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The spiral upwards because of knowing God (and how to pray for it)

Lynne Baab • Friday August 21 2015

Recently I got together with two old friends. We met 40 years ago next month! As old friends do, we talked about our children, our parents, our siblings. At some point, we moved onto the subject of praying for the needs of these central people in our lives. One of my friends enthused, “My favorite way to pray for the people in my family is to use that prayer from Colossians chapter 1, about being filled with the knowledge of God’s will in order to live lives worthy of the Lord. I pray it for my kids, and I often pray...

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Let’s get creative with ACTS prayer

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 30 2015

I’ve been writing about ACTS prayer. Pray this way, my mentors said when I was a young adult. Begin with (1) adoration, because you’re entering into the presence of a holy God. Then (2) confession will come naturally because God’s holiness will make you aware of your own sin. After you confess your sin, you’ll be aware of God’s great mercy in redeeming us in Jesus Christ, so you’ll want to spend some time (3) thanking God. Only after all of that should you engage in (4) supplication, asking God to meet your own needs and the needs of those you...

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Let's rediscover (or discover) lament

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 23 2015

I’ve been writing about ACTS prayer (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication). Last week I compared ACTS prayer to the Psalms, and noted that lament prayers are common in the psalms, but ACTS leaves no room for lament. In fact, lament is pretty rare in most kinds of prayer today.

A few weeks ago I was on our church’s roster to do the “prayer for others” in Sunday worship, and I decided to try a lament. I chose a psalm of lament, Psalm 10. That week I had read a powerful article about the record number of displaced people in our time. It seemed...

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ACTS prayer analyzed in the light of the Psalms

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 16 2015

Last week I wrote about ACTS prayer, the idea that prayer alone or with others works well if the components are these, in this order: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication (requests for ourselves or others). I’ve been thinking about the ways ACTS prayer compares with the psalms. The psalms are often called “the prayer book of the Bible,” so they are a very helpful guide to prayer. All four of those components appear over and over in the psalms, no doubt about it.

Here are some of my other observations:

1. Many psalms are weighted heavily toward only one of the ACTS components. My...

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