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Barbara Brabec’s
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Personal Musings about Life

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December 2024

Making Prayer a Part of Your Daily Life

Formal prayer has always been difficult for me, but I’ve learned
that prayers don’t have to be formal or long to please God.

I’ve always felt most comfortable talking to God as the loving Father and companion He is to me. I’ve had many chats with Him while doing dishes, driving, or in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. I share my problems, needs or concerns, lift up a friend’s name, ask forgiveness for my sins—especially those I may have unknowingly committed—and, most importantly, thank Him for each day’s blessings.

Curiously, I’ve found that the longer I’ve trusted in the LORD and walked with Christ, the less I’ve had to ask for anything. Now in my late eighties, I feel I have everything I need, and I continue to be blessed with help even before I know I need it.

Even when I allow the stresses of life to keep me from prayerful conversations with God, I can always see evidence of His hand in my daily life. I learned decades ago that God has always loved me and was working in my life all my life, even when I was ignoring Him. The evidence for this is overwhelming: I’ve had a wonderful and blessed life with amazing parents, sisters, relatives, and many life-long friendships. I had a rock-solid marriage that God allowed me to have for nearly 44 years (a story told in my memoir, The Drummer Drives! Everybody Else Rides), and my years of widowhood have been an amazing life journey too.

God-Enabled Connections

For forty years, my life’s work as a writer and self-publisher was to help people start and succeed in a home-based business. After my born-again encounter with God in 1994, I felt compelled to carry my writing and teaching to a new area of life, one far more important than business. After I set up my first website in 2000 and published a couple of faith-building articles, God began to send people my way, and before I knew it, I had a little ministry. People who contacted me as readers or clients told me how they “accidentally” found my website, and that still happens today. Whenever I connect with someone I haven’t communicated with before, I know God enabled the connection because He wanted us to know one another.

Do You Pray?

A 2023 survey indicated that 61 percent of Americans pray (about 6 in 10). The “Frequency of Prayer” survey by Pew Research charts the frequency of prayer by religious groups, age, gender, ethnicity, income, and more. The percentages in each group may surprise you. Most everyone seeks God in their own way, but many stumble through life for years without developing a relationship with Jesus.

Although I read the Bible and went to church as a child and young adult, I fell away from both during my late twenties. Always so self-sufficient, I managed to operate under my power for nearly thirty years before I finally ran out of steam and was brought to my knees. My first ardent prayer brought an immediate and dramatic response (documented in my Testimony for Christ), and I wanted to shout this good news from the rooftops!

Many find it difficult to talk about their faith in God because they fear they might offend someone. But I’ve never been able to be silent on this topic because God has so graciously blessed my life and proven to me time and again that He hears my prayers and is constantly at work in my life.

One-Sentence Prayers

After hearing Allen Jackson’s sermon on “Let’s Pray: Prayer 201,” I was inspired by his idea for how to pray shorter prayers, and I’ve included comments from that sermon that are slightly paraphrased. 

“Start thinking in terms of praying a one-sentence prayer,” he suggested. “In the fabric of your everyday life—in the context of all your relationships—when someone opens a window about a life circumstance they’re dealing with, we need to be prepared to do something about it except not care. There is a ‘Let’s pray’ opportunity in almost every interaction you have in your day, and you can invite God into that circumstance in a sentence.” He gave several examples, including:

Say, “Let’s pray. God, give us your strength. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Say, “Let’s pray. God, give us your wisdom. In Jesus’s name, Amen.”

Say, “Let’s pray. God, help us today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

He called this a “spiritual hit-and-run” prayer that could be voiced anywhere and anytime and be immediately followed with ordinary conversation. This sermon also reminded me that God invites us to communicate with him throughout our day, and we can send up many one-sentence prayers as the Spirit moves us. Although He already knows what we’re thinking, doing, and worrying about, He wants us to tell Him in our prayers.

Jack Hibbs—another of my favorite pastors—said that people in his church often ask him what he would like them to pray for him. He said the prayer he says every day when he puts his feet on the floor is this: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” He added, “That was Jesus’ prayer on the cross, and that prayer puts everything in God’s hands.”

He also suggested a prayer we might want to pray daily, asking the Holy Spirit to let us know if we’ve done anything or said anything that we need to repent. Ephesians 4:30 reminds us, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

NOTE: Your subscription to the Brabec Bulletin includes my mid-month TIDBITS Bulletin—short takes on things I've found noteworthy, with links for more information if I've piqued your curiosity. Note that TIDBITS bulletins are not archived, but to sample earlier archived issues of the Brabec Bulletin, see below. Selected MUSINGS posts are archived here and identified as such in the Table of Contents. Comments to this post are invited and emails are always welcomed and answered as soon as possible.

Visit the HOME page for Timely Quotes and links to Featured Articles of the month. Thanks for linking others to Barbara Brabec’s World.

Brabec Bulletins
~ Published in 2024 ~

(No Bulletin published in December.)

November 8, 2024: Are You Ready for Such a Time as This? Who can deny that we are living in chaotic and dangerous times when things are happening that no one could have imagined before? America now seems upside down and backward, where white is black, good is evil, and a biblical worldview is now held by only six percent of American Christians.

October 7, 2024: Exploring Your Special Interests and Creativity: How to stimulate your subconscious mind * Things you may be collecting and their worth * Inspiration for inventing a new gizmo or gadget & How to be more creative.

September 5, 2024: The Real ID Card and Healthcare Cyberattacks. What you may not know about the Real ID card—which will soon be a national tracking system—and how cyberattacks against the healthcare system are affecting hospitals, doctors, and consumers.

August 5, 2024: Food, Glorious Food! A Collection of Food Tidbits, including a recipe for “Goopenpucky” and a shot of humor.

July 8, 2024: The Benefits and Power of Journaling. How journaling changed my relationship with my kid sister, based on an idea you might want to try. Plus inspiring articles to help you journal with purpose. 

June 5, 2024: Good-to-Know Medical Information. Barbara shares her research and experience with The Short Life of Medical Records, Breast Cancer Signs, Symptoms, and Exams, and Perspective on Knee Joint Replacements, with something to laugh about at the end.

May 6, 2024: COVID Hasn’t Ended—Help Yourself by Staying Informed. This issue features a timely COVID-19 Quick Reference Guide, New COVID-19 Variants and Strains, and Barbara’s Study of Five Bad Colds

April 4, 2024: Understanding Copyrights and Public Domain Works. Why thousands of copyrighted works fall into the public domain every year and how this may affect your creative output.

March 5, 2024: The Time-Honored Tradition of Saving and Sharing Recipes. Adapted from one of Barbara's unfinished books titled Stories in My Recipe Box: Kitchen Tales, Cooking Tips, and Old Family Recipes.

February 6, 2024: Are You Getting Enough Sleep? Good sleep is more important than you may realize. Here’s how to get all you need, with special tips and resources for insomniacs.

January 19, 2024:  What are Your Plans for the New Year? Are you where you want to be in life? Or do you feel you need to get your act together this year?

Copyright © 2024 by Barbara Brabec. All Rights Reserved.