Keep the Discipline of Lent Going in Your Prayer Life by Katie Kimball

The joy of the Easter Season is in full swing!

Since I have no self-discipline unless I’m sacrificing for God, that joy came with way too much sugar during Easter week, a bloated stomach, and a lack of structure in my prayer life. I work so hard for 40+ days at certain habits, and as soon as Lent is over, sometimes I fall right off the wagon. Sometimes so fast that I can’t even find the wagon!

Today I want to encourage you to keep up the discipline of prayer that you (hopefully) increased during the Lenten season. Try giving yourself a new goal, something attainable. How about nine days?

Choose a special intention, choose a saint (or a particular prayer or set of prayers) to pray for them, and pray a novena. When it finishes, choose a new intention and new prayers for the next nine days. This is a great way to make a commitment to prayer, like the 40 days of Lent, that won’t overwhelm you with it’s infinite time limit. You can do nine days.

When I was faithfully keeping novenas running, I kept track of them on my prayer calendar…just in case any miracles happened, I’d have documentation, right?! And that helped keep me on track. This way, I felt I HAD to keep the novena going for my special person/people, therefore I was less likely to skip prayer time. (Find lists of novenas for your reference here, here, and here.)

What are you doing to keep the prayerful spirit of Lent alive while enjoying the Alleluias of the Easter Season?

Next time we’ll talk about when to fit daily prayer into your life.