CHRISTINE GORDON | CONTRIBUTOR

I didn’t have much praise in my heart that spring morning, so I went outside to hear the praise of the birds. I was met by their song even before I got out the door. Tweets and trills, melodies and chatters, their chorus was accompanied by swoops across my back yard. I’d walked out into a world where praise was the dialect, and the hymns of the birds exposed my thankless heart. Their energetic tribute to their maker eventually led me to express my own words of praise to God.

But my praise was slow in coming.

From Lament to Adoration

It had been a difficult few days full of pain for my family, and I’d prayed through the steps of lament several times in the previous hours, bringing my anger and questions before the Lord over and over. Each time the darkness would settle again in the back of my mind and attempt to take up permanent residence, I would name my specific frustrations and the details of damage happening in my family. I would end my silent prayers while cutting up vegetables or wiping down the countertops with a weak and forced prayer of trust, trying to remember God’s goodness.

But I didn’t want to stay there. I’d been honest with God about my sadness for days and longed for more hope. And so as I listened to the joy of the birds’ chirps and calls, I settled into my plastic Adirondack chair and let the entire spring morning enfold me. Squirrels jumped from one branch to another in the treetops. A rabbit dashed from one end of my yard to the other. The huge oak tree in the corner raised its arms to the sky and the little flowering tree I’d planted three years prior showed the beginnings of leaf buds. Slowly my heavy heart began to match the lightness of the mood in my back yard. I started to see not just the movement of the birds but the color on their wings. I felt the humid breeze on my face and remembered how I love the smell of rain. The old oak tree pointed my gaze up toward heaven as I traced its branches with my eyes. My soul began to enjoy what I saw, felt, and heard, and finally to enjoy the maker Himself.

Why Prayers of Adoration

Why do we need to pray prayers of adoration? In my unceasing love for efficiency, I’ve asked this question many times. Doesn’t God already know who He is and what He’s like? Why do I need to remind Him repeatedly of His own character? Maybe you’ve quietly asked questions like these at some point in your life with God. When your to-do list includes more items than your day allows, it can feel like spending whatever minutes you have petitioning God for needed help makes the most sense, not naming His many attributes.

The truth is our need to adore God is greater than any other need.

A prayer of adoration is one of devotion and reverence. It’s one of attachment and eagerness. When we adore, we put everything aside and cling to God. We admire Him from different angles, like picking up a diamond and allowing the sun to catch its brilliance as we slowly turn it in our hand. We must enjoy God slowly, contemplatively, allowing our minds to match the leisurely pace of the branches as they bow in the wind. We need long minutes to let our hearts apprehend the beauty of the green slowly spreading through the yard. We cannot fully appreciate the symmetry of the newly opened tulip or the brilliance of the hummingbird’s neck in a quick glance. In the same way we cannot take in the majesty of the creator God with a fleeting look. We need time to study, consider, and enjoy Him.

But why? What help is it to spend time adoring God?

Richard Foster, Quaker theologian and pastor, wrote, “in adoration, we enter the rarefied air of selfless devotion. We ask for nothing but to cherish him.”[1] In adoration we are free to contemplate only God in all His perfection, purity, and splendor. Our souls become full of all things wonderful, right, and good. We’re free from the unceasing anxiety about our child or the weighty sadness of the loss of our friend. In adoration we enter a space where there is always light and joy, fulfillment and happiness, because God is there. There are endless aspects of His character and stories of His kindness to ponder. We praise Him because we see who He genuinely is.

When we do this, it furthers our enjoyment of God. C.S. Lewis writes, “We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.”[2] When we adore God we express back to Him in our finite, modest way some of the love He has lavished on us. We can’t exit such an experience the same person we were when we entered. We’re changed when we steadily gaze at God’s beauty. 1 John 3:2 reads, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” Eventually we will see God with unveiled faces, as promised. On that day we’ll be completely holy, entirely like Christ in His righteousness. But any gaze at God now generates change in us.

It is not the natural posture of our hearts to adore God. It takes time and the coaxing of our souls to slow our pace and really look at Him. The psalmists can help us. Psalm 103:1-5 reads:

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,

who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

If you need a list to remind you of what to adore in your God, start with that one. Be patient with yourself, slow down, and let your prayers of adoration change both your attitude and your soul.

[1] Richard Foster, Prayer; Finding the Heart’s True Home, HarperOne, New York, NY, 1992.

[2] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, HarperOne, New York, NY, 1958.

Photo by Olivia Snow on Unsplash