Prayer

When I first became a Christian, I heard a sermon during which the youth pastor taught about prayer through ACTS. That is,

A-doration (praising God for creation, His grace, love, mercy, among other things)

C-onfession (being honest with God and coming clean with our sins)

T-hanksgiving (giving thanks to God for the things He has done)

S-upplication (offering our requests in humility and in faith)

This helped me a lot during my initial prayers because I would mentally go through the four steps in my head while I prayed. It is also something I usually offer people who say they don't know how to pray or what to pray about. This is a pretty good set-up for prayer, and gives an initial idea of the breadth of my prayers.

Later on, my area pastor taught me how to pray the Word. That is, to pray bible verses aloud and appropriate them for myself. This was particularly useful in times when I couldn't think of anything, and I would turn to my Bible and to the book of Psalms. And I would, for example, take Psalm 1 and go: Lord, "Blessed am I who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But my delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law, I meditate day and night. I am like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose lead does not wither. Whatever I do prospers." This helped me hear the Word and also claim the promises of the Bible. And also it added depth to my prayer life.

Then, I realised that these would be subject to the prompting of the Holy Spirit during my prayer times. That sometimes, when I'm praying, the images of certain people or certain names would pop up in my head, and I knew that I was to pray for these people. And my prepared prayer script/list would be junked.

During my quiet time then, I was much more keen to tell God everything than I was to hear about what He had to say to me. I still do that nowadays. I will rattle on and on about my day, some things that I learnt about, my problems, my struggles, my joy, my delight etc. The result being that it felt like a one-way conversation most of the time. Then, I realised that hey, if I don't stop to listen, I won't be able to hear what God has to say to me in the areas of my life and His responses to my prayer requests etc. So I discovered that meditation was an important part of quiet time. That I was to be still before the presence of God, and just soak in the silence and pray that the Holy Spirit opens my eyes, my ears, my mind spiritually so that I may hear. And that I would be in the Holy of Holies, instead of being at the outer courts of His temple. Being still before the Lord is still very tough for me even now. Phew!

I hope that this account will make you all think about how you pray, and encourage you to pray. I won't mind if you all respond with your own accounts of your individual prayer styles. Those will be very interesting, I reckon!