New Year, New Goals

This past week I was thinking over the goals that I had for this past year and feeling down about what I thought was not enough improvement made. I was so very thankful when I read this post over at the girltalk blog. This post gave me a whole new perspective on evaluating my goals. To sum it up, we are not perfect only God is. If we look back on our goals often time there is progress made, maybe just not as much as we would have liked to see. As Carolyn Mahaney stated "I’m going to try again this year. I’m going to make new resolutions to glorify God. I’m going to seek to make them humbly—recognizing my weakness and inability to complete them all perfectly."

One of the areas of improvement that I was not satisfied with was my prayer life. I have always struggled with consistency and depth of prayer. But, after I started looking back with this new perspective I was able to see some of the progress that had been made and most of that progress is due to the addition of many wonderful resources that the Lord has brought into my prayer life.

I wanted to share with all you some of the resources and prayers that have been such a wonderful blessing to me.

• My newest and Favorite resource is "Prayers of an Excellent Wife" by Andrew Case. This book is filled with scripture based prayers for you to pray for your husband. I have only had it for a few weeks but have loved everything I have read. This book was not made for profit so you can go to this web-sight and find out how you can order your own copy for $4.82 with this code 4HM3HHEE or they also have it available anyone to download for free. Chris is also reading through Water of the Word also by Andrew Case, which is the same type of book just for husbands to use to pray for their wives.
• The other book that I have that I love is Valley of Vision. This book is a collection of Puritan prayers and devotions. These prayers have been a wonderful addition as they are so beautiful and stated in ways that I would not normally think of.
  
• The next prayer is from Desiring God blog. This post is by John Piper on 9 scriptures to pray for your soul.
• Another one of my prayers is also from the Desiring God blog. This post is by John Bloom entitled Text to Pray for Our Children.
• This next group of prayers is from my good friend Carrie. She posted in her blog Our Journey three lists of scripture that she prays for her sons, daughters, and her husband. Thanks Carrie!
  
• This prayer was also posted by my friend Carrie! It is a prayer that I use for mothers that I pray for myself.
  
• I also enjoy using this 31 day calendar for Praying for our Children.
• I had enjoyed this Watermark song for a long time but had never thought about using it as a prayer until I read about it on Sheri's blog. Here are the lyrics to Watermarks song "Invade".

Most of these prayers I have printed off and pasted into my prayer journal. This way I have them on had to pray through. I pray that these prayers will be a blessing to all of you. What are your favorite prayers or resources that you use?

"Rejoice always,
pray with out ceasing,
give thanks in all circumstances;
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18