Broadening Our Horizons in Prayer
When you hear the word prayer, what comes into your mind? What does prayer look like to you when you hear the word?
I would suggest that for the majority of people, prayer means asking God for something. Virtually all of us have had someone ask us to pray for a need in their lives, or we ourselves have asked someone to pray for us. This is not a surprise. The famous preacher Charles Spurgeon has been quoted as saying, “Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the Kingdom”. Jesus invited us to ask God for our needs, saying “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Luke 11:9).
At its core, prayer is simply communicating with God. However there are numerous types and ways of communicating with God, which have led Christians over the centuries to distinguish between some of the different types of prayer. (Author Richard Foster has written about 18-20+ different forms of prayer) In this post, I would like to share some thoughts on a few of the more well known forms of prayer. My hope is that this will broaden our thinking and potentially even our own practice of prayer.
The acronym, ACTS is one way for us to remember some of the most well known forms of prayer: A-adoration; C-confession; T-thanksgiving; S-supplication.
Prayers of adoration invite us to express prayers that give praise to God for who He is and what He is like. When you think about who God is, what attributes or characteristics do you love the most? Perhaps God’s unending love? His perfect faithfulness? His compassion? Prayers of adoration are when we intentionally think about who God is and then express praise to Him for those parts of God. Adoration is a form of worship!
Prayers of confession are when we acknowledge our sins (both individually and corporately) and express our remorse to God for them. King David wrote one of the most well known prayers of confession in Psalm 51. He also wrote about the personal impact of confession upon our spiritual lives in Psalm 32. Confession is when we stop our natural tendency to defend ourselves or blame shift onto other people, and simply acknowledge our sinful behaviours, and also ask God for mercy and forgiveness.
Prayers of thanksgiving are fairly self-explanatory. This form of prayer is an expression of gratitude and acknowledgment of the many wonderful gifts that God has brought into our lives. It is extremely important for our relationship with God to consciously seek to be aware of the good gifts of God in our lives and say thank you to Him. Paul tells us in Philippians 4:6 to pray ‘with thanksgiving’ to God.
Prayers of supplication are when we express our needs to God. Generally, there are two forms of supplication: praying for our own needs, which are often called ‘prayers of petition’ and praying for the needs of others, which are called ‘prayers of intercession’. Once again looking at Philippians 4:6, Paul also writes about supplication:
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition…present your requests to God.”
There are many other ‘types’ or ‘forms’ of prayer, such as silent prayer, listening prayer, contemplative prayer, just to name a few! Our God is infinite and beyond our ability to comprehend or describe and so it should not surprise us to find that communication with God is a vast ocean of discovery!
By nature, we tend to lean toward one or two expressions of prayer. I want to invite you to reflect on your own prayer experience and consider the four types of prayer mentioned above: Adoration - Confession - Thanksgiving - Supplication. Which of those is most familiar to you and most common in your prayer life? Consider how you could include some of the other, less familiar types of prayer into your spiritual practice.
(Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash)
