Friday, July 15, 2011

How to make an Electronic Prayer List on Google

I've recently been challenged to take up doing a prayer list after reading Disciplines of a Godly Man. One idea I came across was to make a Google Prayer List which uses the spreadsheet application in Google Docs.

Why have an electronic prayer list? 

  • You can update it any time. 
  • You always have your phone and if you have the internet, then you will also always have  your prayer list with you to pray
  • You can see how God answers prayer
  • You can watch how a prayer item develops.
  • You can testify of how God works through prayer
  • Google Docs will remind you of when you last prayed for the items (last updated) 
  • You can expand on the prayer list as you go along and you don't have any page limitations
How to set it up? 
  1. Create a Google spreadsheet by going to http://docs.google.com and create or log in to Google 
  2. Make the left most column wide enough (1/5 of the screen) this will be where you list downwards all your prayer lists
  3. Each column will represent one day or prayer session. Put today's date on the top of column B
  4. Each row will represent one prayer item 
  5. As you pray for each item, type in y and then press ENTER or the down arrow to be ready to mark y for the next prayer item. 
  6. Once you have made any changes to the Google Doc, the spreadsheet will jump to the top of your documents list. if you are like me, with many google docs, when you see your prayer list making its way down the list of documents, you know you haven't been praying about things (because the list is ordered by last editted). 
  7. When you pray for an item and God prompts you to change the way you pray, then type instead of y, the new prayer item that you would like to pray for. EG You may decide to change a prayer item from Pray for a job to Pray for a job close to home that allows me to serve God. As you pray for a certain item, you may find after certain days you end up changing the prayer item. 
  8. You can conditionally format the cells to go GREEN when the prayer item is answered. Ask Google to turn a cell red when the cell includes "TG " in it. 
Have you done this before? Or are going to try this? 

No comments:

Post a Comment