The Structure of Prayer in "The Phenomenology of Prayer"

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In church, I was taught to pray following the pattern of A.C.T.S., or adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. As a child, the order of these steps seemed arbitrary and false. Often, the prayers I would hear began with “Thank you, God, for…” and rarely included any confession. Time and “The Phenomenology of Prayer” have given me more insight as to why this pattern is so ordered. 

The book draws attention to five main divisions in prayer: praise, thanksgiving, confession, petition and intercession. Instantly I see similarities to the book’s outline and the A.C.T.S. pattern. Both start with giving glory to God for who He is. Both end with requests of God. While the two middle steps are reversed, I see no problem or conflict in this, as I will later explain. What is evident is that adoration, or praise, must come first. The book goes to great lengths to explain why: it is the single act within prayer that demands a de-centering of self. All other parts of prayer can be done with selfish intent, but not adoration. Through proclaiming the qualities of God and sincerely recognizing them, man properly positions himself before God. Adoration is the act of prayer that corrects one’ perspective. The world does not revolve around any human or humans in general; all creation was formed to focus completely on God. This idea of recognizing one’s place is shown in the Bible through the story of Tamar revealing Judah’s wickedness, Nathan accusing David of adultery and murder, and the men walking with Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Each of these people realize who God really is and who they really are. 

From this newly adjusted posture of being, two things become exceedingly apparent to the one praying: first, how unspeakably good God is; second, how unspeakably wicked the pray-er is. Seeing as though both of these realizations occur at the same time, no definite order can determined. That is why confession and thanksgiving can be switched around. Personally, I find confession to come before thanksgiving. I speculate this is because even after my de-centering, my heart is perpetually selfish and I can’t help but look at myself in comparison to the glory of God. Is this a bad thing? No. It is right for me to admit of my own shortcomings and my evil rebellion against the holy God of the universe. I am a wretch. It is wrong, however, for me to stay in confession without acknowledging how merciful and even gracious God has been to my wretched self. God’s blessings have sustained me despite my betrayal and disregard for His law and love. To remain wallowing in my sin without moving back to focus on God is a grotesque form of pride disguised as piety. Both confession and thanksgiving are necessary, no matter which comes first. 

Supplication comes last, contrary to how most people (myself included) often enter into prayer. I found it interesting at first that the book decided to put petition before intercession, but now I think I see why. Jesus teaches us to address our own problems before attempting to attend to others. We are to remove the planks from our own eyes so that we might properly remove the speck from someone else’s. Praying for others is not wrong; correcting and rebuking others can be right. However, both must be done after one has met his own needs and has had his own faults corrected. Additionally, Jesus teaches that the greatest commandment is to first love God, and second love one’s neighbor as oneself. Subtlety, Jesus tells us that it is impossible to love someone else without loving oneself initially. Of course, it is impossible to love at all outside of receiving God’s love had responding to Him first. Within the greatest commandment, God shows us that adoration precedes and enables supplication, first for oneself, then for others.