Although I found P.R.A.Y. a helpful acronym to pray with, I didn't want to stop there with trying prayer acronyms; A.C.T.S. is another one I'd tried before, although never with a great deal of success. I find that adoration, often one of the clearest parts of prayer, frankly threw me; I can confess, I can be thankful and I can ask on behalf of myself and others...but I have trouble with adoration. How does it fit into my daily prayers? Does God want my prayers to be prefaced by a long spiel along the you-are-wonderful line of thinking?
Here's what http://www.prayerguide.org.uk/ had to say about Adoration:
"Adoration is to adore God, to worship him and to fulfil the commandment to love him with all of our heart, mind and soul. As we spend time in adoration, we praise God for who He is - our Creator, our Sustainer and our Redeemer."
Changing the word 'adoration' to 'praise' helped me to clarify my thoughts about what was being asked of me. When I think of praising God I imagine specific acts that represent that praise to me, such as singing hyms. I think, though, that in this instance it would be too easy for me to just say 'well, I'm already singing five psalms to start the morning, that can count as the adoration/praise part of the acronym.' I needed to find another way to try adoration.
http://www.discipleshiptools.org/ suggests looking over your life and remembering all that God has done for you. It also goes on to say:
"This (praise and adoration) is about the greatness of God, His incredible omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience, His sovereign nature and rule, and His complete holiness."
Hmmm, that gave me an idea. I decided to try praising God through the times in my past that I had seen his sovereign grace on a personal level. I wrote out a short list of events when God's protection was evident in my life; times when without him I would have suffered greatly. And then I wrote another list of times when I had suffered, and yet all was well in the end, because He watched over me.
As I was preparing for Adoration, I started to think about Confession as well. I felt comfortable simply confessing whatever sins would readily come to mind when the time came, but perhaps this offered me an opportunity to try another suggestion on my prayer list.
If you start looking into the idea of formalized confession you can quickly get mired in technicalities. I suppose there are any number of nuances inherant in each denomination's interpretation of the scriptural basis for public or private confession, but for the purposes of my experiment, I don't see a lot of value in delving into them. I don't believe an intermediary is needed between myself and Christ, nor would I probably be allowed to use one if I did, seeing as I'm not a member of the Catholic, Lutheran or Anglican churches, all of whom offer confession to a priest. I also can't really use a corporate confessional model, such as the confession and absolution of the Anglican church, because I'm praying solo.
I ended up finding an excellent beginning at http://www.catholiceducation.org/. I'll include a quote here:
"...a person begins with a good examination of conscience. We need to hold up our life to the pattern of life God has revealed for us to live. For instance, we take time to reflect on the 10 Commandments, the Beatitudes, the precepts of the Church, and the virtues of prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice.
The examination of our conscience is like stepping back and looking at the picture of our life in comparison to the masterpiece of life revealed by God. Remember when we were children, we used to trace pictures. Tracing helped us learn to draw. We would take a piece of plain paper, hold it over the original picture, and then put it up to the window. The light would enable us to trace the original picture onto our blank sheet of paper. Periodically, we had to stop and step back to see if our paper had slipped and was out of kilter with the original or if we had deviated from the lines.
In a similar way, as we live our lives, we are tracing them in accord with God’s pattern of life. In examining our consciences, we step back and honestly assess how well we fit God’s pattern and have stayed within His boundaries."
My confession was going to require a bit more preparation than simply seeing what God brought to mind in the moment. And so I sat down with my bible and meditated on the ten commandments and the beatitudes and how I had failed in each of them. It was an incredibly humbling experience. I may have sat down in the past and listed sins, I don't remember, but I don't believe I had ever sat down with a template before. I have often confessed sins, I have often felt forgiven, but I have never, to my recollection, sat with a bible and written out specific examples.
With a clear outline of how Adoration and Confession were going to go, I had no trouble with Thanksgiving and Supplication. I had my list of those who had asked for my prayers in my daily prayer journal and finding things to be thankful for has never posed a problem for me.
And so this morning, when I woke up at 4am with a fussy baby, instead of turning over and going back to sleep after he finished nursing, I went and sat in the livingroom and prayed. I was surprised at how difficult it was today. I suppose I thought that with a clear outline the praying would be easier; I rarely pray with so much preparation behind me! And yet it was very difficult.
I will say, though, that confessing your sins aloud, even when it's just you hearing them, is a lot harder than saying them in your head!
Have mercy on me, a sinner.
And that was day 2.
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