How do you use prayer lists?

Dominick Sela said:

If you use prayer listsm how to you use them?

For me, I type a prayer name, then in the notes section, I type what it's for.  Like the prayer name might be "Missions in Haiti". then in the Notes I type "For all the victims in Haiti, their families and those worried about them, and for all of those offering care and charity";

I've only tried it once and only created one item and it was...ironically...also for Haiti.

Since I don't use the Home Page much, I don't get reminded about it every day. But Haiti is on my mind all the time anyway, since my brother is down there working with CARE on the relief efforts.

I used to be one who used 3x5 cards for prayer lists, and it was a big dutiful thing for me, never advanced my relationship with God. The only difference it seemed to make was that it helped people to know I was praying for them. I still tell them I'm praying for them (and that still helps) but I don't do it in that dutiful way anymore. If God brings them to mind, I pray on the spot. Otherwise, whatever. Over time I have broadened in my understanding of prayer to encompass more than just pray for this or that person or outcome and then when it comes to pass, mark it as answered and stop praying for it. That still makes up a portion of my prayer life, but a small fraction of it (like MJ).

Here are a few of my favorite quotes about prayer:

“Prayer is keeping company with God.” (various ancient Christian writers, including Clement of Alexandria and Evagrius of Pontus; quoted by Simon Tugwell in Prayer: Living with God, p. vii)

“To pray is to pay attention or, shall we say, ‘to listen’ to someone or something other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention — be it on a landscape, or a poem or a geometrical problem or an idol or the True God — that he completely forgets his own ego and desires in listening to what the other has to say to him, he is praying.” (W.H. Auden)

“Prayer does not change God, it changes the one who offers it.” (Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, p. 345)

“Prayer is the nearest approach to God and the highest enjoyment of him that we are capable of in this life.”
(Walter Hilton, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, ch. XIV)

“Prayer is nothing else than a devout setting of our will in the direction of God in order to get good, and remove evil.”
(The Cloud of Unknowing, p. 106)

“Prayer is a conversation in which God’s word has the initiative and we, for the moment, can be nothing more than listeners.”
(Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, p. 15)

“The art of praying, as we grow, is really the art of learning to waste time gracefully—to be simply the clay in the hands of the potter.”
(Thomas H. Green, S.J., When the Well Runs Dry, p. 59)

“Prayer is the breath of the soul.”
(Ole Hallesby, Prayer, p. 147)

     Come now, little man,
turn aside for a while from your daily employment,
escape for a moment from the tumult of your thoughts.
     Put aside your weighty cares,
     let your burdensome distractions wait,
     free yourself awhile for God
     and rest awhile in him.
Enter the inner chamber of your soul,
     shut out everything except God
     and that which can help you in seeking him,
     and when you have shut the door, seek him.
Now, my whole heart, say to God,
     ‘I see your face,
Lord, it is your face I seek.’
  (Saint Anselm, from Proslogion, ch. 1) 

So, as you can see, for much of that kind of a life of prayer, prayer lists don't really help. Nothing against them, it just is really probably not a feature I'll make much use of.