Our minister, at St. John's United Methodist, taught us a couple of prayer methods earlier this fall. They have been around for quite a while, but I'd never heard of them before and was delighted! One is ACTS, which stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. The other method uses the fingers on your hand to remember those you should pray for. I wanted to DO something with them. At first I was thinking of a simple watercolor painting of a cross with ACTS on each of the points of the cross, and a hand of course with the explanation inside. Well, the whole idea just kind of sat in my head and I couldn't draw the cross the way I wanted. Then I thought about how I would reproduce them to share with others. I mentioned the fuzzy idea to my friend Elaine, and she said, "why not use those pretty cross stamps you have?" That's as far as I got until one day in the shower the idea just came all in a rush
BAM! Every piece, how it could be arranged and even the very old stamp containing an Irish blessing on it came flooding in my mind. There is no doubt where this idea came from, it was not me. I'd tried to work it out for weeks and got nothing. The Holy Spirit presented me with this way of sharing it with others.
We made several in Card Ministry at Church this month and gave them to our three ministers to give out and use how ever they would like. Then I made 32 more for all the ladies in my Bible Study. Several other people have said they would like them as well. I keep mine in a pocket in my Blessings Book, along with paper listing those who are on our prayer lists in Sunday School and Bible Study. Below is one the cards we've made. We made several color combinations, this is the one I have. You could do something like this with many different stamps. The descriptions for ACTS and the Hand prayer methods can easily be found on the internet. If you'd like to make something like this, I have the typed information and dimensions written out. When we make several at a time, it's really easy if I have the measurements written down, cause we get to talking and laughing and ... well you can imagine when a group of friends get together to make things right?
Dimensions and stuff
Explanation of the hand and ACTS Illustrations - Inside of card
Explanation of ACTS
Scripture associated with ACTS - on card back
