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A healthy prayer life allows you to connect with God so you can receive the spiritual nutrition you crave. In a world that drains your energy, God’s living water is essential.
“but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 4:14 ESV
God’s well never runs dry. But as your imperfect body ages, it wears out. Hearing from God always refreshes your spirit and boosts your energy levels. Even Jesus, being human, relied on prayer.
…the report of [Jesus’s] power spread even faster, and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases. But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.
Luke 5:15-16 NLT
Have you heard the saying, “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage?” When you abuse or misuse your body, it’s going to wear out faster. If you take care of your belongings, they usually last longer.
If you have a new car, it becomes used the moment you drive it off the lot. From then on you have to perform regular maintenance to keep it from breaking down prematurely.
Balance Supercharges Your Life
Without maintenance, your car’s tires don’t wear evenly. Your steering becomes misaligned. Small errors become significantly larger if given enough time. The same is true for your spiritual life.
A life out of balance will usually function less efficiently than one in balance. Imagine if you exercised your left leg ten times as much as your right leg. You would probably be better off if you hadn’t exercised at all. That’s fairly easy to see. But the same is true for the broad functional areas of your life as well. If you keep yourself mentally fit but ignore your physical and emotional health, you’re going to suffer.
Here is a basic list of areas to keep in balance.
- Career
- Physical Health
- Emotional Health
- Finances
- Recreation
- Spiritual Growth
- Romantic Relationship
- Family
- Friends
- Church
- Rest
- Creative Work
- Service to Others
- Adventure
The list isn’t comprehensive and isn’t in any particular order, so you can add, remove, or prioritize areas to fit your lifestyle. Focusing on one area at a time can be beneficial. If you identify an area of weakness, you can bring it up to par with the other areas. The categories above are broad, so you can add more detailed areas if you want. For example, for career, you could add specific disciplines that will help make your work healthier.
Prayer Supercharges Your Life
A prayer journal is a written record of your prayer requests and answers. A life balance worksheet helps you evaluate and improve the quality of your living. When you put the two together, you get a comprehensive prayer plan.
What if you rated each of your life balance areas on a regular basis? When I do that, it helps me see where I need to focus. On a scale of 0 to 10, how are you doing in each area? But you don’t have to stop there.
What if for each area you wrote out what is going well and what needs improvement? It’s easier for me to dwell on the negatives, so this helps me be thankful for the positives. But you don’t have to stop there.
What if you wrote a short prayer for each area? Thank God for what is going well and petition Him in areas that need improvement. That’s one way you can perform regular spiritual maintenance.
If you haven’t figured it out already, this is a great tool to use when you feel discouraged, directionless, or disconnected. When you feel a strong negative emotion, chances are, someone area of your life is out of balance.
Read more about journaling.
Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay
