Setting prayer traps

When we read the verse, ‘Take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ’ (2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV), we tend to think it’s about capturing sinful thoughts and getting them out of our minds—and it is. But it’s also about capturing creative thoughts and keeping them in our minds. This Scripture also means stewarding every word, every thought, every impression, and every revelation inspired by God’s Spirit.

Mark Batterson writes: ‘The Aramaic word for prayer means “to set a trap”. We often think of prayer as nothing more than words spoken to God, but maybe it’s more than that. Prayer is also when God speaks to us through dreams and desires and promptings and impressions and ideas. Prayer is the mechanism whereby God ideas are conceived and captured. And it’s our capacity for prayer that will ultimately determine our creative potential. One way to set prayer traps is by keeping a prayer journal… Journalling is one of the most overlooked and under-appreciated spiritual disciplines in our multi-tasking culture.’ Your journal captures your journey. It shows you how far you have come and how far you still have to go. It reminds you of God’s grace when you stumbled and His faithfulness that brought you back to the right road after you had taken the wrong one.

When you set a prayer trap, you capture each experience and wring the wisdom out of it to be better and stronger. You need to ‘write down the vision.’ (Habakkuk 2:2 NASB) Some of us do this digitally, and others with pen and paper. What matters is that you are recording what God is doing in your head, in your heart, and in your life.