One of the main "weapons" listed for spiritual warfare is prayer.  In fact, in Clint Arnold's commentary on this subject he thinks it is the principle weapon in spiritual warfare, especially as we gather in small groups to pray.  How do we go about making it a regular part of our lives?  Someone once said we plan to fail when we fail to plan, and that also goes for a consistent prayer life.

A suggestion in learning to pray for your family and or your church is to have a prayer list.  In Kent Hughes’ book, he tells how he prays.  Now his list is probably larger than most of ours, but you can begin with your family or your Sunday School class.  (You can add friends and missionaries).  These are all the people that God has placed in your life, that you sense you are responsible to pray for them.  In Hughes' book they share their own prayer journal for their children in which they will include a photo and a post-it ntoe for each of the different areas with requests written on each of the different areas of their life.  I tried to reduplicate it below.

They make a page like this for each child, and then also for each person they are praying for.  What do you think?  Have you ever tried to make a prayer journal or prayer list?  I've found that prayer lists do help to keep our prayers from solely being about ourselves or those we think about often and disciplines us to pray for others.  Why don't you give it a shot and see if it does not make a difference in our spiritual warfare on behalf of our family, church and friends?