Those who will be spending the holidays (especially Thanksgiving and Christmas) with family members, can reach out to those who are alone and brighten their holidays with just a little effort. Doing one or more of the following ten suggestions can make a world of difference in someone’s life.

1. Ask the singles in your workplace or church if they have any plans. Don’t assume they have somewhere to go for the holidays. If in the past you’ve had the same person(s) over for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, don’t assume they know they’re expected to come again this year. Talk to them and let them know you’re counting on them being there.
2. Don’t wait till the last minute to invite them. Anticipation is half the fun! Plus it allows them to join in as others share their holiday plans, instead of just listening and wishing they had somewhere to go or someone to spend the holidays with.
3. Ask if they’d like to bring something that’s always been part of their traditional holiday dinner. A simple holiday dish can make the meal complete for them and bring back precious memories.
4. Allow them to participate in the usual holiday preparations. Have them over when you decorate the Christmas tree. Don’t forget to include them when you go looking at all the Christmas lights.
5. Let them help with the holiday baking. Being involved in these arrangements allows them to enjoy a family setting.
6. Find out if and when they’re going to decorate their place and go over to help them. If they‘re not decorating because it’s too much trouble, why not show up with some decorations and a tree and help them decorate? Don’t forget to bring some homemade cookies and Christmas music to help set the mood.
7. Go and visit them. It’s great to have friends over, especially around the holidays. But your single friends may be afraid to invite you knowing how busy you are this time of year. Make some time to go over and spend  it with them.
8. Invite them to go shopping with you. Even fighting the holiday traffic and shoppers in the mall can be fun when you do it with someone else. Remember to get a little something for your single friend.
9. Sit with your single friend during the special Christmas services if they attend church. For those who find themselves alone during the holidays, church can be a very lonely place.
10. Be there for them with a listening ear and arms that embrace. Remember no matter how long they’ve been alone, holidays are still lonely times. It doesn’t get easier; they learn to adjust to it. Allow them to talk about their loneliness and encourage them as you can.

As you reach out to those who would have otherwise spent the holidays alone, not only have you brightened the holidays for them, but you will also find yours more meaningful.

Do you find it difficult to stay focused in prayer?

Here are a few simple ideas and tools for you to use that will encourage you to pray more often and more effectively everyday. Remember, prayer has life-changing power … why miss out?

• Start where you’re at and go from there. If your prayer time is limited to a quick blessing before meals, try setting a goal of praying for five minutes a day. If you’re currently praying that long, then make a commitment to pray 10 minutes every day. Don’t set a goal to pray for 60 minutes a day when you’re struggling to get through five minutes now, unless you feel the Holy Spirit leading you to do this.

• Begin your prayer time with prayer. Before jumping right into what you want from God, or what you want Him to do for you, spend a few minutes acknowledging who He is and praise Him for who He is. Confess your sins before Him, and then thank Him not only for His forgiveness, but also for what He has done for you and given you. Now you can let your request be known. There will be times when you want to pray for someone or even for yourself, but you’re not sure how to pray. Ask the Holy Spirit to come and show you how to pray.

• Pray the Scriptures when you pray. God’s Word is full of promises that we can request of Him and claim for ourselves, and those we are praying for. Read one of the classic books on prayer. There are many great books on the subject of prayer. What Happens When Women Pray by Evelyn Christenson, Prayer That Works by Jill Briscoe, The Kneeling Christian by An Unknown Christian, The Hour That Changes The World by Dick Eastman and Power of Prayer by R.A. Torrey. These books are available at your local Christian bookstore or on the Internet. Don’t forget to read the prayers of the great men and women of faith in the Bible.

• Have a prayer closet. You don’t need to literally go into a closet to pray, but have a place set aside in your house where you can go to be alone with God. Go there every day, preferably in the mornings with the expectation of hearing from God. Have your Bible, pen and a notebook handy so you can write down what God is saying to you.

• Find a prayer partner. Pray that God will lay someone on your heart to ask to be your prayer partner. Remember a partnership involves more than one person, so as you expect them to pray for you and your needs, you also are to pray for them and their requests.

• Carry 3×5 cards with you. Write your prayer requests and the names of those you are praying for on the cards and carry them with you wherever you go. During the day when you have a free minute or two you can pull the cards out and pray. By doing this you will find that what would have been unproductive time (standing in line at the grocery store, sitting in a doctor’s office) can become time spent with the Father in prayer. You will also notice that you are spending more time in prayer, and everyone on your prayer list is being prayed for and often more than just once a day. You can also carry blank cards with you so that when you run across someone during the day you can write down their prayer need. Also when God brings someone to mind, write their name down and begin praying for them. There was a reason you thought of them.

• Keep a prayer journal. Keeping a prayer journal helps us not only to remember who and what we’re praying for. It also encourages us in our prayers as we look back and see how God has answered our prayers. It’s easy to forget answered prayers especially during a season of not hearing from God. Prayer journals can be purchased at your local Christian bookstore or made. They are a simple, but effective way of recording the day you started praying for a certain request and the day it was answered and how God answered it.

Remember, the most important thing to do regarding enhancing your prayer life is to pray. No matter how many books we read on prayer, how many prayer seminars and workshops we attend we won’t be effective in praying till we actually get down on our knees and begin to pray.

Want to get more out of your daily Bible reading but don’t know exactly how to go about it?

Set aside a time and place where you go to meet with God as you read His Word. Don’t just randomly open your Bible and start reading, have a plan. You might choose to read straight through the Bible starting with Genesis, or in the New Testament. Whatever plan you choose, be consistent and read every day.

As you prepare to read, pray for the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to what God is saying to you in His Word. Remember God’s Word is alive and active and relevant for today. As you read expect God to speak to you through His Word, and His Holy Spirit. Record what God is saying to you in your journal and be obedient to what he is saying. Remember we are to be doers of the Word and not just hearers of the Word.

Once you’ve gathered the materials you will be using during your reading it’s time to begin your study. Now you need to decide which format you will use. Your study format can consist of reading a chapter a day and looking for and high lighting (with your colored pencils) verses that deal with certain Biblical doctrines such as angles, end times, salvation, the deity of Jesus, or the Holy Spirit. You might want to highlight prayers that you find in the Bible, or if reading the Old Testament, highlight the words of God. You can also look for major areas of the Christian walk such as spiritual warfare, evangelism, or stewardship and high light those. Grace, mercy, judgement, holiness and sin are other themes that you might want to consider looking for as you read. While reading focus on one theme or word at a time. When you finish the first book you can go on to another book looking for the same theme or re-read the book with a new theme in mind.

This method will help you with a particular doctrine or theme, but what if you want to see what God has to say to you personally? Again with the Holy Spirit’s leading choose a book of the Bible but this time instead of reading a chapter a day you will concentrate on a smaller portion of the book. Read the passage (example Matthew 16:13-20) through once. On the second reading take each verse and write the verse number in your journal followed by the key words in that verse, omitting adjectives. Do this with each verse in the passage. Now write the verse numbers down and using the key words you wrote down for each verse, write down what spiritual truth, command or warning is the writer giving in each verse? Now write the verse numbers and going back to the command, spiritual truth or warning that you just wrote and ask yourself what is God saying to you personally?

As you end your reading or study time spend time in prayer concerning what you have just read. While it is important that you read/study God’s Word every day, if you miss a day or two don’t give up, pick up where you left off and go on from there. Remember the more time you spend in God’s Word the more you will want to, and the more you learn the more you will want to learn.

You find yourself hoping and yes, even praying, that she won’t be at Bible study, or any activity that you plan to attend. She’s done nothing to you. Nothing that should get to you like it does. But for some unknown reason everything she does and says irritates you! What’s more, chances are she’s not even aware of how you feel.

“Why do I feel this way?” you scream inside. “What has she done to make me feel this way?” These are difficult questions that need to be prayed about and answered. To get to the root of the issue, step back and consider:

1. Is she a believer who is acting like an unbeliever?
2. Is she causing division within the body?

If the answer to these questions is “no,” the problem may not be with her, but within yourself. Since the problem may be with you, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Am I jealous of her?
2. Do l feel threatened by her?
3. Am I in competition with her?

After you answer the above questions, the next step in the process is to:

1. Pray that you will see her through God’s eyes.
2. Pray for God to change your heart towards her.
3. Pray for her daily.

Loving by faith

The next step is to begin working on your attitude. Remember, your heart will not likely change overnight. It will take time. But as you continue to pray and work at changing your attitude, God will honor your prayer. We change our attitude when we acknowledge that it needs to change, and have the desire to change it with the help of the Holy Spirit. How do we go about it?

1. Spend time together one-on-one – getting to know her will help you understand her.
2. Work together on a ministry project.
3. Try to see the things about her that irritate you as positive things. For example, do you see her as being bossy? Why not see the strength in that, which is being assertive? As you pray and work on your attitude you will notice in time that you are not as annoyed with her as you have been in the past. You may even find yourself liking her.

The end result is that you will experience peace and not irritation – you will learn to love by faith. You may find a new friend, but most importantly, there will be unity in the body of Christ and God will be glorified.

Perhaps your boss, a fellow employee, your spouse, your children or your father or mother is on the list of those whom you will love by faith. Pray for each person. Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with Christ’s love for all of them. Then, seek to meet with them as you draw upon God’s limitless, inexhaustible, overwhelming love for them by faith. Expect God to work through you! Watch Him use your smile, your words and your patience to express His love for each individual.

How exciting it is to have such a dynamic, joyful force available to us! And it all comes from our loving Savior, Jesus Christ, who explicitly promises in His Word all that we need. You need not guess, nor hope, nor wish. You can claim this love by faith, right now, on the basis of God’s command to love and His promise to answer whenever you pray for anything according to His will. Why not make this prayer your own:

“Dear Father, I need You. I acknowledge that I have been directing my own life and that, as a result, I have sinned against You. I thank You that You have forgiven my sins through Christ’s death on the cross for me. I now invite Christ to again take His place on the throne of my life. Fill me with the Holy Spirit as You commanded me to be filled, and as You promised in Your Word that You would do if I asked in faith. I now thank You for directing my life and for filling me with the Holy Spirit. Lord, You would never have commanded me to love had You not intended to enable me to do so. Therefore, right now, on the authority of Your commands for me to love and on the authority of Your promise to answer if I asked anything according to Your will, I personally claim Your love – the 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love – for You, for all people, and for myself. Amen.”

If you prayed this prayer, we would love to hear about it!

Children imitate what they see modeled, and we need to be an example of praying adults for our children. If they are to become children, and later men and women, who know the importance of prayer and make prayer a daily practice in their lives, then as their parents and grandparents we need to be setting the example. How can we do this?

• Let our children see us praying. Children learn by example. Our children and grandchildren need to see us starting our day off with prayer and reading the Bible.

• Our children also need to see us praying when a crisis arises or decisions need to be made. We also need to make pray a part of our children’s daily life by praying with and for them. Praying with our children needs to be more than a quick prayer said at meal and bedtimes.

• Send your children off with a prayer. We have an opportunity to make a difference in our children’s day by sitting down with them before they head to school and praying for them individually. We need to be pray for guidance and protection for our children while they are away from us. Then we need to give each child the opportunity to pray for their activities of the day, and any special concerns they may have for the day. At first we may have to pray for their activities, but as they become more comfortable with this time of prayer and praying in general, they will begin praying for their own needs and the needs of the brothers and sisters as well.

• Make a prayer box and write on slips of paper the names of extended family members, church leaders, close friends, and special needs of those in the church. Then at breakfast or during your family devotions, have each child draws a slip of paper and have them pray for the person whose name they drew throughout the day.

• Pray over problems. When our children come to us with problems, such as problems with a classmate, upcoming test, we need to not only listen to them, and advise them, but also pray with them. Like us, our children may become discourage with prayer when they don’t see their prayers being answered right away. Just as we need to occasionally be reminded of the prayers God has answered for us, so do our children.

• Make a “Thank You, God” box for answered prayers. As prayers are answered, write them down and place them in the “Thank You, God” box. Then once a week have each member of the family draw out a thank you slip and praise God for the answered prayer.

• Encourage older children to keep a prayer journal. The prayer journal can consist of not only their prayer request and answers to prayer, but a place to write their prayers out.

We need to remember that our children and grandchildren will not become prayer warriors overnight, but prayer can becomes a vital part of their lives. Don’t try to put all these tips into practice at once, but start with one or two. Also don’t get discouraged if you miss a day or two of praying with your children. Just pick up and start again. Remember, start with prayer. Pray and ask God which prayer practice He would have you and your children start with and watch how God will bless not only the lives of your children and grandchildren, but your life as well.