Why I don't use prayer lists - an appeal for votes on suggestions

I agree with your two points, this is an area for improvement. Many of our prayers are simply thanksgiving or praise, and would be served better with a modification to how prayer lists can be used. Moreover, there are many prayers that I have which are petitionary, or intercessory, and which God answers, but I will still keep praying them - the Lord's prayer is one such example. 

If I can also jump on the band wagon, I've added a couple more suggestions.

• Prayer Lists - Dashboard widget for all prayers due 'today'

To use the prayer lists on the desktop application, each list must be viewed individually. In contrast, on the mobile application I am able to view all prayers that are scheduled to be prayed that day at the same time - they have all been aggregated together into the one place.

I would like to request such a feature on the desktop application - ideally a widget on the dashboard which collects and displays all the prayers I have due today. This will simplify matters a lot, and means I won't need to clutter my dashboard with a multitude of prayers lists like I currently do.

• Add spell check to prayer lists

Please add a spell check to prayer lists. For the same reasons that we have spell check in notes - It is a helpful feature to ensure legibility for both myself and for others. I am much more inclined to share prayer lists or use public/group prayer lists if I don't have to spend 5 minutes correcting all the spelling mistakes I or others make.

I stopped using prayer lists around 2016 when it came out that Logos does not use the server support capability for encrypted data for the data they store - I think it's on Amazon Web Services but I don't remember now. Any successful hack on the server side, that prayer data is exposed, as is data in Notes, and any data you store. Having my prayer list so generic and obfuscated to not be a risk was just not worth it to me - YMMV. I have nothing personalized in my Notes. See the links below for the threads discussing this in the past, as far as I am aware Logos has not come out to say this has changed. And as you will see in these threads, Bob goes further in saying:

[quote]So, if you take user privacy _really_ seriously, I agree you shouldn't store stuff in our Notes files.

Pretty amazing that Logos does not encrypt any data in today's world, unless that's changed and they have not told us.

The relevant threads:

https://community.logos.com/forums/t/154701.aspx 

https://community.logos.com/forums/t/130633.aspx?PageIndex=1 

For the last two or three years, I have created a physical prayer list based on the suggestions in the book, When You Pray: A Practical Guide to an Orthodox Life of Prayer by Fr. Joseph Letendre. He suggests creating a prayer list with “Remember, O Lord” at the top of a page. I created a document where I typed this at the top, and then listed family members and those I am committed to praying for long term. As new prayer requests arise, I pencil in new names and situations. At the bottom of the page, as suggested by the book, I add, “Remember those I have forgotten because of the multitude of names. Remember them, for you know the names and needs of each” and “Help them, save them, have mercy on them, and protect them, O God, by your grace.” As I add names to the list, eventually the page becomes full, and I create a brand new list. I transfer over any of the names from the previous list where the needs are still current. These petitions are incorporated into my regular rule of prayer. 

a priest mentioned to me the hardest lesson he had learned throughout the ordeal was to pray for God, in His wisdom, doing what was best for his father rather than praying for what he, as the son, wanted.

Even so, Jesus asked for what he wanted when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane ("Take this cup from me"), but followed up with "Yet not what I will, but what you will." It is OK to pray for what we deeply desire, even though we know that God won't grant it if it isn't his will. We can trust that he's OK with listening to the cry of our heart. It's not that our prayers can't/won't ever change God's will (it has happened before, when Moses pled with him to spare the people after the Golden Calf incident in Exodus 32), though that is a highly rare occurrence.

We don't need to pray that God will do what's best for us and others. He'll do that anyway; it's in his nature. Prayer is more about our being in relationship with God about those things we care about. I'm reminded of a lesson I learned from Eugene Peterson about this. He told of when his daughter wanted a water bed and asked her parents for one. Eugene listened to her and asked her to explain the reasons why she wanted a water bed. He had no intention of granting her desire, but he wanted her to know he loved her and cared about her desires. For a couple of weeks she would bring more information about why she liked the idea of a water bed and really wanted one. Then one day she came to him and told him that she no longer wanted a water bed, because a friend of hers had one and it had burst and the water went all over the place and ruined her bedroom flooring. It was Eugene's patience with her, not rejecting her pleas outright, but letting her talk out her desires with him, that led her to come to her own conclusion that it wasn't the best thing for her. He could easily have shut her down right off the bat with a "No" that closed the doors of communication. But prayer is not like that. God listens and hears the cries of our heart, even if he knows it would not be good for us to grant them at that time.

Have you read Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition by Anson H. Laytner?

No, but thanks for the recommendation. I just picked it up.

I have read other books that talk about this Jewish tradition of arguing with God, though. One fascinating one is The Trial of God by Elie Wiesel. Here's what I wrote about it after reading it in 2000: "Powerful.  Challenging theologically.  A play within a play.  Set in a Ukrainian village in the 17th century, after a pogrom has taken place leaving only two Jews -- the innkeeper and his daughter.  Some itinerant actors passing through propose to put on a Purim play for the Jewish community, and the innkeeper insists that they can only do it if it is a trial of God.  They agree, but nobody can be found to play the defender for the accused, until a stranger, Sam, agrees to do it.  He does a marvelous job defending God against the acerbic accusations of the prosecutor, but he turns out to be Satan in the end and to have been fooling them all.  We are left wondering "who is really able to defend God against the accusation that he let his people be slaughtered?"  Haunting." (That was before I'd given up the practice of putting two spaces after a period. I can date my transition on that through my notes in my Books Excel spreadsheet. [:D])

I wish Logos had some of Elie Wiesel's books. All they have are three that he wrote the Foreword to.