Cover Intercessory Prayers

Prayer shows up all throughout the Bible. If prayer is heartfelt conversation with God, then we find it as early as Adam’s interactions with God in the garden of Eden. We also see it as late as the prayer for Jesus Christ to return again in glory at the end of the book of Revelation. There are countless examples of individuals offering up prayers to God within the Bible. And there is a whole book of the Bible—the Psalms—that is made up entirely of prayers.

One of the consistent themes in the New Testament’s teaching about prayer is that we can be assured that God will hear and respond to our prayers. The apostle John points to this when he says,

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (1 John 5:14 NIV).

This is a wonderful message! It tells us that God knows our needs, and that God absolutely expects us to bring our needs to him through prayer.

One way to think about prayer in the Bible is to look at the different types of prayers that we find. Perhaps the easiest way to think about the major biblical modes of prayer is through the acronym “ACTS.” It stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. These represent the four basic types of prayer that go by these names are found in many places in the Bible others are called the Prayers for Healing and Deliverance, Intercessory and agreement prayers and Spiritual warfare prayers.