Adoration

Over the next few weeks we’re going to continue to work towards a more practical spirituality where we can help our Christianity come out of the box that we might have it in.

I often go on about how our faith is to be expressed in our normal spaces and I’ve been thinking about how it doesn’t really happen for me. At Traction a few weeks ago Jordan talked about how we can be so horrible to the people we love most, and how inconsistent that is with our faith. He was right on the mark judging by conversations I’ve had with many of the youth. Jesus has been quite pointed in questioning how we can love people we like:

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. [Luke 6;32]

What credit is it to you if you’re nice to people at church and school but downright nasty to those at home?

Because of this very problem I’ve been racking my brains as to how we can claim to “know Jesus” but be so downright unethical and disobedient, but more than that, just uninspired by this faith that claims to transform us and improve us.

We’ve looked at God and what it means to say we love him. We’ve worked our way through the narratives of the Gospels, talked about the Lord’s prayer and how especially the first few lines are really big words. And many of us have come to new appreciation of just how we speak to God can be so flippant. Which is great, perhaps but it’s still not enough. Because we might know what we are to do, but just don’t know how we do it.

It’s common for me to have conversations with you about how you just don’t feel God. That you feel disconnected. That there’s this disconnection between the theory and the practice of faith. We can say that God’s amazing, but we may not live like it.

The first thing I want to say here is that I understand. I’m not a super Christian, let’s get that clear. I’m not even sure if such a thing exists. It’s difficult to live a holistic spirituality when so much of life demands so much from us. The question is not just where does God fit into all this, but if. I think the problem is that we are losing touch with the spirituality of everyday life.

We were praying this morning at church and AJ was hugging my leg. It was so cute and I felt bad that I wasn’t concentrating and had my eyes open. But as we were praying I was thinking that what was going on here was a divine gift. And I was being distracted from it by a prayer. To look at AJ and see that this was a spiritual responsibility and relationship created a dimension to my prayer that could have been lost. I saw things differently for that moment. It was just a normal everyday activity that had nothing in it about saving the world or the lost. There was no act of worship or bible reading here. No sermon, no book. This was a pure moment that allowed me to pause and consider how wonderful God is. In that moment. His gift to me was AJ’s hug. And it was completely normal and supernatural at the same time.

Sometimes there is a terrible irony in that the very things we use to help us worship are the very things that distract us. And we can easily begin to think that what we do in this service or in any other Christian ritual is worship. And we need to break out of that mould. This is worship, but it’s not enough if that’s all there is. In fact, it’s probably an insult to God if this is all that there is.

But my point in that story is that I realized just how much God is a part of those small moments because God is part of every moment.

Imagine if we lived like that?

Lets break into groups and talk about what we would change if Jesus was physically present during our morning routine.

Now consider that Jesus is there, part of your morning routine and every other routine. So what does our lifestyle say about how we think about our almighty saviour?

Let’s look for a moment at how the Bible describes the Jesus who is present with us:

Revelation 4:2–11

. . . There in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! And the one seated there looks like jasper and carnelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. Around the throne are twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads.

Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God; and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal. Around the throne, and on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with a face like a human face, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and inside.

Day and night without ceasing they sing, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.” And whenever the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing:

“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

Wow. It’s an extraordinary image. And to think that we are breaking into this whenever we pray? No more than that, that we are invited into this when we pray? Surely it is right that we acknowledge the nature of this verbal exchange that spans the cosmos. Surely it is right that we would approach prayer with a little less flippancy. Imagine if you were there. What would you say? How would you speak in that room?

And there is the power of adoration. Right there. Because with adoration we are reminded of the cosmic reality that we inhabit. That life is bigger than what we see and experience. That spirituality is bigger than our own private little worlds. And that we are welcome to engage with God, at any time. And those realisations are so countercultural that if we really lived with them, we couldn’t but help transform our lives and this world would be radically different.

I believe that this is how we are meant to live. It’s how we’re wired. But we miss that. I think we are meant to be living conscious of God’s involvement at all times in the goings on around us. That this throne room image, is now. I think that this consciousness should begin 1st and foremost with Adoration.

Simply put: Adoration is the foundation for a sustainable faith experience.

To Adore is something that’s really hard to define. It means to love and respect deeply. Adoration is the act of doing this. It think if we are adoring God we are verbalising what God is. God is the starting point of the descriptions we use.

Adoration is our way of describing God and appreciating his God-ness.

It is the beginning of the Ten Commandments. It was the foundation for the rule of life for God’s chosen people. And this hasn’t changed.

Exodus 20:2–7

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Make no mistake about the intensity of these words. We’ve kind of lost faith in them to a certain extent. Perhaps for another time, but the idea of God’s punishment? We don’t really think much in those terms . . . well at least I don’t. Steadfast love to the thousandth generation? Hmm, not sure what that means. But let’s not let those questions distract us from the fundamental force of this commandment.

God is it. It’s inappropriate for us to not hold God as the one deity, one object of worship in our lives. That is the first and foremost act of adoration. Uncompromised devotion to him. Words, they pale in comparison to this and it’s extraordinary that we often revert to this as our main form of adoring. But it’s better than nothing . . . a whole lot better than nothing.

As the first word in the law of Israel, God says, in no uncertain terms and in every aspect of life: I AM. God establishes the cosmic pecking order. It’s me and me alone. Your freedom depended on that, and will continue to depend on that. Simply remember that I am your God and all will be well.

The rest of the law could be interpreted as being a manual for how to express that devotion, that God centeredness, that love in very practical ways. In fact, that is exactly how the law could be seen as a gift from God : it empowered people to tailor almost every aspect of their society towards being an act of worship. Everything they did would become a statement of their adoration and commitment to God.

In the new covenant we don’t have law except to love God and love people, and we have the freedom to make our own sets of rules as long as they fit that first law. We have more autonomy to make every aspect of our lives an act of devotion to God. It’s no longer prescribed. But it’s still vital.

Could this be what some of us are missing? An understanding that all that we do expresses our love for God? Whether we like it or not? Where does that place the words we speak? To worship and adore in a church service is one thing, to adore God when you’re cleaning the toilet is another.

In the prayer meetings that we used to hold on Friday mornings we would follow the four letters of the word ACTS. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. We would spend a quarter of the hour at least in adoration. And we made it a rule of thumb to avoid using the words “thank you for.” The reason for this was because we didn’t want to express feelings about God’s because of how we feel we’ve been treated, rather we want to express our understanding of how God is, no matter how we feel.

Thanking God is a good thing to do, but it is not adoration. Thanking God is being grateful for what he has done, but it is different to adoration. Whenever you get given a birthday present, you can be thankful and grateful, but that sense of gratefulness rarely continues for very long. It doesn’t mean you weren’t thankful, it’s just that you don’t go back time and time again to express that thanks. Adoration then, is less about thankfulness and more about describing the qualities of the person it is directed to. It remembers the character of the person. In the way that God establishes himself as the God that rescued them from 400 years of slavery in Egypt, He is to be remembered because of his character in that. And he constantly reminds the Israelites of this fact whenever they stray, not to pull a guilt trip, but to remind them of their pedigree of being the miraculous chosen people.

In this very simple act we established the cosmic pecking order and it really made confession, thanksgiving and especially what we asked for quite different.

When we stopped to realise just who it was that we were addressing, the prayer for the car-park outside the shop doesn’t quite make sense anymore.

When we stop to reflect upon the nature of our God as it is even when we don’t really like him, when we stop to reflect on that, then the rest of life takes on a different colour. When we stop and adore our God we will find sustenance for our faith.

This is why I will counsel you when you say that you cannot feel God at the moment, this is why I will counsel you to adore him.

But how do we talk of God with any sense of meaning? We know so little of God, but already that’s far too much for us to handle. Well, the Psalms actually help us in this. Note how their method is to take an attribute of God and talk about that. I think it stems from the idea that God as first principle is unknowable. The Hebrews knew this in a way that perhaps we don’t. They were afraid to see God’s face believing that if this were to happen, they would die. So holy was God. Remember Isaiah’s reaction to the throne-room. He was literally beside himself in fear his word? “Woe!” he was crippled by the prospect of seeing God’s face. So there is much to God we don’t know. We don’t even know his name, but we can give him titles.

But the counter to this is that he is revealed. And so we can take the things that are revealed to us and be in wonder at those. It’s exactly how we can see the stars and be in wonder at the magnificence of the universe that lies beyond it.

So when we talk of God, we may use words more like I appreciate and I like. The Bible often uses metaphors to adore God. The Psalms and the Prophets are full of them.

Psalm 36:5–8

Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O LORD.

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.

Adoration then reminds us of our understanding of God and how much he has been revealed. It anticipates also the fullness of revelation when time comes to an end.

So adoration is about the past, as in remembering the character of the God who has rescued us, it is about now where we realise the cosmic pecking order and where God is in the normal spaces, and the future where we anticipate a time when our eyes will see things more clearly.

Adoration, is the foundation of a sustainable faith because it reminds us, humbles us and directs us. I think there is a case to be made that any prayer, whatever it is, should begin with adoration. And many of us probably do it without thinking it.

Many of us use the word Lord. That is a term of adoration that’s usually accompanied prostrating yourself on the ground in worship. But it’s lost its meaning for two reasons. One that it is such a common word in prayer and has almost the same significance as an opening as Amen has as a closing. And the other, is because we don’t live in a feudal society anymore. The closest we would get is the Boss, but that doesn’t quite work because there’s too much equality in that relationship: pay being the balance. We don’t need to respect our boss to get paid. Our family is not owned by the Boss. I’m not sure what word would work . . .

So I think more than ever we need to find new ways of adoring God. Which is what we are doing tonight.

The final word. This is a spiritual practice. In other words, God doesn’t need to do anything for you to merit it. We do this because it is the right thing to do. We do this because when we adore God, we refocus, and I believe we transcend sin. When we step into the throneroom of God deliberately, we will be changed. So I invite us all to embark on a daily journey of adoration. First for 2 minutes a day. Pray in the shower, or while cleaning your teeth. Make your mundane task that is part of your rhythm make that a spiritual act of worship. I don’t think it will take much for this to become a really useful part of your life.

And it will expand. Because adoring God is part of our makeup. It’s part of the fabric of our being. And we will sooth our angst ridden souls when we do it.

Let’s begin tonight.