How we should pray

There are many suggested ways to pray and all are useful if only to give us a regular prayer focus so that we do not ramble on in our prayer, bouncing indiscriminately from topic to topic. 

I loosely base my prayer on the ACTS acronym:- Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving and Supplication. I don’t always follow this format but it is useful to ground my prayer base. 

Adoration - praise God for all that He is and all that He has done for his people.  This helps to slow us down in our thoughts and bring us nearer to Him. 

Contrition – confession of sins.  We sin not only in deed but also in thought and word.  The Father knows our sins already but it is important to acknowledge our short-comings before Him, to humble ourselves so that our sins may be washed away.

Thanksgiving – saying thank you to God for all that He has given us.  We tend to dwell on what we don’t have and forget how fortunate we are in so many ways. 

Supplication – where we can pray for ourselves, for others and for any issue that is important to us.  Our prayers of intercession.  Nothing is too big or small to the Father.  Don’t be afraid to pray for yourself as well as other people and people unknown to you also, they are not unknown to God.  You don’t even need to know why you are praying for someone, lifting them up to God is sufficient.