Contents of Prayer
A few months ago while I was travelling by train to Howrah, an old man travelled along with me. He was sitting near me with a long chain made up of small beads. He moved the beads of the chain. He was actually praying to God when he moved the beads.
In the evening we reached a railway station. The old man along with his friends washed and lined up in the platform for worship. The old man took out a compass, identified the direction for worship and they worshiped as a group. The guard delayed the train by waiting for them to finish their worship and board the train. They carried out their worship and prayer systematically and in an organised manner. They never bothered about anything or anybody. They are all fundamentalists who stick to certain order in their prayer regularly.
Many Christians do not pray to the Lord in a systematic and organised manner. They pray aimlessly and without any order. Some others find it very difficult to concentrate in prayer and spend more time in prayer without actually praying. To pray systematically we need to organise our prayer in such a way that it will have all the elements of prayer.
1. Five elements of prayer: It is commonly accepted that prayer the following five elements. The prayer with the five elements can be abbreviated as PACTS. P stands for Praise, A stands for Adoration, C stands for Confession, T stands for Thanksgiving, S stands for Supplication. Our personal prayer must have all these five elements.Pact means ‘an agreement’ or ‘that which is agreed on’. So let us make a pact with God to pray daily, packed with all these elements of prayer.
a. Praise: Praising is an expression of admiration to God for His greatness, nature and for His attributes. “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvellous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” Psalm 139:14
b. Adoration: Adoration is reverential praise acknowledging Lordship of God and telling that we love Him. So it is an expression of our love to God. “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Phil. 2:10,11
c. Confession: Confession is accepting before God that we have sinned and asking God to forgive us. Daily we commit sin and they must be confessed, forgiven and forgotten. After confessing our sins, it is very important to evaluate ourselves and to find out reason for committing that sin and pray to God to help us overcome that sin. “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your loving kindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight.” Ps. 51:1-4
d.Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving is expressing gratitude to the Lord for what He has done for us, what He has provided us and for all our benefits. “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thess. 5:18.
e. Supplication: The Revell concise Bible dictionary defines supplication as a specific request to God to meet a particular need. So all requests to God are supplications. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” Phil. 4:6
2. The elements of prayer present in the prayer taught by Jesus: When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, Jesus Christ taught them a prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) which contains the four important elements (PACS) of prayer. They are:
Praise: ‘Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.’
Adoration: ‘For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.’
Confession: ‘And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’
Supplication: ‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil one.’ This supplication in the prayer taught by Jesus Christ contains four requests. Out of these four requests, only one prayer request is for the physical needs (that too for food which is the basic necessity of man) but all the others are for spiritual needs. This prayer teaches us that our supplication must contain more requests for the meeting of spiritual needs. It is sad to note that the supplication of many believers are mostly for physical needs.
Preparation of a Prayer Diary: You can include these elements of prayer, if you are not praying systematically with organised prayer points. Your prayer will become more systematic and regular if you prepare a prayer note-book or a prayer diary. Writing down the prayer points will help you to pray with concentration and enable you to pray for all the points without forgetting any point. The prayer diary can have five sections. In the first section, a few pages of and adoration items or Bible verses which help you to praise and adore God may be written. The second section may have thanksgiving items. The third section on supplication may be divided into two main parts. The first part can have personal and family prayer points and the second part can have prayer points to pray for the ministry and for others. We may be ordinary people, but God can do extraordinary things when we pray systematically and fervently. “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth produced its fruit.” James 5:16-18.
(Dr. C Barnabas, Translated from True Discipleship Oct. 1999)