Prayer - Part two
Several weeks ago, I submitted a word on “Prayer.” This is a follow up to that article.
My Bible Study lesson for this week deals with prayer, and as I dug into the lesson, I found some information that I thought I would share with you.
I gave you, in the earlier article, the acronym “ACTS” that was a simple guide for a way to pray. This week I ran across an article by a young pastor who searched the scriptures and identified seven types of prayer in the Bible. He came up with ACTS, and then identified three more.
A – Adoration – Praises God for who He is.
L – Lament – Brings our fears, doubts, and despair to Him.
T – Thanksgiving – Praises God for what He has done for us.
P – Petition – Asking God for something for us or for someone else.
D – Deliverance – Praying to Him to keep us from harm or challenging
situations. Similar to but still different from Petition.
C –Contrition or Confession – Asking forgiveness for things we have
done that are not in step with His will for
us.
G – Guidance – Similar to Deliverance but more of an acknowledgement
of Gods knowing what is best for us and following the
Holy Spirit’s lead in us.
We can see these as individual prayers, in other words “stand alone,” or we can combine them as we did in the “ACTS” acronym. Most of the time I find myself doing just that, combining them.
Let’s look at a couple of prayers and see how this works. The Lord’s prayer in Mathew 6:
Our Father in heaven,
your name be honored as holy.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. - Adoration
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, - Petition
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And do not bring us into temptation, - Petition
but deliver us from the evil one. - Deliverance
A prayer of Petition: Mark 10:51: Jesus and the blind man
51 Then Jesus answered him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
“Rabboni, the blind man said to him, “I want to see.”
A prayer of Lament and Petition: Ps 13:2-3 - King David
How long will I store up anxious concerns within me,
agony in my mind every day?
How long will my enemy dominate me? - Lament
3 Consider me and answer, Lord my God.
Restore brightness to my eyes;
otherwise, I will sleep in death. – Petition
I found myself, after reading the article, reading prayers, the prayers of Paul, the prayers of David, the prayers of Neamiah, the prayers of Jesus, and seeing how powerful they were, and I had to reevaluate my prayer time and what I need to change as I pray to my Heavenly Father.
I hope that by reading this, you will consider your time with Him and the way that you pray. That time should draw you closer to Him and make you realize what a privilege it is to spend time with our Creator and have Him listen to us and guide us.
Ed Johanson