​I was talking recently with some ladies and the question arose: "Is it okay to pray many times for the same thing, even in the same day?" The ladies were talking about those times when a particular matter weighed heavily on their spirits and they could barely think of any other thing throughout the day. They feared falling into the category of "vain repetition," as Jesus described it in Matthew 6:7-8:

​When we read books on prayer or accounts of Christians who have been known for their prayer lives, we usually only hear about the hours that they spend in dedicated prayer. While those prayer times are important (see my thoughts on "set apart prayer time" in the next section), when we're developing prayer-muscles or we are in a particularly demanding season of life, five-second prayers are totally legitimate. They overcome the first barrier to prayer (the reluctance to start praying at all) and they direct our thoughts toward the Lord many times throughout the day. Instead of "saving up our prayers" for a particular time and place in which we can offer set-apart prayer, we see all times and places and contexts as legitimate for prayer. Many times, we see people in the Bible pray as they go, seeking that brief connection with the Lord in the midst of their activities.

Let's go back to the concept of creating categories. We do this all the time:
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• Things Worth Praying For
• Things Not Worth Praying For
• Things I Can Do Myself or That Are Going Well, So I Don't Need to Pray For Them
• Things That Are Causing Stress or Fear, So I Need to Pray About Them

This is Chapter 9 of "Discovering Joy," a devotion-style diary written during the coronavirus self-isolation. I've been posting it chapter-by-chapter on Wattpad. Enjoy!
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The next few chapters will be about prayer, not because I set out to write some sort of theological treatise on prayer (I'm not nearly qualified!) but because I believe the Lord is building our prayer muscles during this time of self-isolation, global fear, and suffering. By "our" I don't mean just my husband and I, but the church as a whole. If God's people will not pray, who will? If we do not believe prayer to be effective enough, important enough, crucial enough--then do we truly believe in the God we say we do? If we saw prayer as more than just a blessing over food--if we saw it as a Christian soldier's active use of a sword and a shield in a furious spiritual battle--how would we pray?
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These are the things that I have learned about prayer. I hope they help you as you also join the "prayer front" in this battle!