Using Autocorrect to Assist Your Prayer Life
Have you every noticed what Paul says about the frequency with which he prays? Check out these verses:
9 God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you 10 in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.
I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.
I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.
I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you, 4 always praying with joy for all of you in my every prayer.
For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,
We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers.
Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.
4 I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, 5 because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. 6 I pray that your partnership with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of Christ.
He prays a lot, right?
If you think about it, he must either have had an incredibly good memory, better than any of us have, OR he had a really good system for remembering who to pray for.
Not everyone has a super great memory. But most of us can follow a system of some kind or another, to help us pray for the people we want to pray for.
In this article, I want to show you what I do. Not to flex. I don’t care if you’re impressed or unimpressed with what I do. But I want to challenge you to think about what will work for you and your prayer life. Because praying for people is really important.
Here are my basic steps.
Step 1—Categories
Make up some list categories. I have five lists for Monday through Friday.
Monday: the people from my 6pm congregation;
Tuesday: leaders—church staff leaders, lay leaders/parish council and wardens, denomination leaders, and government leaders;
Wednesday: extended family, friends in Christian ministry, close friends;
Thursday: my youth leaders, the people in my Bible Study, missionaries;
Friday: the youth at my church.
Step 2—Fill the lists
Put names on each of those lists. Here’s a pretend list for Monday:
Ava
Benjamin
Charlotte
Daniel
Emily
Step 3—Set up text replacements
Then I set up text replacements. This is how I do it on my Mac.
Type in “text replacements” and click on the icon.
2. Then put in a code in the section titled “replace”. I go with pd1, pd2, pd3 etc., standing for “Prayer Day 1”, “Prayer Day 2” etc.
3. I then copy my list into the section that says “With”.
4. I click add.
Step 4—Pray
Then, each day, I’ll pray for the people.
I’m a bit of a weirdo and I type my prayers out. I find it helps me to concentrate much more effectively.
So, as you can see below, I type in my code, …
And then … out pops my list
My generic prayer for them is this:
I thank you for each one of these people.
Fill them with wisdom and knowledge.
May they be full of hope.
May they live in peace and unity.
Strengthen them with spiritual power.
Enable them to learn to abide in Christ.
Enable them to grow in their love for others.
Preserve their righteousness and purity.
May they overflow with praise and thanks to you.
Give me opportunities to minister to them.
Amen.
I actually add that to the autocorrect for the day as well. When there are specific requests I’ll try and remember to pray for those too.
Default Prayer Template
I also have a default template that I use. I created it using the same method I showed you above.
Each day, I type in “pd0” and out pops this template:
I’ll start off by praising God, followed by some time in confession, followed by some stuff to thank God for, followed by prayers asking for stuff.
(I actually have a bunch of biblical and liturgical prayers with keyboard shortcuts for them too: e.g., PS8 -> Psalm 8; LP1 -> Lord’s Prayer; Conf1, Conf2 -> Confessions from Anglican Prayer Book)
Under “God”, I’ll often pray the opening lines of the Lord’s Prayer.
Under “Family”, I pray for my immediate family, based on my family prayer (you guessed it—I have an autocorrect for that too).
Under “Evangelism”, I pray for people I’m hoping God will save. (sometimes I’ll pray Psalm 67 for them. Yup: another autocorrect)
Under “Yesterday”, I’ll pray for stuff that happened yesterday.
Under “Today”, I’ll pray for stuff that’s coming up today.
Under “Tomorrow”, I’ll pray for stuff that will be happening tomorrow or at some point in the future. Often just future stuff I’m concerned with.
Under “Peace”, I pray that God would give me a sense of “peace”. Each year, I pray for a different fruit of the Spirit for the whole year.
Under “List”, I’ll pray for the people on my list for that day. That’s when I bring in the autocorrect trick I just showed you.
After that, I pray for stuff based on the Bible passages I’m reading that day.
What works for you?
I’ve never managed to convince someone else to use my system. This is a very Martinesque system. It works for me.
And I’m cool with that. My prayer system is like the wallet-phone-keys-airpods-garage-remote-all-in-one-thing that I put in my pocket:
(I took the phone out of the case to take the photo…)
Like my wallet-phone-keys-airpods-garage-remote-all-in-one-thing, my prayer system works for me, and nobody else.
But, in writing this article, I’m not trying to convince you to be like me. I’m trying to help you think through how you can be like Paul. What will help you remember to pray and give thanks for people “continually”, “always”, “day and night”?
My suspicion is that you’ll need a system. What will it be?
What others do
Some people I know prefer to use a physical notebook.
Others like to use an app like Prayermate.
What will you use?
