The C.A.T.S Prayer Pattern

Prayer is a staple component to any healthy Christians relationship with God. But many Christians do not know how to pray. Prayer is something that is hard to grasp.

I remember when I was a young teenager my father began to take us through a book teaching us how to become men of God. Through this time and the next few years of my life, my father taught us that in prayer we are to first confess our sins.

Having learned what my father had taught me and learning on my own I like CATS better. And just so you know, I like dawgs not cats. And this was a model that I followed. It was not until I was doing some discipleship with some students that I heard about the ACTS method of prayer.

A.C.T.S stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication

This method is just a simpler way to remember the model of the Lord’s prayer.

As you are going through this, keep in mind that this is just a pattern to pray. There is no right way to pray as long as you are praying in Jesus name.

But I like CATS. So here is what this acronym means.

Confession: Confession of sin in crucial to your relationship with God. Psalms 66:18 says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:” (KJV). This is a very powerful statement. Now you might say well what about the person coming to faith in Christ or someone in trouble? I believe that this is applying to the relationship aspect of prayer. We must confess our sins before we praise or ask for anything.

Adoration: This is spending time in your prayer just praising God. Jesus says this in the model prayer found in Luke 11:2 “And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name.” I challenge you the next time you pray to see how long you can go without asking God for anything and just spend time praising Him.

Thanksgiving: Thanking God is crucial to our payer life. This breeds humility that is needed in our prayer life. Philippians 4:6 says, “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Our prayers should be saturated with us giving thanks to God.

Supplication: This is a big fancy word for asking/seeking/praying to God for something. Within in this we should ask according to God’s Will (See Luke 11:2).

As we should pray we need to keep the following in mind.

Prayer should draw us to God’s Will not drawing God to our will.

What pattern do you use? 

What are some habits that you have learned that helps you in your prayer life? 

Love to hear you thoughts!