Seven Mornings

A prayer journal with a short course in praying built into it.

Most prayer journals hand you a blank box and a verse. This one teaches you what to write. It takes seven ways Christians have prayed for centuries and gives each one a day of the week: praise on Sunday, the Lord’s Prayer on Monday, praying for others on Tuesday, slow Scripture reading on Wednesday, thanks on Thursday, confession on Friday and lament on Saturday. Each way has its own printable page, so no two mornings are the same.

It is for any adult who wants a steady daily prayer time and keeps stalling: new to prayer, or praying for years and running dry. It suits any church background and takes no side where churches differ.

How each way is taught

Every one of the seven chapters has the same six parts, so you always know where you are:

• A painting to look at. Each way opens on a public-domain painting (Rembrandt, Honthorst, Tissot, Maes and a Netherlandish master) and a “Look closer” page that reads three details of it and what they show about this kind of prayer.
• How to pray it. Where the way comes from, why it helps, and the steps with minutes beside them. About fifteen minutes in all; five on a short day.
• What it sounds like. A short model prayer, a five-minute version, and three “when it goes wrong” answers to the things people actually say: “it feels fake”, “my mind wanders”, “I can’t think of anything”.
• A worked example. The day’s page filled in by Joan, 63, or Sam, 36 (both fictional), with handwritten notes in the margin explaining why they wrote what they did.
• Eight weeks of passages chosen for that way, one a week, to look up in the Bible you already use.
• The page to print.

Also inside

• Why prayer journals end up in a drawer: the six things readers of the bestselling journals complain about, and what this one does about each.
• Your prayer map: seven circles of people and concerns, one a day, so everyone you mean to pray for comes round once a week and no morning is crushing. Joan’s filled-in map shows how.
• Watching for answers: a watch list for specific requests with dates and four honest outcomes (yes, not yet, no, something else).
• When you miss a day: no printed dates, no streaks. Pray today’s page, never yesterday’s.
• Fifty-six mornings: all 56 passages on one page, and a four-week look-back page.
• Prayers to borrow for the mornings when nothing comes: the Lord’s Prayer, Psalm 23, the Jesus Prayer, the blessing from Numbers 6, and four breath prayers.
• A plain line on the lament pages saying where to turn if you are not safe.

What you download

• Seven Mornings (61 pages, PDF, US Letter): the book, in colour, with bookmarks and a contents page. Read it on a screen; it includes one copy of every printable page.
• Print Pack, US Letter and Print Pack, A4 (12 pages each, PDF): the seven daily pages, the prayer map, the watch list, the four-week look-back and the reading plan, laid out for your paper size with a page on how to print them. Print as many as you need, as often as you like.

Good to know

• Bible quotations are from the World English Bible, a public-domain translation. Every passage is given by reference so you can read it in any translation.
• The daily pages are designed for a pen: a whole page a day, one side only, with a tear-off section on the confession page and a fold line note for privacy.
• The pages also work in note-taking apps that let you write on a PDF.
• This is a PDF download. No physical book is shipped.