We had great success in 2009 as we started this prayer blog. Thank you for participating with us on this journey. For those who are new, here are the top 10 posts for 2009 based on a combination visits, length of views, comments, and social bookmarking. For more prayer information follow us at @praytelNET

1. We Love Because God First Loved Us: We can only love God because He first loved us. Therefore what is keeping us from loving God more? We must not believe the extent we are loved in Christ. This post describes potential lies we believe about ourself and God.



2. What I Have Learned From Fasting: Fasting is an often neglected discipline of the Christian faith. This post shares the experience of one whose gone 40-days. Be sure to check out the comments as we have been collecting several comments from others about their experiences.



3. 10 Things to Prayer for Your Children: Do you want to broaden what you pray for your children, check out this list for ideas from my former priest's wife.



4. Prayer: Top Issue Facing Today's Church: Prayer is the top issue critical to the church today based on study from LifeWay Christian Resources.  Full survey attached in the article.



5. Prayer Alert: Islam Rally on Capital Hill: We encouraged people to pray for the September 25th Isalm rally at the capital. May this be a reminder of the need to continue in prayer for our country.



6. Four Keys to Prayer: The Scripture gives us many promises that lead us into a deeper relationship with God. This was four keys to prayer that will increase your confidence in going to God.



7. The Sweetness of Children and Prayer: Never discourage your children from going to God in prayer. This is simple story of my oldest daughter's question to God.



8. Why is Giving Thanks Important?: This was part 3 of 4 on the series of giving thanks, and the post takes a look at the importance of giving thanks with regarding to how it benefits our relationship with Jesus.



9. God Works All Things For Good: If God works all things for the good, then please explain... We all have events in our lives that seem to prove that God does not love us. We need to go to Jesus for His reinterpretation of the events in order to keep coming to Him.



10. Thank You For the Fleas - Corrie ten Boom Story : Corrie Ten Boom suffered many trials in her life, but she learned the importance of giving thanks to God for all things. This is the story of where she gave thanks for the fleas.

Bob Buford is a Texas cable entrepreneur turned social entrepreneur. He wrote the famous book "Halftime," founded Leadership Network in Dallas, TX and blogs at www.activeenergy.net, which I recommend. I've had several chances to spend time with Bob in Charlotte and Dallas and have gained from each opportunity. Recently he's been writing about rise of social entrepreneurs, many of them forsaking high pay in exchange for high significance. I thought I'd let Bob know how praytel.net fits into the revolution. Here's my reply:

Bob,

I worked on an acquisition for fourteen months-- a sure thing that ended up falling apart when details surfaced. I took some time afterward to ask the Lord what next? I came away convinced that prayer was what matters, for prayer is the means God has ordained to move him.

If we pray and move God how many X is that? There's a bewildering amount of symptoms in the world. A problem here, another there. This new revolution seeks to strike at these problems, and rightly so. Thoreau wrote in 1854 that "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The closer to the root of the world's problems that these revolutionaries strike, the more powerful will be their movement.

So would not God (or rather, the lack of him) be at the root of these problems? I say so, and that if we wish to "strike at the root" of evil, we must begin with prayer. Why is it then that I would rather exhaust myself with "branch hacking effort" (low - X work), when we are called to pray, which moves God (infinite - X work)? Let's face it though, most of our prayers are non-existent or anemic. We get busy hacking branches, we get distracted, we forget, we get sleepy, we are unorganized. I've always been more effective when praying with others (like with friend and entrepreneur Michael S. of Florida). For now, my part in the revolution, my X, is to get people to reengage prayer. With a small team of other revolutionaries I've developed praytel.net, which is nearing beta stage. It will call people daily at a phone of their choice at a time of their choice and and deliver prayer prompts and prayer space to coach them through fresh, relevant, topics to pray about. They can leave prayer requests which will be routed to others, and others' requests will be routed to them. Ministries or individuals can sign up. It's my small part to gain leverage in the big revolution.

Best,
Ted Budd

Now that's a provocative headline! It's true. Yesterday I got whipped by the man in the video who a few years ago was a pound for pound world record holder. His name is Travis Mash and I have the privilege of having him as my fitness trainer. I am not sure whether it motivates him or not but I have a standing $50 "barf bonus" offer. If he works me so hard that I b…., well, you know, then he get's a cash bonus. It's more joke than reality, but if it ever happens I'll sure pay up.

Travis is a fantastic trainer, but I could do most of what he makes me do on my own in the gym. In fact, with a little self-discipline and creativity, I could do in my garage or living room, most of what I do in the gym. Follow me here, I am developing an analogy to prayer. Do you see that I am repeating the phrase "I could do"? I realize I could do a lot of good things on my own, but I don't do them. There is a gap between the knowing I should do something, and actually getting it done. We all have these gaps with some issues in our lives, be it exercise, writing thank you notes, eating right, or spending less that one earns. Some (read "I have done this") try to overcome these knowing-doing gaps with frustrated bursts of self-discipline or infomercial derived motivation. May I ask, how long does that last? We know the answer. Not long. So how do we over come the knowing-doing gap? The answer lies in two things: who we are, and what we have. First, we are created by God as interdependent beings. Simply put, we need other people. Second, because we are interdependent, we must trade what we have for what we don't have. Here's how this plays out with Travis. I know I need to exercise, but don't have the discipline in that area, so I look to Travis for someone who has strength where I am weak. Secondly, I have some discretionary dollars that I can choose to spend to further my goals and close my knowing-doing gaps, so I give some of those dollars to Travis to buy his talent where I lack. Now that I have made the trade, I must activate the trade by placing him on my calendar so that I won't waste my investment.

This relates to prayer in the same way. Let's say, like exercise, we know we should pray, but seem to get distracted, interrupted, or just plain forget what to pray for, until the next time we feel guilty for not doing it. Let's look for somebody with a strength or the willingness to help (a friend who who also wants to pray) and take what we have (time) . We swap by praying for each other, but it costs both of us time, though well spent, so we put each other on each other's calendars. Now we can call each other or show up at a good place to pray on a regular basis. I've done this and it works, but it can get a bit tedious when either of the partners enters into a busy season with work, family or life in general. Sometimes it's hard to schedule even the most reliable of people. This is the problem PrayTel was created to solve. It is not PrayTel's purpose to convince people to pray. We think you are already there. Our job at PrayTel is to help you close the knowing-doing gap on prayer. We do this by making a trade with you, just like we can with a fitness trainer or prayer partner in the examples above. We provide you with a daily call delivered to a phone of your choice at a time of your choice. You pay a small monthly fee, (less than I pay for single hour of fitness training). We provide the relevant content to pray and a moment to pray for it, followed by more content and more moments to pray. At the end you can leave a prayer request to be routed to another user, while another's request is routed to you. You could ignore our calls. You could hang up. Our bet is that our subscribers won't, because they know how important it is to connect with God to pray. We could pray without PrayTel and we hope that we all have been. We also know that these are busy and distracting times, so in these times we are here to help close the knowing-doing gap on prayer.

 "We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power.  We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little; many services but few conversions; much machinery but few results."  R. A. Torrey

We are all familiar with this, but the busyness of life becomes so great that we feel we have no choice. The tyranny of the urgent over plays the desires within our spirit to reach out to God. Unfortunately, too often this leads to self-abasement. Self-abasement is from the devil. The Holy Spirit does point out things we should change, but His way offers hope. What's the difference between guilt and conviction? One leads to discouragement, shame, and depression; the other leads to hope, life, and change.

Praytel is a service to offer a friendly reminder to pray and walk you through helpful topics. Prayer should never be a source of discouragement. Instead, it should offer us a chance to connect with God, who in spite of our personal discouragements does not discourage. As Christians, we may always boldly enter in to His throne room to find grace and mercy. Check us out.  If you give us your email, we wil offer another friendly reminder... this one for when the service becomes live! (The plan is this fall)

Welcome to praytel.net's blog! We are excited to introduce ourselves to the prayer community. Prayer is a wonderful blessing that is often underutilized. Author Philip Yancey introduces his book on prayer with some statistics he found in his research. A simplistic summary is that everybody sees the importance of prayer and most pray. At the same time, just about everyone is not happy with their personal level of prayer. That is why praytel was founded. Praytel seeks to connect Christians with their desire to pray and make it a reality.

"[Yancey] interviewed ordinary people about prayer. Typically, the results went like this: Is prayer important to you? Oh, yes. How often do you pray? Every day. Approximately how long? Five minutes — well, maybe seven. Do you find prayer satisfying? Not really. Do you sense the presence of God when you pray? Occasionally, not often. Many of those I talked to experienced prayer more as a burden than as a pleasure. They regarded it as important, even paramount, and felt guilty about their failure, blaming themselves." - page 14, Prayer: Does It Make a Difference?

It’s a simple concept. You tell us when to gently interrupt your day with an automated phone call that coaches you to pray. We are still putting together a few of the processes, but we plan to be live in the fall. Until then, we will provide insights we have found from our own personal journey with prayer. We invite you to join us either by subscribing to the blog in a reader or through email.  We will be sure to inform you when the calls go live.