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Trust and obey for there's no other way

Lynne Baab • Saturday August 8 2015

Ten years ago my spiritual director began talking to me about trust in God. “Trust is something you need to focus on,” she said to me more than once. Several times after I described difficult situations and my conflicting emotions about them, she said, “You either trust God with this or you don’t.”

Her words about trust were like some obscure foreign language to me, maybe Sanskrit or Sioux. Sure, I’d been a Christian for several decades at that point. I’d studied the Bible and prayed in many different ways. I’d kept a Sabbath for many years and fasted many times. I’d...

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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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