Prayer Requests

*This is a non-book related post.*

We were visiting some friends of ours recently and the wife informed me of this online web service that she uses to keep her prayer requests organized. It's called Echo Prayer Manager. She was telling me how it's an easy way for her to pray through the requests on her list without feeling overwhelmed. I came home and looked into it and have been using it myself for the past month. I find it enormously helpful and wanted to share it with you all, in case you think it would be of use to you.

This free website is extremely easy and straight forward to use. (I was worried that setting up my prayer reminders would be complicated but it was not at all.)

What you do with this site is enter in prayer requests individually and then you can specify how frequently you would like an e-mail reminder to pray for each request. I'll give examples, changing names to protect the innocent. ;)

I typed in one request as follows: "Sam and Linda's wedding."

There is a box available for me to be more specific in how I want to pray for this event, or I can just know that, in general, I want to be praying for this. I can then also choose how often I want to remember to pray over this request. The website allows for me to set the degree of frequency this request pops up.

I can choose how many requests are e-mailed to me each day and at what time of day. So, for instance, if you are one of those crazy early morning people, you can request that your e-mails be sent to you at 5:00 a.m. or something silly like that. I have my reminders set to be e-mailed to me around the time when I usually wake up which is not at 5 a.m.

You are able to add innumerable prayers to your free account.  You can edit them as situations change or you are informed of new specifics to add to any requests. Then you can also mark when prayers have been answered.

I like Echo Prayer Manager for a few reasons:

• Chiefly, that it is easy to say that I'll pray for someone when they ask but harder to actually do it. If I put the request into the website, then a request for them will pop up at various points reminding me to follow through with my promise to pray.
• As my friend who introduced me to this website pointed out, prayer lists can be long and daunting. Because that is so, it is easy to be discouraged by the sheer enormity of the list and the lack of time than you feel you have to set aside to pray. (Hello, Young Motherhood. Nice to meet you!) I like that I can select how many reminders to send me each day. I have a certain quantity sent to me on a daily basis.

At first I thought this idea of the prayer website was kinda like wimping out and proving I'm too lazy to remember prayers and make time for them. However, I think that attitude is largely unhelpful and it is better to pray for a handful of items each morning then not at all. This website is indeed making sure that each day is started with prayer. (Except on really, really busy mornings which I've been having in great number lately. However, I have the prayer requests before my eyes and I don't delete the e-mail until I've had my time to pray.) For a mom of littles, I find this website not only convenient but truly helpful. I don't feel nearly so helpless when I'm asked to pray for something, left thinking that I'll never remember to find the time! My brain is running in a million directions thanks to many little feet and the morning challenge to remember some specific things in prayer helps me focus the day and prioritize my relationship with the Lord as well.

That all shared, let me assure you that I'm not being paid to recommend this site. I'm not receiving any compensation whatsoever. I have not contacted the owner/developer of this site to ask for permission to mention it. I'm talking about this on my own time because I have truly found it so very helpful that I feel certain it could prove a blessing of a tool for some of you. For what it's worth - here it is.