ll make a difference, and half-believing they probably won’t. They didn’t work last year; why would they work this year?
If New Year Resolutions are doomed to failure, is there any point to making them at all? Some people think so. But others are discovering a new ritual based on the recognition that of ourselves we can do nothing. Au contraire, we need God's strength in every area of our lives. So why not invite Him to be part of the resolution process and turn it into prayer requests.
Here’s how it works.
This list is not a wish-list for Santa-in-the-Sky. It is a prayer list; it serves as a tool for transparency with God—an opportunity to let Him work in and through you to make His Kingdom manifest.
Take a special notebook or a folder in your computer to compile your list every year.
If you already have started a notebook, at the end of the year, review your list from the previous year. Check off answered prayer. Underline unanswered prayer. Color-code or put an asterisk on prayers that need to be redirected. Oftentimes, when you look over your prayers, you will see God has changed your desire, or shown you were praying amiss: “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (James 4:3, NIV).
If you're new to this practice, and don't yet have past prayer lists to look over, take time to jot down important events from this year.
With or without a previous list, before creating one for the New year, probe your own reactions, desires, disappointments and search your heart to recognize where you need to grow. Pray over those things, surrender them to God. You may want to include some of these probings in this new list.
Go back over the list to thank God for the answered prayer and pray again for the things that still need answering—salvation of a loved one, healing of a child, financial struggles, etc. (You’ll rewrite those unanswered and still-relevant prayer requests in the new list.)
Next, you take a fresh page and start a new list for the upcoming year.
Here are suggestions of the kinds of things to write:
- Prayer for family and loved ones, whether for their salvation or other needs.
- Prayer for neighbors, colleagues, church-members with needs.
- Prayer for your own needs.
- Prayer for your own desires – and be sure to remember to surrender your will to God’s and ask Him to change any desires that are not of Him. (Check out Psalm 106:15).
- Prayer for national issues. (This year would be a good time to include praying over 2012’s elections.)
- Prayer for global issues.
- Prayer for orphans & widows.
- Prayer for our military and all those who are there to protect us.
- Prayer for anything else important to you.
If you make this an annual practice, you’ll find it to be cathartic and life-changing.
Happy New Year.
Janey DeMeo M.A.
Copyright © December 2011
Comments