After you have gathered your supplies from Step One, it is now time to set up the first five tabs of your new prayer binder. But first... the most crucial part: Be Kind to Yourself. Enjoy the process. Don't feel stressed that you have to get the whole thing set up TODAY. Work on just ONE section at a time. You've been this long without this binder, a few more weeks won't make a difference. Take a deep breath, and let's dive in. But First: The Most Needed Part of any Prayer Notebook Sticky Notes Do NOT start your prayer notebook without this essential tool! I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I sit down to pray and as soon as I start, a thousand things of "need to do", "Can't forget!", and "Oh! That would be fun!" start buzzing through my mind. I need sticky notes to write all these things down or I will NEVER get through my prayer time. I'm the girl who has had an amazing thought at the beginning of prayer, closed my notebook, ran off do so something AWESOME, and never come back. Don't be me. Keep a post it stack right in your notebook with a pen! Okay, now we can move on. First off, I have one of my favorite quotes in the very front of my prayer binder. I don't read it every day, but do read it over a couple times a week. PRAISE And as you can see from my tabs, my first section is Almighty God, or Praise. Gina Garland titled hers as Almighty God, and the "Hour that Changes the World" book titles it Praise, with an emphasis on adoration. Either way, this is all about praising God. No wants, needs, or problems. This is praise of God and getting your heart and focus set on Him. It's not praise for the sake of "building up" God (He doesn't need it), it's about getting your heart right. Focusing not on you, but on Him. So in this section, I have some meaningful hymns typed out and also have been working on listing some names of God. If you do a Google search on "The names of God PDF" you'll find all kinds of printable resources to add to this section. I really like this one: 30 Days of Praying the Names of God How this works: I set my repeating timer (right now I'm praying in each section for two and a half minutes) and open the section and flip through pages, pausing as something catches my eye and think through it, making it a prayer to God. When the timer rings, I move to the next section. REST The next section is REST. In my previous posts, I had it labeled as "waiting", as the book suggested, but I thought "waiting" had a sense of me waiting for God to do what I asked. When I re-read the chapter, I realized it's more RESTING in God than waiting. So I changed it to REST. When I get to this section, I picture myself snuggling up against my loving Father. I imagine putting my head on his chest and just RESTING on Him. There isn't a lot of praying during this two and a half minutes, but I'll often have a verse come to mind, or a song, and just think through those things as I rest in His amazing arms. I have just these two pages in this section, just to keep my mind focused on what I'm doing if I start to drift off, or my attention wanes. CONFESSION This section is so important. I use the suggestion of the book where I think through the last 24 hours with these questions. And I've added things as I read them in books or see them. This section isn't necessiarily me writing out my sins, but verbally talking them through with God... because if I wrote them all out, I'd be writing for my entire prayer time. God already knows. I'm asking Him to forgive me and show me sins that I'm not even aware of. I have quite a few verses that are full of truth and life when I'm delving into the internal ugliness of my flesh. SCRIPTURE PRAYER This section is just a tab for me to remember what to do next, with two pages. One is notes I took from the book on what scripture prayer is, the other is this: I am currently praying through the Psalms, and may start keeping track of which I've prayed through, because sometimes it's hard to remember early in the morning. You can print off a copy of the above page here. Just for fun. PETITION And the last section of this first part, is prayer for me, or Petition. This is where I start asking God for all the things I need. And because there is so much, and I want to remember to hit all the key points, I divide it up into days of the week. So on Monday I pray for one aspect, and on Tuesday another, etc. The MAIN THING to do when working on this section and praying through it is to keep asking yourself WHY. Ask WHY all the time. WHY do I want this? WHY am I asking? It really helps clear up things... like if you are asking for selfish reasons or godly ones. It helps me think through why I'm asking and helps eliminate any selfish or fleshly prayers. WHY. Always be asking WHY. Here are the items I am praying for each day of the week. Your pages will look different, of course, but this will give you an idea, hopefully. Behind these, I also have a list of "wants", again all thought of when asking WHY. So that's it for the first five tabs. I hope this helps get your binder going. Remember BE KIND TO YOU. And enjoy the process. Just pray through these sections as you set them up, and keep working as you have little windows of time. Let me know if you have any questions!