Prayer is very important to every believer's life. So many people pray as a reaction to bad
things happening in their life. Like you're getting pulled over, you hear a bad news,
or maybe you're getting a doctor's report, or perhaps you are facing an exam or test,
or you have a guy that likes you or a girl that likes you, and you're not really sure what to do
and so we go into a prayer. And nothing wrong with that. God is faithful and God is good,
and He wants us to call in the day of our trouble. The Bible actually invites us to do that. You know
God invites us actually to talk to Him. He is inviting us to pray to Him, not because
God is lonely. God is a relational God. You must understand within Godhead there is three Persons,
which means that God is never bored or lonely. God is a relational, eternally relational being.
So He wants a relationship. He doesn't need a relationship. Now, you and I need a relationship
but He wants that relationship with you. He wants you to talk to Him every single day. Prayer is
simply talking to God. Now I'm going to share with you today for those of you who may be struggling
with what to pray about. And I have a lot of videos that I released on that but on this one
it's going to be a little bit different, where I'm going to take you through what I'm going to call
TACOS prayer. I wasn't the first one to coin this TACOS. I heard from somebody else but I believe
it will be very helpful for some of you who are struggling with what to pray about, or how to
keep my prayer longer than one or two minutes. And this will help you to kind of keep a very simple
template of what to pray about to keep your prayer focused and to keep your prayer intentional. Now
you don't have to come to prayer with needs or a plan. You can come and just spend time with God,
and that's completely acceptable and it's good. But in order to live a consistent prayerful life,
it's good to have a plan or to have a template, and I'm going to give you one. So TACOS stands for
thanksgiving, adoration, confession, you pray for others and you pray for yourself. Let's go through
it. Thanksgiving. It's important that when you come to prayer you start with thanking God. Go
through the things that God has done, go through the things that you are grateful for and verbalize
it, tell it to the Lord. Prayers are not something we think, we say them. That's why Jesus says,
when you pray, say this or pray this. So verbalize things like, Lord, I thank You for good health. I
thank You for providing for me. I thank You that I have a local church to go to. I thank You for my
wife. So I thank God for things that He has done. Then I thank Him for things like, thank You for
salvation. Thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus Christ to die for me, Lord. And even if it's every
single day and I repeat that, what it does is it keeps my heart grateful and focused on what God
has done, instead of obsessed with what God has not done. The second letter in TACOS is adoration.
"A" for adoration. This is different. This is different than thanksgiving. This is praising
God. So if I thank God for what He's done, I praise Him for who He is. I praise Him for His
attributes. Now some people also say it's similar to worship, and you can combine both of them,
where you're beginning to glorify God. No longer based on what you've been benefited or received
from Him but about His character. That He is a Creator, that He is almighty, that He is powerful,
that He is glorious, that He is holy, that He is righteous. And you begin to just honor Him,
and you begin to exalt Him and you begin to adore His character, His name, His power, His presence,
His promises. All of those amazing things. Which actually encourages you to know the Scriptures and
learn about God, so that in prayer you can praise Him, you can quote the Scriptures back to Him. The
third component of TACOS is prayer is "C." It's for confession. Now confession of sin. It's when
you begin to look over, examine your heart and see if there's anything that you've done that
displeased Him, that didn't bring Jesus honor, maybe grieved the Holy Spirit. And you acknowledge
your sin, you ask God to wash you with His blood, you confess it. You will experience unburdening,
freedom and release. And the goal of confession is that it will lead you to repentance, meaning
that you will forsake those behaviors and those acts. You will not repeat them again. Confession
is not like a trash can where you just dump the garbage in, empty it out, only to do it again.
Confession is so that you can experience cleansing and so that you can be led to repentance. After
thanksgiving, adoration and confession, and the "O" in TACOS stands for others. You start praying
for other people. It could be for somebody in your church. I always encourage people to pray for
your pastors, pray for your leaders, pray for the staff, pray for the elders, pray for your parents,
pray for your wife, pray for your children, pray for your mentors, pray for your mentees,
pray for the people you're discipling, pray for others. Go through the names that the Lord
brings in your mind. Pray for people who know Jesus that you are telling about Jesus. That
the Lord will soften their heart, remove the veil and that there will be a victory so that they can
receive the Gospel once it's presented to them. Pray for others, intercede for others. The next
thing is "S." So TACOS. "T" for Thanksgiving. "A" for adoration. Confession is "C." "O" for
others and "S" for self. Pray for yourself. Pray for your own personal needs, your physical needs,
your academic needs. Maybe your financial needs or maybe your spiritual needs. Present your needs to
God. Don't put your needs first put your needs last because by the time you're worshiping and
praising and confessing your sin, God is already blessing you. And when you're focused on praying
for others, God is already blessing you as well through that because He is strengthening you. He
is equipping you through that. You're becoming more like Jesus by being someone that's focused
on other people. And focus on yourself last, but nevertheless, focus on yourself by praying
for yourself. Instead of being anxious, instead of being worried, instead of being constantly bagged
down and overwhelmed with the cares of life, you tell the Lord about it. You bring it to God,
your personal needs, and you will see how God will turn your worry and He will turn it into faith.
How the things that you were anxious about will become things that you turn over to God and now
you will have peace. And as you begin to live like this, pray like this, whatever extra time that you
have, just be in His presence and just listen to His voice. One of my practical habits that
I like to do is I actually like to read the Bible first before I pray. By doing that I actually set
my mind and my prayer in the direction that is in line with God's Word. Now some people don't read
the Bible at all, they just pray. But I think that when you add God's Word and you pray out of God's
Word, it's extremely beneficial to your spiritual life. And my other, I call it secret sauce on the
TACOS, is praying in tongues. I love taking good sometimes 10 to 15, to 20 minutes and just praying
straight in tongues. Praying, let the Holy Spirit pray through me and if I don't feel anything,
I'm not discouraged. I just keep on praying, keep on praying, keep on praying and then like
there's that switch that happens. Where you're no longer conscious about what you are praying for,
you're just praying in this spiritual language. And you're beginning to receive actually in your
mind what you're praying for in your spirit. And it's incredible because it builds your spiritual
faith and then intercession is being made in line with God's Will. And we have other videos
that deal with praying in tongues and how that's beneficial to your prayer language. So have you
prayed TACOS prayer before? If you haven't, try that today or try that tomorrow. Put that into
practice. Spice up your prayer life, so that your prayer life is exciting and your prayer time is
beneficial to you, and you also feel more deeply connected to the Lord. Remember, we don't pray so
we can have oneness with God. We pray because we are one with God. We don't pray so we can be in
Jesus. We are in Jesus as Christians and out of the place we pray. We don't pray so we abide in
God, we pray out of abiding in God. Abiding is by faith. Abiding is because He placed us in Jesus,
and out of that place, we pray. Thank you for watching this video. Hit like if this was a
blessing to you and share this with other people. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't yet and
then let me know in the comments of what did you learn from this video. I would encourage you to
subscribe to our email list, so you can be each week getting some updates from our ministry. And
in case we lose our social media platform, that we can still stay connected to you. God bless you.