Dr. Ron Sumners
February 19, 2006
Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul. When our reply to God is most direct of all, it is called adoration. Adoration is the spontaneous yearning of the heart to worship, honor, magnify, and bless God.
In one sense adoration is not a special form of prayer, for all true prayer is saturated with it. It is the air in which prayer breathes the sea in which prayer swims. In another sense, it is distinct from other kinds of prayer, for in adoration we enter the rarefied air of selfless devotion. We ask for nothing but to cherish Him. We seek nothing but His exaltation. We focus on nothing but His goodness. "In the prayer of adoration, we love God for Himself, for His very being, for His radiant joy."
There are two sides to the Prayer of Adoration: thanksgiving and praise. The usual distinction between these two experiences is this: in thanksgiving we give glory to God for what He has done for us; in praise we give glory to God for who He is in himself.
The distinction is valid, but we must not make too much of it. In experience the two weave themselves in and out of one another. The biblical writers frequently use the words interchangeably and even on top of one another: "I will thank you in the great congregation; in the mighty throng I will praise you" (Psalm 35:18). Thanksgiving and praise are both part of the experience of all true adoration.
The Old Testament world is soaked with the language of thanksgiving. In the days of the monarchy, King David chose certain priests to be ministers before the Ark of the Covenant with a singular commission, "To invoke, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel." He appointed special singers to do nothing but "sing praises to the Lord" (1 Chron. 16:4-36). Then there was the "thank offering" that was such a prominent feature in the worship of ancient Israel.
It is hard to find a page of the Psalter that does not contain the rhetoric of thanksgiving: "O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good: for His steadfast love endures forever" (Ps. 106:1); "I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart" (Ps. 9:1); "O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever" (Ps. 30:12).
Jesus was the ultimate grateful person. The signature written across His life was the prayer, "I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth" (Luke 10:21). Paul knew the spirit of gratitude, "I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you" (Romans 1:8). The Bible witnesses speak with one voice, urging us to always give thanks to God and for everything. (Ephesians 5:20).
To the extent that we can draw a line of distinction, praise lies on a higher plane than thanksgiving. When I give thanks, my thoughts still circle about myself to some extent. But in praise, my soul rises to self-forgetting adoration, seeing and praising only the majesty and power of God, His grace, and His redemption.
The Bible is filled with praise to God. Deut. 10:21 says, "He is your praise; He is your God." The Psalms pulse with a symphony of praise. "Praise the Lord, 0 my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to the Lord all my life long." (Psalm 146:1-2) “I will bless the Lord at all times; His praises shall continually be in my mouth." (Psalm 34:1) "He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God" (Psalm 40:3).
The writer of Hebrews urges us to "continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God" (Hebrews 13: 15). And the writer of Revelation assures us that praise is the serious business of heaven: "I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered thousands and thousands, singing with full voice, 'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!"' (Revelation 5:11-12).
Luke closes his Gospel with the enthralling words of blessing, "and they were continually in the Temple blessing God" (Luke 24:53). When we are brought into experiences of blessing God, the soul is filled with praise.
Who can question the significance of these twin activities of heart and mind? Together they help us understand the meaning of adoration. I pray that our hearts be stirred. I ask that our minds be rejuvenated. May we join with the ancient processional up the holy hill of Zion: "Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and bless His name" (Psalm 100:4).
If we could only see the heart of the Father, we would be drawn into praise and thanksgiving more often. It is easy for us to think that God is so majestic and so highly exalted that our adoration makes no difference to Him. To be sure, God is self-sufficient, but we should always remember the words of St. Augustine, "God thirsts to be thirsted after."
Our God is not made of stone. His heart is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small. A cup of cold water given in His name catches his attention. Like a proud mother who is thrilled to receive a wilted bouquet of dandelions from her child, so God celebrates our feeble expressions of gratitude and service.
Think of Jesus healing the ten lepers. Only one returned to give thanks, and he was a Samaritan. How moved Jesus was by the one, how saddened by the nine! Think of the woman who bathed the Master's feet with her tears of gratitude. How moved He was by her simple devotion. Think of the woman who anointed Jesus' head with costly perfume. Judas was appalled at the waste. Jesus was touched by this lavish act of adoration. What about us? Dare we hold back? It brings joy to the heart of God when we say simply and profoundly, "Thank you, bless you. Praise you!"
C.S. Lewis identifies several things that keep us from adoration. The first is inattention. It is easy to be caught up in the whirl of life and miss the expressions of Divine Love. It is not just that we are trapped in a rat race of acquiring things. It is the quite legitimate demands of home and family and school and work that conspire to make life a blur. Like Jack's beanstalk, our obligations seem to grow overnight. We cannot adore God when we are too busy to see God.
A second obstacle is the wrong kind of attention. We might see a sunset and we are drawn into analysis rather than praise. We enter into Bible study, and we want to analyze the method and motives of God. We discuss long and loudly creationism, the second coming, soul-competency, Darwinism, Calvinism versus Armenianism, and a host of other theological topics. When did we last leave our analytical minds behind and simply praise and adore God for who He is and what He has done without feeling that we have to have complete understanding?
A third obstacle to adoration is greed. Our addiction for more and more of what we already have a surplus of destroys our ability to adore because it keeps us from reflection. Lingering over a rose or a verse of scripture - smelling, tasting, chewing, drinking it all in - this is the stuff of adoration. Rather than this we ask God for more roses, more tasting, more chewing, more to drink in. Instead of enjoying pleasures, we demand more pleasures - whether we enjoy them or not. I contend this truth and I feel I can back it with 35 years of ministry: The more people have the less they enjoy what they have and the less grateful they are. The people who have little enjoy what they have and are grateful to God for it!
C.S. Lewis mentions one more obstacle to adoration, conceit. How easy it is for people who discover God in the ordinary to become very smug about it. We are condescending to those who don't yet get it. We tend to feel superior to those who have not discovered adoration. The most obnoxious people of all are the religiously self-righteous. Do you know why Christians are so despised by the world? It is because we are despicable! Instead of being loving and nurturing and helping people to grow to understanding, we are haughty and condemning of those who have not had our experience. When conceit takes over, the focus is on how wonderful we are - and it effectively severs the cords of adoration.
The Prayer of Adoration must be learned. It does not come automatically. Our children do not have to be trained to ask for things. If you need verification for this, just take your young child to the grocery store or Walmart. If you get out of the store without threatening their life because they have pitched a fit for some toy or some super-sweet cereal count yourself blessed. But to express thanks? That is a totally different matter.
Gratitude must be taught, and that teaching must be reinforced constantly. The same thing is true for us adults. Thanksgiving, praise, adoration - these are seldom the first thoughts in our minds or on our lips. We all need help to move to a fuller, deeper adoration. The following stepping-stones may help mark the way.
We begin right where we are in the frustration and fears of ordinary life. When we are filled with sadness, it seldom helps to count our blessings. We start more simply. Pay attention to the little creatures that creep upon the earth. Just watch birds and squirrels. Go to a stream and splash some water on your face. Dangle your feet in the water. Do not seek to solve all the problems of pollution and the ecosystem; just feel the water. Most of all, don't try to find God in the water or make yourself thankful for the water. Simply allow the cool wetness to refresh your skin. Now sit back and listen to the sound of the stream. Watch the branches of the trees sway overhead.
Notice the leaves fluttering in the breeze - notice their shape, their color, their texture. Listen to the symphony of the rustling leaves the scampering little creatures the chirping birds. I am asking you to notice, not analyze.
If you will begin to do this, you begin to experience pleasure without the need to scrutinize or analyze. What this does within us is wonderful. We are first drawn into these tiny pleasures and then beyond to the Giver of all pleasures. True pleasures are "shafts of glory" as C.S. Lewis put it. As this happens, thanksgiving and praise and adoration will flow naturally into their proper place.
This is where we begin, but it is not where we end. We must move to our "Grateful Center." Each of us has such a center in our lives - a time and a place where we were free of all the grasping and grabbing, all the pushing and shoving, all the disapproving and dissenting. You have such a center if you have truly walked with Jesus. If you don't, walk with the Lord and find yours. Go to that place in your mind and allow the adoration to flow.
This moves us to the next stepping-stone: the practice of gratitude. We must develop the habit of giving thanks for the simple gifts that come our way day by day. Try to live each day in utter gratitude for what God sends your way. Balance every complaint with ten gratitudes, every criticism with ten compliments. When we practice gratitude, a time will come when we find ourselves saying to God not "Please," but rather "Thank you!"
The next stepping-stone is to magnify God. To magnify something, you make it look larger. If we magnify ourselves and our accomplishments, we are on dangerous ground. But we cannot say too much about God's love or His goodness. The most exaggerated things we can say about the glory, majesty and goodness of God will still be far less than the truth!
The final stepping-stone is celebration. Celebration is done best in community, but we can do it alone. Like Miriam who danced and sang before the Lord when God delivered the Children of Israel from the chariots of Pharaoh, like Mary our souls magnify the Lord, and our spirit rejoices in God our Savior.
We have only begun to learn how to adore God. As the Hymn writer said, "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun!"
0 most high and glorious God, how great is my dilemma! In your glorious presence silence seems best. And yet, if I keep my peace, the rocks themselves will cry out. But if I do speak, what will I say? It is love that calls forth my speech, though it still feels like stammering. I love you God! I adore you. I worship you and bow down before you.
Thank you for your gift of grace
- the consistency of sunrise and sunset,
- the wonder of colors,
- the comfort of voices that love me.
I magnify you, Lord. Let me see your greatness, to the extent that I can receive it. Help me bow in your presence in endless wonder and ceaseless praise.
In the name of Him whose adoration never failed, even Jesus the Christ. - Amen.
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