About Prayer Ideas

Why We Created Our Website

The Prayer Ideas Website exists to encourage Christian prayer so that many might become closer to Christ. We offer free online ideas on all aspects of Christian prayer to those who want to learn more about prayer and also to the leaders who mentor them.  We also offer prayers on specific life situations to help readers have a prayerful conversation with God about their lives.

We Believe Everyone Can Become Exceptional Their Ability to Pray

We believe that ever Christian has a God-given potential to pray well.

We believe that the more we pray, the greater the power and usefulness of prayer becomes in our lives and the greater the effect our prayers have on our families, churches, communities and on God’s Kingdom.

We believe that prayer growth takes effort, inspiration, encouragement and motivation. By offering different prayer ideas we encourage everyone to find ways and means of praying that fit their personalities and life situations.

We believe that everyone can begin where they are no matter where they are on their faith journey.

What We Offer

Our Articles

Articles on how to pray that include topics such as how to find answers to prayer, how to meditate, how to develop a strong prayer life, how to use the Bible in prayer, how to lead prayer groups and how to overcome prayer problems.

Written prayers that enable us to communicate with God about our current life situation, whether it be a life difficulty or a life celebration.

Resources postings such as books and music that others have found useful in their prayer lives. We’re a nonprofit, so we don’t sell books, we just recommend them.

Places of prayer listings that tell about chapels, gardens and retreat centers that you can visit to meditate and pray. Everyone needs to find a place of peace, rest and refreshment in our busy world!

Personal prayer experiences by our founder Karen Barber that answers questions from our users and tells about how prayer works in real life situations.

Facebook page where we enjoy interactions with our users.

Our Writers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have over 50 writers from all Christian denominations and we’re always adding more. You’ll find published authors, business leaders, artists, poets, bloggers, community leaders, nurses, teachers, engineers, office workers, parents, counselors, musicians and clergy members. We feel it’s important to include writers of all backgrounds who offer ideas that they have found that work in their own prayer lives.

If you or someone you know would like to find out more about writing an article for us, contact us at info@prayerigniters.org

Who We Are

Prayer Ideas is an outreach of Prayer Igniters International which is a nondenominational Christian ministry. We are a 501( c )(3) nonprofit organization and all donations are tax deductible.

Our Vision: Encouraging Christian prayer to bring many closer to Christ.
Our Mission: Offering resources and ideas on all aspects of prayer to those who want to learn more about prayer and the leaders who mentor them.
Our Values: Christian, Prayerful, Teachable, Focused, Inclusive, Respectful.
Our Guiding Bible Verse: One of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Luke 11:1

History: After seeing the far reaching power of the internet as the go-to place for sharing information Founding Advisors Cathy Belatti, Nancy Drake, Mary Jane Norris and Karen Barber prayed gathered in Alpharetta, GA to pray and to write the vision and mission statement. We were incorporated in 2009 and were granted 501( c)(3) nonprofit status in 2010. Our prayerideas.org website went online in the summer of 2011 and underwent a redesign in 2016 to become mobile friendly.

About Karen Barber, Founding Director

Karen Barber is a Christian writer and speaker. She is a Contributing Editor for Guideposts Magazine and her works have appeared in the yearly devotional book Daily Guideposts. Karen has written several books, including Surprised by Prayer that tells true answered prayer stories. Ready, Set..Wait gives practical advice for those going through waiting periods in life. She also co-wrote Daily Talks with God: Seasons of Prayer (Guideposts Books) which offers 52 Scripture lessons about prayer drawn from the life and ministry of Jesus.

Karen is the creator of the Personal Prayer Power video series that teaches how to have an interactive prayer life and how to find an answer to every prayer. She is the founding director of Prayer Igniters International which is a nonprofit ministry that runs the Prayerideas.org website. She is the editor of the Prayer Ideas website and recruits writers and works with them developing articles.

Karen is a popular speaker and teacher on the subject of prayer. She speaks to groups of all sizes on topics such as “Christian Meditation Workshop” “Finding an Answer to Every Prayer” and “Balancing Your Prayer Life Using the 5 Prayer Gateways.” She also speaks to Stephen Ministry groups on the subject of using prayer as a ministry tool.

Karen is a member of the Prayer Committee at her church and is a trained Stephen Minister. She and her husband Gordon have 3 grown sons.

 

The Story Behind Our Website

By Karen Barber

Wanting to help but discouraged. As I traveled speaking about personal prayer I noticed that in every church regardless of the denomination or size there seemed to be huge challenges getting people engaged in prayer. I met people who wanted to help others become engaged in prayer, but they were discouraged by how hard it was. It seems like 21st Century life is so busy that prayer gets overshadowed. Schedules seemed to overflow with too much to do with too few helpers and too little time to do it. I wanted to encourage these prayer mentors, but I didn’t know how.

Drawing a blank on how to pray for my soldier son. At the same time I encountered another challenge that further stretched thin my own prayer resources. Our son Chris deployed to Iraq for 15 months. One day Chris, emailed me asking me if I knew any good prayers he could use with his platoon before going on missions. Since I had never prayed in a war zone, I drew a complete blank. I finally emailed him the last stanza to “America.” “Long may our land be bright with freedoms holy light. Protect us by thy might, great God, our King.” I felt like I had failed him.

In desperation I emailed a friend to see if she knew any good prayers and I suddenly realized that there were probably many people out there who had good prayer ideas for Chris and all our soldiers. My other son Jeff helped me start a website militaryprayers.org where anyone could log on and share a prayer for our troops. People from all over the world posted prayers. Some even shared from forgotten resources such as a World War II book entitled “Strength for Service to God and Country.” Over 1,800 entries were posted before we shut down the site when the war wound down.

God’s Perfect Solution. The success of militaryprayers.org showed me that the prayer could be opened for many using the same concept of freely sharing what we know with each other. As I looked over the internet sites available on prayer, I realized that no single person, ministry, denomination or teacher can possibly cover the vast variety of prayer practices, ideas and resources available. I saw the need for a common site where we could all come together and contribute ideas and resources. Although we might be of different denominations, or be new to prayer or have prayed a very long time, we all have something to offer that might uniquely help someone get started off running with prayer.

Amazing Response. Since the creation of our site we have had 1.2 million page views from all over the world. As we posted more articles on every topic imaginable we saw how God was using this website to fill gaps in the need for practical prayers and prayer ideas on a variety of subjects. We were surprised that our most popular article picked up by the search engines became “Final Exam Prayer Using Bible Verses” and our second most popular article became “Prayer for Adult Children with Problems.”

And we have been very encouraged by our users who email us to tell us that our prayers have made a difference in their lives, such as the high school student in Australia who told us that our “Test Anxiety Prayer” had helped her overcome her stress when taking tests.