One of the things I’ve learnt in time management is the benefit of keeping informal agendas for my meetings with various people. In Outlook I’ve got a list for each of the people in my team, plus others with whom I regularly chat.

So, when I meet up with Deaco, I’ve got a ‘Deaco’ list of all the things I want to chat with him about when we next have our regular meeting.

When it comes to prayer, the same principle can be useful.

Given that my conversations with God should be regular and meaningful, it makes sense for me to have agendas for my daily prayer time with him.

Get a system

A useful system would remind me of things I should regularly pray for daily, weekly and monthly. It should also have the scope to have other daily prayer points that will come and go on a needs basis.

When I finally jumped on board the iOS train, I reviewed a number of apps that could possibly help me achieve this kind of organisation on my smartphone.

My journey ended when I downloaded PrayerPartner by Laridian.

This simple app enables me to categorise prayer points so that I either pray them every day, on a particular day of the week, or a particular day of the month. This means that I can now be prompted to pray for my wife every day, my kids on specific days of the week, and a whole lot of other people and things at least once a month.

It also allows me to assign a contact in my iPhone to a particular prayer point, so that I can then hit a button and automatically have an SMS ready to type to that person, to encourage them that I’ve prayed for them.

It’s no silver bullet for a reliable method of daily prayer. But it does help me make sure that my daily ‘meetings’ with God have a useful agenda, so that I can be organised in presenting my requests to my heavenly Father.

Jodie McNeill is the Executive Director of Youthworks Outdoors.

Photo credit: John.Karakatsanis