When to pray?

Yesterday we looked at the prayer life of Daniel, the famous survivor of the lions' den. Daniel had a routine of praying three times a day. So I encourage you to follow his example and set at least 5 minutes aside three times each day to pray to God.
I think it is important to have a routine daily prayer life, but there are also other times to pray. I think we have discussed this on my blog before that praying when a concern is brought forward is powerful. A common phrase said by many well meaning Christians is, "I will be praying for you." That is a nice offer to someone in need, but how often do we actually follow through with that offer? Too often we probably forget when we do get around to pray or worse yet, we just offered those words as comfort with no real intent behind them.
Instead let's be a people who pray, not people who offer to pray. I know some of my blog followers have shared powerful stories of not waiting to pray, but offering a prayer right then and there. It does take some courage depending on how public of a place you are in, but even in those places there is power in prayer.
A few weeks ago at our Wednesday night activities I was talking with a woman who started to share how tough a week she had. Other people gathered around as she shared and tears filled her eyes. After she shared a while and we asked if there was anything we could do, we made a circle with our arms around each other and prayed for her. There were five of us in the circle.
Helen said that she walked into the sanctuary while we were praying. She said it was a great sight to see. Other people were walking around as classes were ending and choir was about to begin. No one was acting like anything strange was going on as a group was circled in prayer and yet there was a sacred moment of prayer happening in the midst of the busyness in that room.
We will be blessed by daily praying to God three times a day, but we will also be blessed when we take the time to pray whenever a joy or concern is brought to our attention.