by R.C. Sproul

Adoration

As in the pattern of the Lord's Prayer, the most appropriate way to begin prayer is with adoration. Sadly, we are most often moved to prayer by our desires for supplication. We go to God when we want something from him. We are in such a hurry to mention our requests and articulate our needs (which God already knows) that we either omit adoration altogether or skip over it quickly in a perfunctory manner.

To omit adoration is to cut the heart out of prayer. It is one thing to be fervent in supplication, particularly while praying in a foxhole; it is another thing to be fervent in adoration. The prayers of the great saints, the prayer warriors of church history, are marked by their fervent adoration of God.

God forbid that we should ever second-guess the teaching of Christ, but I must confess to being at least mildly surprised by Jesus' response to the disciples' request about prayer. When they said, "Teach us to pray," I would have anticipated a different response from his lips than the one he gave by way of the Lord's Prayer. I would have anticipated a response something like this: "Do you want to learn how to pray? Read the Psalms."

I'm surprised Jesus didn't refer the disciples to the Psalms. There we find not only the heart of David exposed, but also a divinely inspired treasury of adoration filled with models for us to follow.

Our hesitancy and weakness in expressing adoration may have two root causes. The first is our simple lack of suitable vocabulary. We tend to be inarticulate when it comes to adoration. It was Edgar Allan Poe who said that prose is a more fitting vehicle to communicate instruction than poetry. The aim of poetry is to lift the soul to loftly heights. No wonder the Psalms were written in poetic form. Here the loftiest heights of verbal expression are reached in the service of the soul's praise for God.

Many people in the charismatic movement have declared that one of the chief reasons for their pursuit of the gift of tongues is a keen desire to overcome or bypass the deficiency of an impoverished vocabulary, by way of a special prayer language. People often feel their own language is inadequate to express adoration. This sense of inadequacy from having to use the same tired, haggard words yields frustration. A similar view is expressed by Charles Wesley in his hymn "O for a Thousand Tongues." The hymn complains that the restriction to one tongue is a lamentable hindrance to praise, to be relieved only by the addition of nine hundred and ninety-nine other tongues.

The Psalms were written in simple but powerful vocabulary through which the hearts of several writers expressed reverence for God without bypassing the mind. Opening their mouths, the psalmists uttered praise. That praise was given under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to be sure, but by men whose minds were steeped in the things of God.

Another great barrier to articulate praise is ignorance. We suffer not so much from a limited vocabulary as from a limited understanding of the one whom we are adoring. Our worship also suffers from a lack of knowledge of God.

Consider the love-struck teenager who writes love notes to his girlfriend during study hall. The youth may be shy and reticent, but give him a pen and the object of his romance and suddenly he is another Shakespeare. Oh, the love notes may be maudlin and less than sophisticated from a literary standpoint, but there is no lack of words. The boy is in love. His heart moves his pen.

How does one pen love letters to an unknown God? How do the lips form words of praise to a nebulous, unnamed Supreme Being? God is a person, with an unending personal history. He has revealed himself to us not only in the glorious theater of nature, but also in the pages of sacred Scripture. If we fill our minds with his Word, our inarticulate stammers will change to accomplished patterns of meaningful praise. By immersing ourselves in the Psalms, we will not only gain insight into the how of praise, but also enlarge our understanding of the one whom we are praising.

Why should we adore him? Because that is our duty as human beings. We have been called to fill the earth with the glory of God. We are created in his image to reflect his glory; our major function is to magnify the Lord. Likewise we are to adore him, but not to flatter him, as if to "set him up" for our supplications. We note that the angels in heaven are described as surrounding the throne of God with praise and adoration.

Why is adoration so important to us in practical terms? Because the whole life of the Christian--which is to be a life of obedience and service--is motivated and enriched when holiness and the dignity of God are etched into our minds. Before I can be motivated to do something difficult for someone, I need to have a certain amount of respect for that person. When someone asks me to go out into the world and endure persecution and hostility from angry and contrary people, I have to respect that person deeply. Only then does that task become easier.

When we begin our prayers with adoration, we are setting the tone for our coming to God in confession, in thanksgiving, and in supplication. Hebrews 4:16 tells us that we are to enter into the Holy of Holies boldly, for the veil has been removed by the Cross. The sword the angel wielded at the gate to paradise has been removed. Christ has given us access to the Father. Yet, if we look at the history of the church, people have kept a respectful distance, thinking that God remained aloof from them. Prayer became so formal that the church and its people reacted with equal intensity in the opposite direction.

Today we have "conversational prayer." Our talking to God goes something like this: "Uh, hi there, God. How's it going? Not going too good for me today, but, uh, you know, you and me, God, we'll make out somehow, huh?" This is a rather casual approach to God. Historically there is a reason for it. It represents an overreaction to formalism by embracing what turns out to be the informality that breeds contempt. Designed to eliminate artificiality, it has, nevertheless, created the worst kind of artificiality. A creature has not yet been made who would have the audacity to speak to God like this in his immediate presence.

God has invited us to come freely into his presence, but we must realize that we are still coming before God. When confronted with the Lord God Omnipotent himself, who would speak as if to a friend at a baseball game? We may come boldly, but never arrogantly, never presumptuously, never flippantly, as if we were dealing with a peer.

When we begin our prayer with adoration and praise, we acknowledge the one to whom we are speaking. The grammar need not be perfect, nor the words lofty and eloquent; but they must reflect the respect and the honor due God. There is a sense in which adoration introduces us into the proper mode by which we confess and give our thanks and make our supplications.

Several recent books would have us believe that all we have to do is follow certain steps and God will give us whatever we ask. The authors say, in effect, "Follow this procedure or use these specific words and know for certain that God will give in to your requests." That's not prayer; that's magic. That's not faith, but superstition. These are gimmicks intended to manipulate the sovereign God. But the one who prays forgets the one to whom he is speaking. The sovereign God cannot be manipulated, for he knows the hearts of all who pray to him. True prayer presupposes an attitude of humble submission and adoration to the Almighty God.

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This is part nine of R.C. Sproul's small book Does Prayer Change Things?. Over the coming weeks we will be posting the complete text of this short but profound and practical book right here at the Ligonier Ministries blog. We have already posted Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.