Section #1: Adoration

Part of our prayer lives should be spent focusing on praising and worshipping God, and delighting in his presence.  I have heard well-respected people argue that this should be the first thing we do when we approach God because it immediately reminds us of our place compared to Him.  We are forced to remember his greatness and goodness and faithfulness that creates a lovely backdrop for everything else we have to say (and may just change the way we say it!).  I grew up praying through an acronym “ACTS”: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.  So that’s how I have set up the binder.  However, our current church prefers the acronym “CHAT”: Confess, Honor, Ask, Thank.  This pattern puts confession first, then adoration, with the argument being that we should get right with the Lord before we go on to anything else.  The great thing about the binder is that it’s completely adjustable and customizable!  So you can put these pages and sections in any order you please.  See how I just got out of weighing in on that debate?

Whether you put this section first or second, the idea is the same.  These pages provide prompts to help you praise the Lord well.  A great way to praise the Lord is by focusing on his attributes and names in the Bible.  There are lists and lists online from which to draw inspiration, and of course, notice attributes from your own daily Bible reading as well--when you're looking for reasons to praise God through the Scripture, you'll always find something.  Sometimes I go through lists of names when I praise the Lord, but usually I park on one or two attributes and elaborate on what it says about God, how I see it true in the Bible and in my life, and what it means to me.  

I sometimes spend my entire prayer time in this section!  When I have extra time here, or just know I need to spend some extra time delighting in the Lord, I pick a Psalm of praise to read through and pray back to the Lord.  Some people don’t like pre-written prayers, and I get that, but I find that sometimes others can put feelings into words in ways that I can’t.  And sometimes, praying through someone else’s declaration of faith can spur on my own.

I keep some looseleaf paper in this section also and occasionally record song lyrics or my own words of praise that are running through my head.  

The sky is the limit here.  The point is to give you practical ways to praise and honor the Lord!  

This download page also includes a cover page for your binder.  A quick word about that.  If you commit to pray more fervently and consistently, you will hit resistance.  I intentionally put Ephesians 6:12-18 on the cover page to remind me of exactly why we’re doing this whole prayer thing in the first place.  “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the…spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (verse 12).  Yikes.  Our problems and concerns and difficult people should not be the focus of our war efforts.  As Priscilla Shirer says, they are not the real enemy!  The real enemy is the Devil himself and his nasty crew.  How do we fight the spiritual forces of evil?  With spiritual weapons.  Namely, prayer.  And in the rest of this passage, Paul tells us how to put on the armor of God to be prepared to fight off spiritual attacks.  Read through this passage often.  As you do, pray on the armor and be inspired anew to pray with vigor.  The battle is real, though it is unseen.  Prayer is not our last resort when all else fails, but our first line of defense against the evil in this world.  

Let’s get suited up.