Prayer Sticks To Organize Family Prayer Time

{Disclaimer:  This post contains affiliate links.  It’s how I keep the lights on around here.  Please read my disclosure here.}

I was visiting a friend this week when I found a decorative jar of colored sticks with people’s names written on them, sitting by her coffee table.  “What are these?” I asked.  “Those are our Prayer Sticks” her 6 year old told me with a grin.  “It helps us remember who to pray for and ask Jesus to bless!”

Well.  If there is a method that is quick to set up, would help me remember to pray for everyone on my “want-to-pray-for” list AND would be fun for my children, I want to hear about it!  So I was all ears…

The method is so simple!  The mom purchased some colored tongue depressors.  Then, on each stick she wrote the name of somebody she wants her family to pray for.  One name per stick.  In this case, she used a white Sharpie marker and I think it looks so pretty!  (And yes, those were the aforementioned affiliate links.)

(***Sidenote:  You could just purchase uncolored tongue depressors and paint them or color them yourself.  I did that once and it took forever.  Three whole days, in fact.  So it’s totally worth the extra few dollars to get the tongue depressors already colored, in my opinion.)

 Some sticks got pretty silver flower stickers on the ends.  The stickers are a reminder to pray very specifically for that person’s salvation, before praying for their other needs.

My friend’s prayer method is so simple.  Each day at Family Prayer & Praise time, each family member draws three sticks and prays for the people whose names they drew.

The packages come with sticks in 6 different colors.  You could get creative with those colors.  One possibility is to only draw green sticks on Sunday, orange sticks on Monday, blue sticks on Tuesday, etc…  Another possibility is to put missionaries on green sticks, family on purple sticks, etc.  Then each day you could draw one stick of each color.

Of course, anything involving pieces in the same house as children generally leads to a big mess.  My friend keeps the mess under control by keeping the prayer sticks in a repurposed vase that her daughter brought home from a wedding recently.

Well look at this!  The sign of true friendship is when you find your own name in somebody else’s prayer jar!

This is a great way to organize public, family prayer time.  To see how I organize my private prayer life, see my post about the Perfectionist’s Prayer Journal here.