2 Chron 7:12-14, Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, "I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 
As we have made very evident, we are using material adapted from The Battle Plan for Prayer Bible Study Curriculum, developed by Stephen and Alex Kendrick. We are looking at several practical aspects of prayer as the means of the spiritual growth of the Lord’s Church on earth today. 
	As we proceed in our study of effective prayer in the Church after the heart of God. We are dealing with the acronym ACTS; A-C-T-S, for the types of prayer. I want to revisit something that I may not have made very clear in our previous discussion. 
The types of prayer – Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication may be individually that. There will be times when the prayer is wholly adoration or thanksgiving, as in our times of corporate worship. For many of us, we spend much of our prayer life in prayers of supplication when we are in need or in intercession for the needs of others. We all experience those times when we have disappointed the Lord and are confessing before Him that we need to have His Hand at work in us to forgive us and to help us not commit that sin over and over again.
While each type of prayer is a different modality of communion with God, they are not necessarily independent or set apart from one another. Our prayers should probably, more and more, be infused with aspects of each of these types. It has been suggested that this A-C-T-S should be the manner of each of our prayers. 
We come to the Lord and we begin with the recognition of Who He is and that He is worthy of all praise and adoration. Then we acknowledge that apart from Him and His gracious and merciful work through the power of the death and resurrection of His Only Begotten Son, we have no place before His throne of grace. Then we give Him thanksgiving for the fact of how He has so loved us unto Himself. Finally, we offer those supplications for the needs that we have or that others have as we bring them before Him. 
The other detail that needs to be emphasized is that confession is not just a verbal agreement that we are not worthy of ourselves. We confess that we need the Lord’s intervention and forgiveness as we go forth on this sojourn in order to be utterly pleasing unto Him. It is also the attitude and the condition of our heart and mind with which we come before Him. We come in the humility that we do not deserve to be in His presence except for the great love with which He has loved us in Jesus Christ. This is the most effective means by which our hearts of confession will not just spew forth a recited catalogue of all our faults and failures, but it will be the measure of the heart with which we pray unto Our Lord God Almighty.
Our Lord highlighted this in His declaration concerning the Pharisee and the tax-collector in Luke 18:10-14. Please open to it and stand up while we read it. 
Luke 18:10-14, "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax-gatherer. "The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, 'God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer. 'I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.' "But the tax-gatherer, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner!' "I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted." You may be seated. 
So a prayer of confession is a prayer with the attitude that God is Most Holy and Just and we need Him to be our everything. None of me and all of Thee, Lord, is our prayer.
As we continue then, we were dealing with the T for Thanksgiving. All our prayers should be accentuated with praise and with thanksgiving to God. One of the greatest means of this is to include God’s own Word in our prayers. We can be very thankful for all His promises in scripture and should be speaking them back to the Lord with the sincerest gratitude for the every one that He has given us in Jesus Christ. 
Another impetus for thanksgiving is that we should be thanking God for His Eternal Blessings. If all that He ever did was to save us from Hell, that alone is worthy of eternal thanksgiving for His salvation. But we have the free gift of Jesus’ Life at work in us. We have His Word to guide and to comfort and to sustain us. We have His Holy Spirit at work within us opening the Word in life, guiding us, and empowering our walk before God and before man. We have the unity of the Church, our fellow believers to stand with us. At the very heart of this discussion, He enables us to pray, and for that we need to express endless gratitude.
Also in terms of thanksgiving, we can thank Him for the people that He has placed in our lives, as so modeled by the Apostle Paul throughout his writings. Take for example, Rom 1:8. Rom 1:8, First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world. 
    	Then Philem 4+5. Philem 4+5, I thank my God always, making mention of you in my prayers, because I hear of your love, and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all the saints; 
    	And Phil 1:3. Phil 1:3, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you… We are to be thankful for all those with whom God has joined us and blessed us as we walk together on this earth.
	Each of these elements are things for which we should be offering God our prayers of thankfulness and gratitude with the knowledge that when we are thankful, God is blessed. As parents, consider the difference it makes for us when our children are thankful for what they receive rather than coming to us with those attitudes of entitlement and demanding to be given what they think they deserve. When we come to God with hearts that are truly filled with appreciation and gratefulness, He is blessed and satisfied with His work in our hearts and beings.
	This, then, brings us to the letter S, which stands for Supplication. This is the type of prayer that tends to be the majority of our time spent with God. The key that we must understand, is that God does promise to take care of us, His Children. He is not going to deprive us of anything that we need. He will use our times of seeming lack to work in us a complete and utter dependence upon Him as Our Provider, but it is for that purpose alone. 
	In Phil 4:19, the Apostle Paul so tells us of the caring provision of the Lord. Phil 4:19, And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Note that God will supply all our needs. Not wants, not lusts, not cravings, but all our needs. As each day unfolds, everything that is needed for the meeting of the challenges of that day are met in Jesus Christ.
	As well, supplications are the prayers of intercession on the behalf of those who are unable to pray for themselves or for whom we are standing in union in Jesus Christ. We lift up the needs as the Lord puts them upon our hearts and we bring them unto the throne of the One Who is able to meet each situation, each circumstance, each dilemma, each crisis with the power that will draw those people unto Himself. We advocate on their behalf before the Lord with those hearts that lay down our lives for the sake of all that would bring the glory of Christ into the lives involved.
	All of these types of prayers or examples of how our prayers should be offered rest on the truth that God answers prayer. There is very little point to our earnest devotion to and dedication in prayer if we do not know with all certainty and with rock-solid confidence and conviction that God will respond to each prayer according to His plan and His purpose in Jesus Christ. God answers every prayer that comes to Him through the intercession of His Only Begotten Son. The key that we need to hold in our hearts is that God answers those prayers in the perfection of His Omnipotence and His Omniscience.
	God is Our Loving Heavenly Father. He responds to the call of His children and He loves to meet the every need of His own. The Psalmist knew this truth as voiced in Ps 84:11+12. Ps 84:11+12, For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord gives grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, How blessed is the man who trusts in Thee! 
    	The Apostle Paul puts this truth on the most solid foundation and cornerstone in Rom 8:32, as he details what is the reality of our very lives now in Jesus Christ. Rom 8:32, He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? As God the Father so freely gave His all in the sending forth of His Only Begotten Son, so does that boundless and eternal love continue to pour forth from His heart unto His children, purchased at the cost of the very life-blood of Christ.
	There are three ways that God answers prayer. Let us briefly consider each one in the full knowledge that He answers perfectly as the Lord God Almighty.
We know that God can and will answer Yes to our prayers as they meet the needs of His people and are in line with His will. He loves to give that affirmative response whenever it is His perfect plan and purpose.
	We also have to realize that sometimes His answer is No. This will always be out of love for us. He knows what is the best course of action in our lives and what is necessary for our lives. He is not limited with finite time structures and deadlines and faulty human understanding and logic. The Prophet Isaiah understood this as He gave expression to the heart of God for all of us in Isa 55:9. Isa 55:9, "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts. 
God is Omniscient. He knows the end from the beginning. He, Alone, knows what is best in and for our lives and for our testimony of His so great love on this earth.That means that sometimes He has to tell us No for our own benefit and up building into the more solid faith and reliance upon Him as our everything. We need to learn to honor God and His will before our own, and therefore, when the answer to our prayer is No, we need to thank Him and trust Him for what He is doing out of the majesty of His plan and His purpose and His love.
	Finally, sometimes the answer to our prayers is to wait. This may be because He has something better in mind, or that there is a much better time in which to answer that prayer. 
	Sometimes, the Lord’s reason is that He wants to bring forth a miraculous answer in His perfect time. He knows exactly when His answer will be the most glorious and beneficial and honoring. 
	Consider, as but one example of this, the answer to Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, as the Lord answered his prayer for a child in Luke 1:13. Zacharias and Elizabeth had been asking the Lord to give them a child for years, and had been in prayer for a long time requesting and crying out to the Lord to become parents. When the time was right, in the plan of God for the one to announce and to prepare the nation for the ministry of Christ, God answered that couple’s prayer. Luke 1:13, But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will give him the name John. This was a miracle which would have been missed or nonexistent if not for the perfect timing of God as He kept Zacharias and Elizabeth waiting for all those years.
	He knows just the right time and His plans are far far far better than ours. He knows when we are ready and when we are not ready. Sometimes He needs to work on our hearts, rooting out bitterness and sin and anger. Sometimes it is just a matter of our having to grow up a bit more in order to be the more mature recipients and expression of His grace and mercy.
	We need to keep in mind, that just because the Lord says Yes, No, or Wait, we must honor and praise Him. Often, in our worship, we tend to give expression to our thankfulness when He says Yes to our prayers. But we need to do so even when His answer is No or when He tells us to wait. He deserves praise and adoration because He is God and He is at work to bring about Christ’s likeness in us through every answer to our prayers, Yes, No, or Wait.Always, our hearts must be that of Our Lord as He prayed in the Garden, “Not my will, but Thine be done!” We must ask Him with the attitude and the understanding in place that His will is so much greater and His ways are so much superior to our thoughts and our understanding.
	There is another aspect to His answer to our prayers with which we will conclude this morning. Too many of us pray to God as if He were our Servant, our employee Who is tasked with meeting our every whim and fancy. We come to Him with the attitude of being entitled to riches and fame and power and every sense of superiority over the lives of all others. There is even that teaching of demanding from Him what we want with the expectation that because we voiced our wishes He must answer it.
	The utter audacity of such foolishness is beyond comprehension. When we come to God, we must do so in humbleness of spirit and with hearts that are fully immersed in the truth that it is not my will but Thine that we seek. 
He is the Lord God Almighty. He is on the Throne of Supreme Authority and Dominion over all of His Creation. He is the One in charge and He knows best what is needed in the lives of His people. We must never forget that truth and we must always give Him our utmost, heart-felt worship and praise because He is God. Whether His answer to our prayers is Yes, No, or Wait, He is to be honored and His Majesty is to be proclaimed and He is to receive our adoration and our thanksgiving with joy and worship. So be it!
Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, "I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Rev. 19:5+6. And a voice came from the throne, saying, "Give praise to our God, all you His bond-servants, you who fear Him, the small and the great." And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude and as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, "Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. Amen.