Here are some tips for the use of your Battle Book.
ONE
Stepping through your book: Let me give you a quick guideline in getting started in your Battle Book (if you have figured this out, skip to the next tool tip).
- Find a quiet place to sit. Have your Battle Book and your Bible with You.
- Open to the first tab: Worship. The first prayer page gives you some help. After you worship, move to Confession. Pray this verse: Psalm 139:23-24
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (ESV)
Then get quiet and see what comes to mind. Confess the wrong in that area to God and ask for His grace to turn from that sin and how to handle things better. Spend the time here that you need.
- Start the timer and get quiet again.
- Ask the Lord to speak to you or to minister to you, as needed.
- Write down distracting thoughts.
- Call yourself back gently when your mind wanders, and just keep listening.
God may not speak often but He has promised to be with you.
- Move to the Self tab. Yes, you need to pray for yourself! It is not selfish, it is needed. This world needs you strong and steady in Christ, so pray and talk about anything to Him. Work through the prayer page, praying one item per day or more. Make your own lists in the notebook pages, so you can persistently return to those prayers until you see answers.
- Move to the other tabs and pray one or more of the prayer pages as you have time. Keep track where you leave off with a bookmark.
TWO
Find a timer app on your phone or use a kitchen timer. The clock on the phone has a timer tab. I also use MultiTimer from the App Store on my phone. You can build one timer for multiple steps.
For a workday,
- I set my timer for Worship at four minutes,
- Confession – two minutes,
- Listening – four minutes,
- Self – two minutes and the rest at 18 minutes for a total of 30 minutes.
This keeps me on track completing my prayer time more successfully. Sometimes I get slower on one section that planned and that is ok. Don’t be a stickler for time, let there be room for God.
THREE
If you have trouble finding time and quiet,
- Getting up earlier. Ugh, I know! One way is to start slow. Try five minutes earlier for a few days. Get adjusted to that and then add another five. Do this until you have the time you need.
- Look for other ways to make your morning and day more efficient and to save some time. I’m learning to pack my lunch for the whole week, as much as possible on Sunday afternoon.
- If you have only small pieces of time throughout the day, start and stop and start and stop. Just keep track of where you are each time you stop. This one is nice in that you stay more aware of God throughout the day.
FOUR
Set up a prayer chair, war room, some designated spot to meet with God. This helps signal your brain and others’ (littles, spouses, …) brains too, that you are meeting with God. Set a routine of making coffee or tea or just putting on your warmest robe. Some of us need reading glasses staged in these places, so there isn’t time lost looking for those.
FIVE
Journaling – the Battle Book isn’t really roomy enough to do heavy journaling. It will fill up fast with notebook paper since it is a small notebook.
- If you are a journalist – get a fatter notebook or use a separate one. You can also clean it out every so often, putting your notes into another notebook.
- Even though I’m not much of a journalist, but will occasionally, work out something by writing it out as a prayer to God. So do it when you need to do it.
- I really recommend using a separate tab for answered prayers or put a notebook page in each tab. Date them (with the year). Somehow time seems to really fly and I can’t believe how far back some of my answers go.
Let me know in the Comments, if you are using any of these tips or have one to pass along. Look for some of those in a future post.
Please send any questions that you may have. I’ll try to get an answer to you. I’ll post a few that may help others too in a future post.
See you in the prayer pages.