Do you want to grow in your prayer life this year? Do you long to see more fruit in your intercession? Here are three tactical weapons that strengthened my prayer time this year and I hope will encourage you.

Keeping a tabbed, topical prayer journal has been a game-changer. It has ensured my loved ones, sponsored children, along with various local, state, and federal officials are consistently being brought before the throne of grace.

At the beginning of this year, I shared a 93 year-old grandma’s prayer habits of consistently praying for her family, her church leaders, and even herself, and my plan to adopt it. You can tab your own journal however you wish. I adapted mine to ensure that my sponsored children, along with the persecuted church, were not being neglected (for which I’ve often felt guilt pangs for in the past!). I also included a section for recording dreams that I felt were significant.

The tabbed journal is not some rote religious act, but a tactical strategy for precision firing. It has been wonderfully exciting to see how the Lord has answered many specific requests, both in individuals and even nations.

Praying in the Spirit for extended lengths of time increases faith to prevail beyond the natural realm. 

I’ve testified of the directive the Lord gave me three years to begin praying in tongues as a discipline, along with reading the bible. This year, I once again sensed Him directing me to spend considerably more time praying in the Spirit. How it happened was this: I was gardening one spring day, listening to a C. S. Lewis audiobook, when I was impressed with an urgency to forego the podcast and instead pray by the clock – for three hours. I did so, and continued this three-hour pattern throughout the next few weeks.

There are many “big ticket” items that I listed when the Lord posed me with the thought, “Ask what I should give you?” The idea that the Lord might respond to my prayers along with those of others and bring righteousness into these hopeless institutions seems preposterous in the natural. But when I ask the Holy Spirit to pray through me, and I persist in this, I find that my faith to expect the impossible supercedes natural thought.

Not only that, but my inclination to pray for public figures, nations, and deep-seated institutional corruption can quickly pull me into fleshly thinking. Praying in the Spirit ensures that I am bypassing the limitations of my own perspective and emotions, and proclaiming the perfect, all-powerful, and omniscient faith missiles of the Holy Spirit.

Partnering in corporate prayer yields dividends. Whether it’s with a prayer group or just one other person, this year has revealed to me afresh the importance of “where two or more are gathered” in His name. One puts a thousand to flight, but two, ten thousand (Deut. 32:30).

I count it one of the greatest blessings of our church that we have a leadership team that emphasizes prayer above programs and every other worthy endeavor. Moreover, that in the heart of town, we have a faithful band of prayer warriors, representing various churches and townships, that gathers every single morning from 6a.m. to 7a.m. to lift up our town, the schools, our pastors, and the government. They have been meeting daily since July 2020, and this year, that ministry has grown into 24 hour times of intercession.

This year, when a friend asked me to pray with her once a week for revival, I little imagined that the Lord would use this to activate a dormant dream of using our property as a camp for young people. This and many other initiatives didn’t just materialize out of thin air, but came out of a time of prayer with at least one other person.

What do you want to see the LORD do in and through you this year? “All things are possible for the one who believes!”

Our Precious Life Girls Camp was realized after weekly corporate prayer