Post Published on June 26, 2013.
Last Updated on April 29, 2016 by davemackey.

The Short Of It

As I share somewhat frequently, prayer is difficult for me. I think this has a lot to do with my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), but that is really neither here nor there for the current topic. All you really need to know is that I am always looking for ways to facilitate my prayer life and one of those ways was through a mobile prayer list application that would allow me to keep track of prayer requests, note when and if they were answered, and allow me to record “less important” requests alongside requests I wanted to pray for on a daily basis and not have the latter get lost in vast sea of needs.

I couldn’t find one fitting my needs currently available, so I created specifications for the application and contracted Karan Rawat, a programmer from India, to develop the application. Prayer Keeper is the end result. The application was primarily designed for my specific use case and needs, but I’m making it freely available in hopes that others may find it a blessing as well.

Feel free to comment on this post with feedback on the application, feature requests, etc. I’d like to keep the apps development going, though this will be constrained by available resources (namely time and money).

Download

You can get Prayer Keeper through the Google Play Store (for free) here.

Current Features

• Create a list of individual prayer items.
• Mark prayers as answered and they are added to an answered list so you can look back and see how God has answered prayers in the past.
• Mark  prayers as archived if they haven’t been answered but you aren’t still praying for the request and they’ll be moved off your current prayer list to the archives list.
• Have a prayer item move back to the top of the list every x number of days (no matter how many other items are on the list).
• Marking a prayer as “Prayed” will move it to the bottom of the list – ensuring you are always praying through the items you haven’t prayed for in a while…or the items you consider really important and want to move back to the top of the list.
• The ability to export one’s current prayer list and answered prayer list to a CSV file, which can be edited on almost any smart device (e.g. tablet, smartphone, computer, etc.) using a text editor or spreadsheet application.

Future Features

• Design:
  • New main program icon which will also appear when the application launches.
  • An aesthetically pleasing UI design.
  • A startup splash screen.
  • Move the about information out of settings.
  • Attempt to make UI responsive so auto-fits on various screen sizes.
• Keep a timestamp of when an item was last prayed for and how many times it has been prayed for.
• Keep track of how many times items have been prayed for cumulatively.
• Maintain statistics over time of answered vs. non-answered prayers.
• Allow for selection of multiple prayer list items and management at one time (e.g. mark as prayed, delete, mark as answered, mark as archived).
• Allow for long-hold on prayer items to open an options menu to manipulate an individual prayer item rather than needing to go into the detail view.
• Rename the detail view.
• Write a web user interface which syncs with mobile app, to allow prayer lists to be utilized and maintain from mobile or web interfaces.

Alternatives

There are a few other prayer list applications out there. Here are a few I’ve stumbled on, in case this one doesn’t meet your needs:

• Mobile Knee – Author: Scott Conger.
• Prayer List – Author: Blake Smith.