If there is one area where pray is dead as a duck today, it is in adoration. Prayer has gone the route of pure supplication today, and drops the identity of the person we pray to. God is God, man is man, and we do not confuse the two. Prayer is a choice, and one that very few people make rightly. Prayer is a discipline of grace through faith in Jesus Christ we are told to exercise, but do we pray to the God of eternity, or a genie in the bottle to hear our latest demand? The prayer of adoration brings context to the relationship we possess with God, and where God is supposed to fall in our worldview. The death of this style of prayer is ultimately tragic, because it is the most important, and even the foundation, of all prayer. Is God your best buddy, or your Sovereign Lord? Before you continue praying, you better have the right answer for the next time you start.
The term adoration is important regarding prayer, but what does it mean to adore God? Simply put, it means to love, cherish, praise, and honor God for who He is. This is difficult to do because it brings us to the point of questioning of what we adore altogether. We do not adore our spouses in the same vein as we adore God, for that would favor the temporal and finite over the eternal and the infinite. How much do we adore God though? The biggest measure is not just adoration prayer in our lives, but how often, and how long, we pray to God. For if prayer is necessary to an intimate relationship with God, a brief, curt exchange is not going to cut it. Would you believe a couple loved each other if the most time they gave each other was three or four times for 1-2 minutes, topping off to 6-8 minutes per day, and 42-56 minutes per week? You would be convinced they had no relationship whatsoever. They barely talk, do not see each other, spent hardly any time with each other, and you are left to the conclusion that they are lying about what they mean to each other. Lip service can be given to loving and cherishing God all you can speak, but if your walk speaks more of apathy and indifference to God, it is clear that you have no love for Him. God is not God to you; He is an afterthought!!
Are there examples of adoration in prayer being demonstrated? In fact, there is a whole book of the Bible that is giving praise to God: The Psalms. There are Psalms for when man is in despair and under death’s shadow, such as Psalm 23. Prayers for deliverance from the hands of unrighteous and wicked men, such as Psalms 3 and 4. Prayers of repentance in Psalms 6. Prayers of rejoicing in God, while declaring to not put before his eyes anything worthless, such as Psalms 101. The focal point of the Psalms is giving praise and deference to God above all else, acknowledging human impotence and finitude to accomplish to accomplish their ways. Ephesians 1 gives praise to God for believers’ adoption through Jesus Christ to the family of God. Finally, according to Revelation 19, there will be much rejoicing in Heaven at the end of days. The Word of God calls for adoration of God both as a means of prayer, and as a foundation for prayer.
How does one pray to God in adoration? The answer lies in changing our minds about who God is. How we think about God, how often we think it, and the extent to which we think about it will influence our prayer life in its totality. Therefore, double mindedness is not acceptable to Christ. If we are serious that God is real, and is interested in what we say, and, moreover, what He wants to say to us, we must come to Him receptive and open-minded, not obstinate and belligerent. The man who comes to prayer with a mindset of God being a means to an end will make the endeavor to slave drive God, which betrays, as noted before, a lack of conception of the ontological (nature of being) and the metaphysical (greater nature of reality) disparity between man and God. Such pretentiousness ends us inviting judgement, not counsel, from God, as the person mitigates, rather than adorates, God’s glory. And people wonder why their prayers of supplication are never answered the way they want.
If God is to be glorified, and man to be satisfied in Him by proxy, as per John Piper’s theological axiom, we better have a solid knowledge of how God handles irreverence. If the sons of Aaron in Numbers 3:4 were killed for using unauthorized fire before God, the manner from which we worship better be in shape. The Sons of Eli did not get a pass for taking from the offering the portion that was God’s, and sleeping with the women whom served at the entrance of the tent of meeting, so neither will we. If our prayers to God bear no reverence, we should not expect any blessing to come from God, for our prayers are not adoration, but sacrilege. Glory be to the father, and glory be to the father alone, as we pray in Word, in Spirit, and in Truth.
A life of prayer is a life of humility, and pursuit of being more like Christ every day. If our time with Him is casual, rather than adoring, it reveals who is really the object of our devotion. God is not the director, but merely the player of our stage play. A man who conceives of God in these terms has nothing but stupidity, and should be ashamed of himself in every sense. The God who forged the heavens and the earth by vocal decree, as per Genesis 1, deserves more than a, “How is it going buddy? Hey, could you do me a favor?” Not in the light of redeeming us through His Son a, “Could let me off the hook for that nightly excursion with that lovely lady?” He deserves a “God, who formed Heaven and earth to your glory, I am a sinner. I am a man of unclean speech, and I live among a people of unclean speech. Forgive me, for the sake of your glory and Kingdom, all things rendered to your name.” That is the difference in prayer. One honors God humbly, the other dismisses God arrogantly.