Prayers and Reminders

Josh here -

I thought I'd post while Sylvia is out of town, but she's coming home tonight!

Every Monday morning I meet with a pastor/friend and we ask accountability questions of each other.  One of the questions I have him ask me is, "How much did you pray this week?"  My usual answer is "about the same" which means 'not much.'  I'm really not much of a praying man, although I try to be.  I pray in the morning, I pray at meals, and usually a couple other times during the day, but that's about it.  I WANT to pray more, but I don't, and the reason is that I just don't think of it.  I've got my MP3 player plugged into my head, and while I usually listen to sermons all day long, hearing someone else talk about God is not the same as talking to God myself.

I live in a small town which has a few churches which ring bells throughout the day.  The reason churches ring bells is to remind people to pray, so I decided that every time I heard the bells, I would pray.  That works all right as long as I hear the bells, but I rarely hear them so that plan doesn't work for me.

On Monday it finally occurred to me - I've got a wonderful watch that has an hourly chime - why not turn that on?  The only problem is that it chimes 24 hours - and that means it will chime all night long as well.  If I turn it off, I'll not remember to turn it on in the morning again, but perhaps that small inconvenience of leaving it chime all night is worth the reminder.

So I turned it on, and Monday was a great day - I prayed every single hour up until bedtime.  I decided right away that I had better not finish a task and then pray, for I'd forget to pray.  Better to drop everything and say a prayer for whoever or whatever was in my mind at the moment - pastors, friends, brothers, parents, in-laws, wife, kids, cousins, the Duggars, Vision Forum, myself, etc. etc.  It was splendid!  They were not long prayers - probably less than a minute, but I prayed every hour.  That night I heard the chime once as I was drifting off to sleep, and didn't notice it again until morning.
Tuesday was the same - I prayed every hour.  Sometimes I had earphones on to shut out tool noise, and may have missed a chime or two, but I sometimes remembered at other times during the day and prayed then as well.  Same thing on Wednesday - I prayed all day long - I'm a prayin' fool, now!!  I even thanked God for my watch a couple times.  (I've always loved this watch - the Casio Wave Ceptor - it gets a signal from Denver every night so it is calibrated via sattlite to the very second. I always have the exact time.  I lost the watch once, and couldn't find the same one in the stores, so I ordered the same one online.)

I've said for years that most of us don't really need to learn any more about the Bible - We just need to put into practice what we already know, and I know enough about it to keep me busy for the rest of my life.  Once I start DOING what I know I ought to do, then I can learn some more.
Of course, I read the Bible every day - we should always do that - but my point is that for myself, I need reminders more than new info.
This little watch has really done wonders for my prayer life.  What simple things can you do for your own walk with Jesus?  After all, the point of it all is not "pray often" or "do good things," but rather to have a closer relationship with God.
May he bless you in your efforts to grow closer to Him!