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If you struggle with staying focused during your prayer time, or you’re not sure where to start or what to say, use this ACTS acronym to help.
Prayer is an important part of our daily lives and relationship with the Lord. There is always room for us to grow in our prayer lives and different ways that we can incorporate prayer.
One of those ways that give our prayers more structure and help us to be more focused during our time in prayer is through ACTS.
If you’re wondering what ACTS means, it is an acronym that many people use as a way to help them pray. The acronym, broken down, stands for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.
If you struggle with staying focused during your prayer time, or you’re not sure where to start, this prayer method is both easy and helpful to incorporate into your prayers.
Prayer methods like ACTS are a guide that we can use in our prayers, but they are not meant to limit us in our prayers or be followed exactly, or it is ineffective.
It is not the acronym that inclines God’s ear to us, it is our cry to Him, and our hearts that are seeking after Him.
This specific acronym is structured in a way that fixes Your eyes on God from the beginning and leaves supplication (or requests) until the end. This is to reframe our minds, and to place our focus on God, who He is, and how glorious His works are, rather than to turn to Him as someone who we only come to when we need something.
Though it is important to make our requests known to God, it is also important for us to honor God, and give Him the praise and adoration that He deserves.
The prayer not only helps us to fix our eyes on God, and behold His beauty, which prepares our hearts for the rest of our prayer. But it also helps us to come to God with hearts that are repentant of our sins.
One part of growing in our relationship with God is in confessing our sins, and not only finding forgiveness but seeing how He purifies us, and changes our hearts and desires.
After adoration, and confession, we are encouraged to take some time to express our gratitude toward God. So often we can feel overwhelmed with the worries of life, and forget that there is so much to be thankful for. And lastly, we can bring our needs to God through supplication, knowing that He cares for us.
Because it is so short, it is easy to commit the structure of ACTS to memory and to recall it when you pray. Some people even enjoy writing down their prayers and using ACTS as a structure for their prayers and during their time in scripture. So, there is certainly more than one way to use it.
You won’t find the acronym explicitly in Scripture, but you can see that each element is rooted in what the Bible instructs us to do.
Let’s break it up together with a reference from scripture, a short explanation of the element, and an example of what that may look like in prayer.
The ACTS Prayer Acronym
Adoration
Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.” – Psalm 95:1-7
If you’ve ever had someone in your life that meant a lot to you, I am sure you have felt what it is like to adore someone. You may have someone that you look up to, whether they are someone from your life or someone in the public eye. Adoration is a respect and deep love for someone. When it comes to adoring God in prayer, it can be in the form of praise or reverence.
We know according to Proverbs 9:10 that the beginning of wisdom is fearing the Lord. This fear that is referred to is a fear meaning reverence. It is having the right view of God and His greatness, and submitting ourselves under Him in love and respect.
There is so much to adore about God, and give Him praise for. It’s important that we study God’s word so that we can grow in the knowledge of who He is and all that He has done and continues to do.
When we know His character and are familiar with the events of scripture, our adoration begins to flow, because we not only are informed about who He is but we have the experience of who He is too. As you start your prayers, take time to fix your eyes on God, and express how wonderful He is.
Confession
“Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.” – Psalm 32:5
We know from Scripture that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It is not through our own righteous works, or moral goodness that we are saved, or come to faith in Christ.
It is only by grace and God’s mercy that we are saved through faith. Our conversion is a one-time thing. This is when God brings us from death to life, and from darkness to light. Once He has given us His Holy Spirit, we cannot lose our salvation.
This is something we can give God praise for, because it reminds us that throughout our lives, He is the one who sustains us. We are dependent on Him for all things. But we know that once we are saved, our sinful habits and ways of thinking do not disappear overnight.
The difference between our new self and our old self, is that the Holy Spirit lives in us now, which means that we are not simply content with sin like we used to be, but there is now a battle between our sinful nature and the Spirit inside of us.
Where we used to allow sin to run rampant, we now begin to resist it, feel remorse over it, and ask God for forgiveness. Through this process He sanctifies us, and we begin to look less like our old selves, and more like Christ.
When we confess our sin, we do so realizing that sin is something that God takes seriously, and that displeases Him. Not only that, but we realize that sin has consequences that may lead us down a path that we will regret.
Through daily confession of our sins, we can ask God to change our desires, help us to seek His will, and resist temptation.
Thanksgiving
“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story – those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south.” – Psalm 107:1-3
A heart that is filled with thanksgiving is not as heavy, and weighed down as a heart that forgets to give thanks, and only sees where there is lack. The reality is, it can be easy to complain about everyday life.
We may complain about our spouse, but forget to give thanks for them. We may complain about our work, but forget to be grateful that we have one.
The list could go on and on.
But what if we were more intentional about gratitude, specifically in our prayer time? Did you wake up today?
That’s always the first thing that you can start with if you have a hard time finding things to be grateful for. It is not always the “big moments” but it is in the small, seemingly mundane things of life that we learn true gratefulness and contentment.
We can give thanks to God for our love that endures forever, we can thank Him for redeeming us, and for sending Jesus into our place. When we grow in gratitude, the way we approach life changes. A grateful heart is a full heart.
Supplication
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:6
Can you imagine what it would be like to live life anxiety-free? For some of us that might seem impossible, or like a task too great to take on.
But I have good news, and that is that God has given us a way to deal with our anxieties and to trade them for something much more effective – prayer.
- If you are anxious about your daily needs, what you will eat, or what you will wear, bring it to God in prayer.
- If you are anxious about an interview, a date, a major life event, or surgery, bring it to God in prayer.
- If you are anxious about what other people think, or how you will make ends meet, bring it to God in prayer.
What I love about this verse is that it doesn’t only list a few things that we can bring to God in prayer. Instead, it says if there’s anything at all, don’t be anxious about it, it doesn’t do you any good.
Here is what to do instead, pray about it. Tell God all about it, lay it at His feet, and ask Him to help you. God cares about you, and He cares about the things that concern you. This is where we can bring our requests, and pray not only for ourselves but ask God to provide for others in the way that they need it most.