Stone Soup for Five: Prayer Binder Tutorial Part 3--Family Pages

Prayer Binder Tutorial Part 3--Family Pages


Welcome back to my prayer journal set up. You can see the walkthrough of my binder here or here, and you can see part one here and part two here.

Part three of this tutorial is all about the family pages.  Like I mentioned in the earlier posts, there are several ways you can set these pages up.  I have a smaller family so I have just a single tab for each member.  But if you have a bigger family, there are a few options:
  1. Pray for each member individually (if you do this, you will have to adjust how long you are praying for each person--you might want to do a minute for each person, depending on how long you have for prayer.)
  2. Combine family members into one tab.  You can combine all the boys, all the girls, all the married, etc.
  3. Pray for your children under one tab for all.  Under a Children tab you can list your children each on one piece of paper and pray through the pages daily.  (If you do this, it might be hard to pray for each without allotting more time for this section... unless you plan to pray for one child on Mondays, another on Tuesdays, etc.
I have a section here for my husband and each of my boys, and added one more section labeled "Extra".

In my husband's section, I have a copy of Inspired to Action's prayer calendar for husbands... 



And I made day of the week pages for my husband, each day concentrating on a different part of his life, just like I did for myself.  I have individual pages for Monday through Friday and a combined page for Saturday/Sunday.

For him, each day/page is a different area that I'm praying for him, such as Christ follower, Husband/Marriage, Father, Brother and Son, Employee, and Leadership/Integrity.  I also have a blank page at the end of these daily pages where I can write down specific prayer requests and pray through those when they come up.


I didn't have any of the adhesive tabs when I did this page, so I made cut out tabs by cutting the Monday page in the farthest, then 2 lines higher for Tuesday, etc.  I reinforced them all by adding a piece of scotch tape and folding it to the back of each tab and they actually work really well, so I'm keeping them.


For my sons' sections, I did the same, starting off with the prayer calendar and then doing a tab for each of them.


Now, if you have multiple children there are a couple cool things you can do with these pages.  I orginally set them up so I would be praying for a different area for each son on the same day... for example, on Monday, I'll pray for my oldest as a Christ follower, my middle son for wisdom and discernment, and my youngest for his future wife and career.  I did that because I didn't want to fall into a rut as I was praying.

BUT,

Then I thought if I had set the tabs up the same for each son, it would be easier to remember what I am praying for the boys that day as I go about my day.  So, for example, on Monday I could be praying for each as a follower of Christ...  you'll have to think through what would work best for you on that.  Either way is great though.

So for each son, I have similar categories and pray for them daily, with a different quality each day of the week.  Some of the areas I pray for them in are:  as a Christ follower, for wisdom and discernment, integrity, purity, as a student, future spouse and career.  I also have a blank page at the end of each section to add specific prayers to as they come up.



Now, one VERY IMPORTANT PART to constantly be writing throughout your prayer binder is

 "WHY"

I have this written all over my prayer binder, on almost every page.  It is CRUCIAL to think through WHY you are praying this.  And if you're anything like me, you'll be floored at how this simple word changes everything you are praying.

I'm praying that the boys will be pure and righteous in their walk with Christ, then I ask WHY.  And it always stops my prayers and changes them into a conversation.  I want them to be pure and righteous because I want their lives to give glory to God in every way.  I want them to never know the pain of impure or unrighteous choices and to never waste time suffering through those consequences.

Is it right to pray this way when the Lord can work through painful and bad choices?
Absolutely.
I DO wish them to miss those rough roads of travel on their walk through this life.  I know they won't always make the right choices, but I can definitely pray for them to!

And finally, I have my "extra" tab.  This is where I jot down people and things that need daily prayer.  I have friends, unsaved friends, urgent requests, etc here.  
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So that's the third section of my prayer binder. 
Next week we'll finish up with the day of the week sections and final ending prayers.

Remember:  be kind to yourself.  Don't panic to get this all set up in a day.  Enjoy the process and add more as you go.  You'll get there!

If you have any questions on these sections, just let me know in the comments below!

Thanks, Kari

6 comments:

  1. Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this!

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  2. Kari, what do you use for taking notes at church and during Bible study at church? I was looking at your post from 2012 about the composition book. Looked simple enough. Such a great idea to have all info about Moses, for example, in one section. Do you still use it? Thanks!! I'm working on my prayer journal too and your ideas have really helped to spur me on!!

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    1. Hi Sandy! I really should do an update post about my Bible journal. I have been using the composition notebook for years, but am trying something different right now (just for the last three weeks or so) I'm taking notes on mini binder loose leaf notebook paper in the Cornell Notes style. I was thinking it would be really cool to have a DIY concordance of all my pastor's and other teacher's thoughts in the binder, book by book, so I could easily refer to them when I was reading a verse or section of the Bible that they've spoken on. I'm not sure how it is going to work, but I wanted to try! How do you do it? Do you use a Bible journal?

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  3. Hi Kari, your idea for a DIY concordance sounds interesting. A perfect way to keep all of my pastor's sermons in one binder. How do I do it? The haphazard way right now! But I believe I'm going to try the composition book for now. Simple. And as you said, no stress in doing this. If it doesn't work, I move to Plan B! Thanks again for listening to God's voice and having this blog. It is an encouragement to me and I know so many others--to stay in God's word. It is our hope.

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  4. Oops....hit that send button too quickly. I meant to say ...God's word is our only hope - and light in this dark world.

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  5. Thank you so much for sharing this. So many people put things up that are so general it is hard for me to know what they mean. I really appreciate your openness. BTW I learned about you from Elyssa Nalani's [post about her 2018 War Binder.

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