Elements of Prayer

Well, my sons and I are taking a break - for a while - from our usual morning devotions routine.  For a couple of years we have read from daily devotions guides for kids.  Now we are reading sections everyday of GOD GUY.  It is a nice approach for youth on becoming a man of God.   The emphasis is really on being a disciple, not necessarily a guy (although there is a GOD GAL book, too).  But I want to keep with the Lenten Journey theme a bit.

We spent this mornings time together (I have devotions with each one separate before they catch their buses) talking about what makes up prayer.  I just shared the simple ACTS paradigm with them.  We talked about the simple components of a full-bodied prayer: A=Adoration, C=Confession, T=Thanksgiving and S=Supplication.

Over the weekend I am going to start a little prayer book guide for them.  I am going to place a colored tab (4 in all) in a little composition book I got for them.  In the first section I will list a few things they can adore God for and with.  In the second section, some things they may want to confess.  The third section a list of supplications.  You get the idea.  I want them to have a little resource to pick up so they can go to each section and choose a few items each day to offer up in prayer.

They already keep a prayer journal for writing their own short prayers once a day.  They have to do this when homework is being done.  This little prayer book guide will be around so they can come up with some material to write and pray about in their journal.

It is essential for us to balance out our prayer practice so we don't fall into the habit of only praying a laundry list of our current needs, or only praying for forgiveness for all our fallen-ness.  The ACTS model helps us balance this out a bit.

Here is a link to a journal you can use on-line: http://my-diary.org/

Peace,

Tom+