Record Your Prayers to Remember God's Faithfulness

By: Melanie Moore

This past week, I decided to clean out a bookcase that was overly stuffed with old journals, notebooks, and planners. As I paged through my old prayer journals, I was struck by the sheer volume of prayers that God had answered during the past couple of years. 

In particular, I had prayed about a couple situations that were desperately in need of God's hand and intervention. As I read the prayers I had written for these situations, I recalled the pain I had felt while praying for God to move. These situations were completely and totally out of my hands, and there was nothing I could do to improve my situation.

My prayers to God were open, honest, and gut-wrenching to re-read. That's the beautiful thing about prayer. We don't need to hide what we're facing from God. He already knows! He wants us to come to Him and pour out our hearts before Him in complete reliance on Him.

That's one reason I love the Psalms so very much. In so many of the Psalms, David cries to God with His open, honest, desperate prayers for God to help Him. He often cries "how long?" in His prayers to God, but then he also closes many of his prayers in worship and praise of who he knows God to be, even in the middle of his suffering.

As I looked through my recorded prayers, I felt the same! God had answered so many of my prayers, and recording the prayers helped remind me of who God is and how He has always been faithful to provide for my every need.

I love the Lord, because he has heard

    my voice and my pleas for mercy.

Because he inclined his ear to me,

    therefore I will call on him as long as I live.

~ Psalm 116:1-2

Many times, I think it is tempting for us to despair in times of trials and sadness. We start to think that maybe God doesn't care, maybe he has even forgotten us. However, if we "zoom out" from the details of our current situation and look at the big picture of our lives, we can see how God's hand has been in every detail of our life. 

God might not always answer our prayers in the way that we expect, and He may not answer in the timeframe we would like. However, if we pray faithfully, we know that God hears our prayers. Looking back over numerous answered prayers give us much needed reminders in times of trials that God is still faithful.

What is on your heart today? Could I encourage you to reach out to God in prayer? Try writing your prayers and prayer requests to God, and watch how God moves! 

Have you recorded prayers before and do you find that it strengthens your faith to look back at God's faithfulness in answering your prayers?