PPT: ACTS

One helpful format I've heard of and used for a daily personal time with the Lord is the acronym ACTS, standing for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. In talking with other people and in my own experiences we often have the tendency to focus on only one aspect of prayer. We may, for example, tend to spend our whole prayer time praying for our needs and those others, forgetting to praise God, recognize His mercy, or thank Him for the petitions He has already answered. It can help to have a mini checklist in our minds to rotate through so we don't forget other types of prayer. In the ACTS checklist, I might start off with prayers that include words like "praise", "honor", "blessed", "glorious", then confess my sins and thank God for His mercy, than thank Him for several blessings He has given me whether answered prayer or simple things like a roof over my head and enough food to eat, then spend time bringing to Him various needs I'm experiencing or that have been brought to my attention by other people. One really nice characteristic of ACTS is that you can begin using it with a very short prayer time, yet it expands as you are ready to lengthen the time you dedicate to your relationship with God and even shows the need to lengthen your time as you realize you have a lot more to say than you can squeeze into a few short minutes.