ADORATION

“Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!” Psalm 95:6

Have you ever seen a baby penguin? Adorable. How about those tiny kitchen videos with the tiny food? Adorable. What about walking in on a little girl playing house? Adorable. There’s that word: adorable. But how could a little bird, tiny food, playing pretend, and the Savior of the world all be considered adorable? Unfortunately, we have cheapened many words that can be used to describe our wonder at the Creator of the universe. Something that is “awesome” is actually that which deserves admiration. Something “Wonderful” should make us full of inspiration and awe. Something “Amazing” is supposed to be something that causes surprise and wonder. Something “Adorable” should be worthy of our adoration which means to hold deep love and respect. Just as these words have become commonplace, so our idea of who God is can become inconsequential to our lives.

So how do we show God His worth? Outside of worshipping him through music, is it possible to dwell on his character? Yes! Of course we can worship Him in every area of our life including prayer time. This type of prayer is called adoration or praise.

Prayer can be split into two main categories: Praise & Requests. Praise can involve thanking God for who He is and for what He has done. When something good happens in our lives we like to “report a praise”. I like to define praise as dwelling on His attributes and proclaiming wonderful things about his nature and Thanksgiving as expressing gratitude for what He does in our lives by healing a loved one, or helping us with trials, etc. But you can offer praise and thanksgiving at the same time for the same event. You can praise God for his faithfulness in helping you through a trial while being thankful for His work through the trial.

Praise is dwelling on His attributes and proclaiming wonderful things about His nature. Thanksgiving is expressing gratitude for what He does in our lives.

Thinking of praise as showing adoration to God can actually monumentally affect the way you give thanks! When you praise God for His love in a situation, you are acknowledging the result comes from Him, not from you. Sometimes our prayers are like, “Whew! Thanks, God for giving me the result I wanted all along. Glad I was right on that”. If we just say thanks without recognizing the Sovereign God behind a circumstance, it can cause pride or even worse, a type of vending machine prayer mentality. We imagine God just dispensing what we want.

One of the best ways we can keep focused on praising God in prayer is by creating lists of His attributes. This could be a running list on a digital document, practicing lettering with names of God, writing them on post-it notes and putting them throughout your house, praying alphabetically and listing as many attributes as you can think of, creating a photo album with attributes of God for each photo, or writing a poem or song that squeezes in as many attributes as you can fit. Get creative! Years ago, I made a spreadsheet of every attribute of God I encountered while reading my daily devotional. Whatever method you use, you can never waste time dwelling on the nature of our amazing, awesome God!

RESOURCE: Enjoy this song, “Lord You’re Holy”

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