Prayer - Adoration

Introduction

What I’ll mention from the start is that the next 4 weeks won’t be in the nature of a sermon type message but more a learning and understanding type message and I will preface that today might be a bit longer than the next 4 weeks but there is a reason for that which we’ll get into soon.

And we’ve been talking about prayer the past 2 weeks and so I think as an introduction we need to first understand if prayer is important, and why it is important:

is it important to pray?

Simply because that the bible clearly shows us that the single most prominent characteristic of a follower of God is that he prays, that the prayer life is evidently one of the utmost important things to a Christian’s life, to the point where there’s a whole book worth of prayers ranging from lamentations, joy, praise, complaints, repentance and I would go so far as to say any emotion you can think of which we know to be the book of Psalms.

Also to the point that Jesus Christ himself gives us a clearcut outline telling his disciples and us as his readers saying “this is how you pray” which we more commonly know as the Lord’s prayer (which we might or might not get to over the following weeks).

Why is it important to pray?

(This is what Tim Keller says) the power of prayer is to realign our sinful hearts which is centered around our sinful desires and thoughts back to the righteous and just heart which is centred around God’s desires and thoughts.

i.e) Because we are sinful by nature, every single action we do without God in mind will gravitate towards sin naturally which can either come in the form of

Thinking that we don’t need God (because we feel loved by other things apart from him) and turning away from him

Thinking that we are not good enough for God (because we don’t feel loved by anything) and turning away from him

And I think all of us have found ourselves at some point in our life, even now, thinking like this.

And so Prayer is important because it is a mechanism provided to us by God so that we are able to battle these sinful thoughts and in turn become more Christ-like.

i.e) We do not see our lives, the world around us, people around us through our own sinful self which we are at constant war with, but realign that malicious view with the righteous view of how God sees our lives, the world, and people.

Now alot of you may understand this already, the logic is there BUT I find myself still not praying.

Now there are many reasons why we don’t pray which can be things like time and discipline, but I think the big reasons which we don’t pray is that We don’t know how to pray

And so hopefully my main goal is for us to not see prayer as fulfilling a duty from a heart of “having” to do it, but rather a fulfilling a duty from a heart of “wanting” to do it, seeing the wonderful things that consistent prayer provides us with.

ACTS - acronym

Now, what I want to share over the course of the next few weeks is a guideline of prayer, and with any guidelines of prayer this does not mean that it has to follow the exact way but rather a scaffold as to what we ought to do and think about when we pray.

And in my personal prayer life, this has helped me over my Christian life to open my eyes on the wonders and opportunities that prayer brings - this is what I always continue to use in my individual prayers.

And the guideline is in the form of an acronym:

A - Adoration - Respecting and understanding the character of God

C - Confession - Confessing our sinful nature in light of Adoration

T - Thanksgiving - Thanking God for what he has done in light of his character (Adoration) and our character (Confession)

S - Supplication - Asking God for certain things in light of his character (Adoration), our character (Confession) and what he has done (Thanksgiving).

I just wanted to point out that the order of the acronym wasn’t just for the sake of making the acronym an actual word, but rather it was intentional to reveal the importance of the order in which we structure our prayers.

And so over the next few weeks, we will look at each component of this acronym where we will find that at each point of the acronym, our mind can shift from one that is based on our own thoughts to one that is based on God’s thoughts depending on our situation - but this week we will look at Adoration

Adoration

Adoration - the first pillar

Adoration refers dedicating the very first part of our prayers to marvelling and being amazed solely on the characteristics of God and who he is.

And the reason why this is the most important part of any prayer and in turn why it is first, is because without having a firm foundation and understanding of who the true God is, the common trap that we can fall into is establishing a pre-conceived idea of God in which our sinful hearts have created which is most probably centered around our needs (which is unique to everyone) and we don’t even realise it.

Going back to the acronym - I think all of us have experienced and still experience this , but alot of the time we tend to start from Supplication - which is the part where we ask God for something - whether it be like asking for healing, help from something, intercessory prayer (praying for other people).

Now IF we pray with this God we have made and ask God for something (I would argue that this is the feeling you do get 100% of the time if we do this), and I’m sure all of us have experienced it, is that you feel disappointed when your prayers do not get answered, and then you get discouraged, and then your faith in God declines and what helped me was to visualise this in a logical way:

Example of doubting God with the 2 circles

And so the basis of WHO we are praying to is important, understanding the characteristics of who the true God is, is important and hence why it is first in our acronym and in any prayer no matter what you are feeling at that point in time.

So then what are the true characteristics of God?

We know that God is a loving God, a merciful God, a gracious God, a righteous God , a good God and all these characteristics of God are 100% true without a doubt, but above the prevailing characteristic of God is that he is a holy God

The only characteristic of God that is not just said once, not repeated twice, but repeated 3 times is his holiness

If we remember in our camp theme this year (Holy Holy Howly is the Lord of Hosts), we remember in Revelations where the angels and the saints cry holy, holy, holy and we remember in the last song we sing in sermon the word holy is repeated again.

And so from this, then it tell us that the characteristic of holiness is of the utmost importance

What does this mean, to be holy? I think we immediately think of righteousness and ethical purity when we hear holy which is right but those characteristics aren’t the meaning of the word holy but rather the results of being holy where holy means - to be set apart from what is common - to be different or unique in comparison to the world

And so because God is holy (i.e different), his loving characteristic is different, his merciful characteristic is different, his graceful characteristic is different, his righteous characteristic is different, his good characteristic is different - and different not in the negative connotations, but rather in ALL ways the positive.

Meaning, God’s love, mercy, grace, righteousness, and goodness can never be less than the best love that his creation can give - i.e God’s attributes are ALWAYS higher than ours - DO line example

And the God we are praying to and have full trust in is a God that is holy

If I am praying during a time of hardship, I find myself overcoming this particularly in this stage and this is because I think about God’s holiness, in particular the holy characteristics of his sovereignty (control over everything) and goodness in play with precedent. Now precedent is not a characteristic, but rather a concept in which I think is most used in legal terms, but it’s essentially “determining the outcome of the current circumstance, based on the outcome (already happened) of a previous circumstance”. And so this is how it works in my mind

I first remind myself of God’s sovereignty and goodness in my mind in that it is holy, it is unimaginably higher than anyone in this world. And my mind aways tends to go to the specific story of Joseph where he goes through a bunch of hardships and in the end God says “You meant it for evil, but I meant it for Good” meaning that every single event that happened prior was part of God’s ultimate plan. Meaning if Joseph didn’t get betrayed by his brothers, if he didn’t become a slave, if he didn’t get thrown in prison, then Joseph and his family won’t be in that position.

And this is where the precedent factor comes in. I think one of the biggest privileges on living in this time and age is reading the bible and seeing how God works through people in all situations both happy and sad. And so if I see that God is always working for his holy GOODNESS through his holy SOVEREIGN nature in the story of Joseph, then in the same way wouldn’t that be the same case for us? And this is what gives me comfort

English Standard Version Chapter 50

you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

And so why this must be included in our prayers is for the reason that we as sinners possess the ability to create a God in our minds that suits our needs in that specific point of time of prayer which is unique to everyone - but through realigning our hearts back to the true holy nature of God, we establish a firm foundation of our prayers in order to set-up the rest of our prayers through removing the expectations that we have from our fake God and awaiting the opportunities from a holy God.

Practical Posture

And because we are on the topic of starting our prayer I think a common question we all ask ourselves is what should be the practical posture of praying? But I think rather than asking this question, it’s rather what is the most respectful posture of praying to a holy God

Now I think the go-to posture of praying is putting our hands together and bowing our heads - not saying there’s anything wrong with it, but if you were to think yourself on people you respect, how would you treat them.

We see in the bible that every time someone comes into the presence of God, their face falls down on the floor - and this is not them stumbling and tripping, but it is the act of going on your knees and placing your face on the floor to show the utmost sign of respect to a holy God.

e.g) We saw in last Sunday’s passage that when Joshua met the angel he fell down on his face.

Now I don’t think its a matter of you HAVE to do this, but I want you to think for yourself, what is the posture in which I can most respect the almighty, all powerful, holy God because this is different across cultures, across families and so I don’t want you to think that you have to go down on your face for the sake of doing it but think of what YOU honestly think is the most. But I do think this is the most universal way of showing the highest praise.

We automatically in our brains go into a mode of respect.

Let us pray

Whilst this is the start, we are going to try pray with the structure of ACTS every single week and with the posture you deem most respectable - and I understand that you might be embarassed in front of other people

Pray about the holy nature of God

He is different

Let us not judge ourselves by our own sinful persepective, other people’s sinful perspective but the perspective of God

Pray about the sinful nature of us

We are sinful - the more we understand our nature, the more we understand the saving of his grace

We come in repentance for not just our sins but our sinful nature, Lord we can’t do anything about it

Pray about thanking God for sending Jesus to die for us

God your holy mercy is so merciful that although you were the creator of the world, you didn’t even bend your own rules demanding the payment of sin to be blood. In that you you gave you son Jesus whilst we were still sinners to give us salvation for our sins.

God you have given us Jesus as payment for all of our sins, and have shown us the love you have shown Jesus - what more could we ask for

Asking God for anything going on in your life.

Pray in silence remembering all we have just prayed about but in light of all that remembering God’s holy character in that he is sovereign and always good.