Building Your Personal Prayer and Devotion Study System with Logos

Dr. John Fallahee leads this Logos training webinar on creating a personal system for prayer and devotion. The focus is on practical ways to structure your study, organize prayers, and integrate Scripture with regular spiritual habits. This article walks through the key steps he demonstrates, offering clear guidance for anyone who wants to grow in prayerful Bible study.

Start with a Dated Prayer List

One of the first tools Dr. Fallahee shows is the Prayer List feature (Document → New → Prayer List). He recommends creating a new list with a clear title—such as “John’s Prayer Journal”—and adding a date (for example, “0507”) so you can find it easily among many documents. The list contains two main boxes: Notes for the prayer request itself, and an Answer box to record how God responds. This simple structure helps you remember both the request and the answer without losing track.

At the bottom of the list you’ll find a Prayer reminder setting. You can choose a frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) or set a start and end date for time‑limited prayers, such as a hospital stay or a surgery. For example, set a reminder to occur “every week” on Thursday. You can also adjust the interval (every two weeks) and select specific days of the week for the reminder, giving you flexibility without feeling burdened.

Tags are another helpful organizational tool. Adding searchable tags like “webinar” or “prayer‑request” lets you filter prayers later. You can also make the list public or share it with a Faithlife group, which encourages collaborative prayer and accountability among group members.

Integrate a Reading Plan with Your Devotions

Dr. Fallahee then walks through creating a Reading Plan (Documents → New → Reading Plan). He chooses the Bible as the source and selects “Specific Passages” instead of a recommended plan. He enters passages separated by semicolons—such as “Psalms; Proverbs; Ecclesiastes”—and sets a start date of today. To avoid discouragement if a day is missed, he schedules the plan for weekdays only (Monday through Thursday). He also checks the “One chapter per session” option, which forces the plan to move book‑by‑book, making each reading a focused moment for prayer and reflection.

Once the plan is created, it appears in the List View, showing each book in order. You can drag the reading plan onto your dashboard for quick access, and Logos will remind you of the day’s reading, guiding your devotional time. This integration creates a feedback loop: Scripture informs your prayer, and prayer deepens your reflection on the text.

Use the Memorization Tool for Key Verses

The Passage List feature (Documents → New → Passage List) is useful for memorizing verses that shape your prayer life. Name the list meaningfully—perhaps “My Prayer Passage List”—and add verses you want to commit to memory, such as Psalm 1:1‑2. Click the Memorize button, then choose Practice or Quiz mode. You can hide whole letters, hide all but the first letter, or set the order to progressive (recommended). The software prompts you to type the verse, giving immediate feedback that reinforces memory.

After you finish a practice session, you can exit and add more verses later, building a personal collection of memorized passages that feed directly into your prayer and devotion routine.

Organize Specialized Searches for Prayer Themes

Inspired by his book Reflect the Glory of God in Prayer, Dr. Fallahee explains seven specialized search acronyms that help locate passages speaking to specific prayer themes. He demonstrates the first two:

1. Remembers the Glories of God – a search for language describing God’s glory (e.g., “glory,” “majesty”). While results may be sparse in a single Psalm, they appear more often when searching broader books like the Gospels.
2. Examine Your Motives and Manner – a search focused on narratives (especially the Gospels) that reveals the motives and manners of biblical characters. This encourages self‑examination as you consider the heart behind your prayers.

These searches are described as “surgical,” meaning they target specific concepts rather than returning large volumes of text. They are a practical shortcut for finding passages that speak to particular prayer concerns.

Leverage Preaching Themes and the Bible Browser

Beyond the acronym searches, the webinar shows four additional methods for finding prayer‑related passages:

• Confession – searching “preaching theme = confession” brings up Exodus 9:27, where Pharaoh offers an insincere confession.
• Intercession – “preaching theme = intercession” highlights Abraham’s plea for Lot in Genesis 18.
• Petitionary prayer – Matthew 7:7 (“ask and be given”) is presented as a model for specific requests.
• Bible Browser – searching for the word “pray” (not “prayer”) captures variations such as “prayed,” “praying,” and “prayer” across more than 100 passages, including Matthew 7:8 and Luke 11:9‑10.

A free 12‑category prayer guide (downloadable from the documents section) complements these searches. It outlines five critical prayers for Bible study, lists 12 categories (confession, intercession, thanksgiving, etc.), and shares Jesus’s seven prayer principles: any time is good, any place is good, pray for all decisions, pray throughout ministry, pray after ministry concludes, pray for enemies, and pray for one another.

Add Devotionals and Create a Custom Layout

For daily devotionals, Logos offers calendar‑based resources. Dr. Fallahee shows how to add a devotional—such as “365 Days with Newton”—to the homepage via the dashboard, enabling one‑click access to today’s reading. He then builds a “Prayer Devotional” layout that combines several elements:

• Bible reading (e.g., Psalm 1)
• Prayer journal
• Speaking‑to‑God section
• Memorization
• Passage list

He saves this arrangement as “zero‑prayer devotional,” renames it for simplicity, and adds it to the shortcut toolbar with a “prayer vigil candle” icon. This layout lets you open a ready‑made devotional in seconds, streamlining your daily routine.

Collaborative Options for Groups

For those leading a small group, the webinar outlines a strategy to create a Faithlife group (via Faithlife.com) that includes five members with multiple prayer requests. Steps include selecting “small group” as the type, naming the group, setting location and privacy preferences, and then sharing it with Logos for collaborative access. Within Logos, you can create a Personal Notebook (Tools → Notes → Notebook), share it with the group (avoiding “everyone” to limit access), and use a template to record prayer requests with dates and names. Copying the previous week’s note as a template helps maintain consistency.

Collaboration is encouraged: share both the Faithlife group and the Logos notebook so members can interact seamlessly. If you encounter any issues, emailing [email protected] with screenshots is recommended. The overall emphasis is on simplicity and flexibility, allowing you to adapt the system to personal or group needs.

Conclusion

The webinar ends with a prayer of thanksgiving, reminding participants that God knows our unspoken thoughts (Psalm 139:4) and inviting disciplined, sincere prayer over empty ritual. Dr. Fallahee encourages viewers to explore additional Logos webinars for deeper training and to use the resources provided—his personal book, the prayer guide, and related webinars—to continue building a robust, personal prayer and devotion system.