ACTS
Acts is a book in the bible that discusses the early church, it is something we do (hopefully like acts of kindness) and it can be a format we use for prayer.
God desires a relationship with us. If you are a Christian this is one of the first things you learn. You may know it in theory but it is a hard thing to wrap your mind around. The God of the universe… The God who created every living thing…. The God who planned out every detail of the world, our lives and the lives of those around us…. The God who is all knowing, and all powerful…. The God who has billions of people to listen to… wants a personal relationship with us!!! It is unbelievable, inconceivable!! Sometimes I don’t even want a personal relationship with me how can God even have time for me much less desire to share wisdom with me, listen to my struggles and desires, forgive my sins daily, help me grow in my faith and my relationships with others, help me be a better mother, wife, sister, daughter, scrapbooker, worker…. How can God care about me when He has the whole world to worry about?
Well this is where I remind you that our ways are not His ways and there is NO way for us to fully understand such a great and awesome God. One thing I do know is that He does care, He does listen and He does want to spend time with each of us individually. He cares about all we are going through. He cares about our growth, our decisions, our hearts and so much more.
When I was in my 30s I still believed that your relationship with God was a private one that you did not need to share with others. I didn’t pray out loud or with my kids or with my husband or anyone. It made me uncomfortable. The year that Marquis moved in with us I knew that I needed to get out of my comfort zone and find some other people to pray with. I was unsure what to pray or how to pray and by the grace of God I found a Mom’s in Prayer group.
If you are unfamiliar with Mom’s in Prayer. Here is the website https://www.momsinprayer.org It is life changing to pray with other women for your children and their schools. If you have kids or grandkids I encourage you to find a group or start a group.
Mom's in Prayer groups pray with the ACTS format so it is fairly structured and when I first started attending a group I had to pray that God would silence my mind and allow me to pray what He put on my heart or else I worried about how I sounded. All the women prayed differently and they all had something different put on their heart for my children. Blessings upon blessings came out of prayer in Mom’s in Touch groups. I could see a change in my parenting, a change in how I view circumstances, a clearer view of God working in the lives of my children, a change in my priorities. Of course many prayers for my children have been answered through the years but that is just the icing on the cake.
One of the things that strikes me today about the way we pray is that we spend much of our time in Supplication (praying for the things that concern us) and often leave out the more important prayers of praise, confession, and thanksgiving. If we spend more time in the ACT of prayer we would more easily align our hearts with Gods and our focus would turn from ourselves to a more godly perspective. Consider how your life would change if your focus changed from self focused to God focused just because you spent more time in the ACT of prayer and less time in the S.
