A.C.T.S. prayer

Does your prayer life look more like a list to Santa than a conversation? Well, maybe the A.C.T.S. Prayer system will help you. It has for me.

When I first left university...

My parents sat me down and had a tough conversation. They were concerned I was leaching of my friends. We were meeting up but I was always asking for lifts and being bought things. My excuse was that I didn't have a job or car unlike them, but the point was true. I was only taking and not giving.
Good news. I changed course and starting making my own way to events and being more generous, but often our prayer lives are more like the leech me than the reformed me. We come to God with a list of request, and leave before we spend any time together.

The A.C.T.S prayer system is an attempt to prevent that.

What is the A.C.T.S prayer?

The A.C.T.S. is a simple mnemonic to help you focus on four different areas when you pray.

• Adoration
• Confession
• Thanksgiving
• Supplication

Let's look at each part in depth.

Adoration

Adoration is another word for praise. It's about acknowledging the amazing God we worship. If you think about the Lord's Prayer, it starts with adoration.

"Our father in heaven, hallowed is your name." This is the right way to start prayer, not focused on ourselves, but on the God we serve. We can praise God through two paths.

1. Praising God for who he is -- his characteristic
2. Praising God for what he has done

We can combine these by praising an attribute of God and remembering a specific occasion.

Confession

Confession is about acknowledging our sin, asking for forgiveness and turning to a new path. In the Lord's Prayer it says

And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. God is a holy being, he deserves reverence and awe. He has made a way for us through his son, but that doesn't end his otherness. The right response is to confess and ask for forgiveness.

Thanksgiving

Studies have shown that being grateful is good for not only our mental health but also our physical health. When we are grateful, and acknowledge God's provision, we stop thinking about ourselves and focus where we should -- God.

Supplication

Supplication is a fancy word for requests (but it helps with spelling acts so let's ignore that). After the previous steps, we may find that our requests aren't so important or necessary now. The thing that was worrying us now seems tiny in comparison to our God. And that thing we really wanted might not seem so important any more either.

Instead of starting at request like our instincts tell us to, when we start with focusing on God, we may find we already have our daily bread.

When we do bring requests, we should do so with confidence that our good father loves to provide and will give us all we need.

A word of warning

This isn't a magic formula and this won't twist God's arms into doing what we want. Instead, it's just a simple phrase that can help us get out of the trap of praying only for ourselves with God as an after thought.