Week #9 – Adoration

Invocation:
Eternal Father, let my first thought today be of You, let my first impulse be to worship You, let my first speech be Your name, let my first action be to kneel in prayer. Amen.

Weekly Scripture Reading: Psalm 150

Daily Scripture Reading:

Monday Deuteronomy 6:4-25
Tuesday Isaiah 42:1-13
Wednesday Genesis 1:1-31; 2:1-3
Thursday 1 Peter 1:3-9
Friday Job 38:1-33; 42:1-6
Saturday Revelation 21:1-7
Sunday Luke 1:46-55

Selections for Meditation

Personal Meditation

Prayer
Try to make the first petitions of your prayer this week to be those of praise & adoration. Do not let yourself begin with your needs or from within the context of your life. Instead, begin your prayer against the backdrop of the greatness and majesty of God:

Our Father . . . Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come, Your will be done. . . .

Hymn: “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,
God of glory, Lord of love
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee,
Opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness,
Drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness,
Fill us with the light of day.

All Thy works with joy surround Thee
Earth and heaven reflect Thy rays:
Stars and angels sing around Thee,
Center of unbroken praise.
Field and forest, vale and mountain,
Flowery meadow, flashing sea,
Chanting bird and flowing fountain,
Call us to rejoice in Thee.

Thou art giving and forgiving,
Ever blessing, ever blest,
Wellspring of the joy of living,
Ocean depth of happy rest.
Thou our Father, Christ our brother
All who live in love are Thine,
Teach us how to love each other,
Lift us to the joy divine.

Mortals join the mighty chorus,
Which the morning stars began,
Father love is reigning o’er us,
Brother love binds man to man.
Ever singing, march we onward,
Victors in the midst of strife,
Joyful music leads us onward,
In the triumph song of life.
-Henry Van Dyke-

Benediction:
Father, may my life make Your great heart glad today. Let me live in adoration, praise and gratitude for who You are and all You have come to mean to me. Amen.

Selections for Meditation:

* “Adoration” for the person of today is difficult because we are not altogether sure what it is or what it means. Yet, “adoration” is one of the great continuing words of the religious vocabulary, a vocabulary which is one of the richest, most retensive elements of our language. Words linger on long after the deep experience which they signified has been forgotten. Sometimes, even the capacity for the experience has become dimmed or lost, the meaning of the word blurred. We “adore” many things — the word is in common use, is used to describe lesser and often inane things or ideas. Thus “adoration” in its religious and original sense — the bowing down in awe and reverence, tinged with the fear of God — has become largely lost in superficial wonder and feeling.
-From Surprised By the Spirit by
Edward J. Farrell-

* The highest adoration is not occupied with the recollection of favors received and mercies extended, though they do help one be aware of the true nature of God. There is still, in all such recollection, a remnant of that self-centeredness which it should be the purpose of prayer to escape. In it, we are still thinking of God in terms of something done to “me” and for “me.” We never really adore Him, until we arrive at the moment when we worship Him for what He is in Himself, apart from any consideration of the impact of His Divine Selfhood upon our desires and our welfare. Then we love Him for Himself alone. Then we adore Him, regardless of whether any personal benefit is in anticipation or not. Then it is not what He has done for us or what we expect Him to do for us, but what He has been from eternity before we existed, and what He is now even if we were not here to need Him, and what he will be forever whether that “forever” includes us or not — it is that which captivates us and evokes from us the selfless offering of self in worship. That is pure adoration. Nothing less is worthy of the name.
-From An Autobiography of Prayer by
Albert E. Day-

* There is a place in the religious experience where we love god for Himself alone, with never a thought of His benefits. And there is a place where the heart does not reason from admiration to affection. True, it all may begin lower down, but it quickly rises to the height of blind adoration where reason is suspended and the heart worships in unreasoning blessedness. It can only exclaim, “Holy, holy, holy,” while scarcely knowing what it means.
If this should seem too mystical, too unreal, we offer no proof and make no effort to defend our position. This can only be understood by those who have experienced it. By the rank & file of present day Christians it will be rejected or shrugged off as preposterous. So be it. Some will read and will recognize an accurate description of the sunlit peaks where they have been for at least brief periods and to which they long often to return. And such will need no proof.
-From The Root of Righteousness by
A.W. Tozer-

* So we have come to the point at which, through discipline and silent waiting, prayer happens. We do not create prayer, but merely prepare the ground and clear away obstacles. Prayer is always a gift, a grace, the flame which ignites the wood; the Holy Spirit gives prayer. The human response is one of adoring love. It is this posture of adoration which is the central posture of worship. “Religion is adoration” wrote Von Hugel. As in meditation, adoring prayer calls for a concentration. But it is not a fierce mental concentration so much as a focusing of our love, an outpouring of wonder toward God. In meditation there was a simplifying of thought so that we came to think deeply around a single word or phrase or theme until thought gave way to prayer. Similarly in the prayer of adoration we focus ourselves. The mind becomes less active, and we allow ourselves, body & spirit, to rest in an attitude of outpoured offering to God.
-From True Prayer by Kenneth Leech-

* Our children can teach us a great deal about ourselves. My daughter once came home with the not unusual remark for a 9 year old, “I’ll never speak to Elizabeth again.” She was angry with Elizabeth but, either because of the latter’s size or the restraining influence of a civilized image of a young lady, she refrained from scratching Elizabeth’s eyes out. Instead, she did the more civilized thing: she refused to speak to her.
To act as if another does not exist is a more hostile act than to slap his face. In the latter action one at least acknowledges his presence. The silent treatment is an extremely powerful weapon of aggression. With God, we are seemingly unable to hurt him in any other way. The only weapon we can use on Him, as a vehicle for our anger at all the suffering he allows, is our silence. Like my daughter we can at least not speak to Him.
-From Guilt, Anger, and God by
C. Fitzsimons Allison-

* And let it be observed, as this is the end, so it is the whole and sole end, for which every man upon the face of the earth, for which every one of you, were brought into the world and endured with a living soul. Remember! You are born for nothing else. Your life is continued to you upon earth for no other purpose than this; that you may know, love and serve God on earth, and enjoy him to all eternity. Consider! You were not created to please your senses, to gratify your imagination, to gain money, or the praise of men; to seek happiness in any created good, in anything under the sun. All this is “walking in a vain shadow”; it is leading a restless, miserable life, in order to avoid a miserable eternity. On the contrary, you were created for this and for no other purpose, by seeking and finding happiness in God on earth, to secure the glory of God in heaven. Therefore let your heart continually say, “This one thing I do” — having one thing in view, remembering why I was born, and why I am continued in life — “I press on to the mark.” I aim at the one end of my begging, God; even at “God in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” He shall be my God forever and ever, and my guide even until death!
-From The Message of the Wesleys.
Compiled by Philip S. Watson-

* When the worst finally happens, or almost happens, a kind of peace comes. I had passed beyond grief, beyond terror, all but beyond hope, and it was there, in that wilderness, that for the first time in my life I caught sight of something of what it must be like to love God truly. It was only a glimpse, but it was like stumbling on fresh water in the desert, like remembering something so huge and extraordinary that my memory had been able to contain it. Though God was nowhere to be clearly seen, nowhere to be clearly heard, I had to be near Him — even in the elevator riding up to her floor, even walking down the corridor to the one door among all those doors that had her name taped on it. I loved him because there was nothing else left. I loved him because he seemed to have made himself as helpless in his might as I was in my helplessness. I loved him not so much in spite of there being nothing in it for me but almost because there was nothing in it for me. For the first time in my life, there in that wilderness, I caught what it must be like to love God truly, for his own sake, to love him no matter what. If I loved him with less than all my heart, soul, might, I loved him with at least as much of them as I had left for loving anything.
-From A Room Called Remember by
Frederick Buechner-