The Prayer of Adoration
You may be familiar with the ACTS acrostic for prayer. It stands for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. It’s a handy frame for building our prayers around. Many of us struggle with adoration, though. It’s easy to confuse adoration and thanksgiving. Once you understand the basic idea of adoration, though, it can become a powerful spark for your prayers.
For Who You Are
When I was young, my Mom had an exercise tape called “Believercise”. If you’re cringing just know that I am too. The tape was like many of its kind in the 80s that had an aerobics program set to popular contemporary music. The “Believercise” aerobics program was different only in that it was set to popular contemporary Christian music. From the 80s. Yeah. Since I was homeschooled, I not only got to witness “Believercise” happen, but it was often my PE class as well.
So, yeah, I have some 80s CCM burned into my brain for life. One of the best songs on the tape was one called, “Because of Who You Are”. The lyrics to the chorus say, “Lord I worship you because of who you are, not for all the mighty deeds that you have done”. This is exactly what we do in adoration. Rather than praising and thanking God for his mighty works, we praise him primarily for who he is.
Who Is God?
If you are going to pray in this way, you need to know something of who God is. We call the distinct characteristics of God’s nature his attributes. There are many attributes of God worthy of praise. They include:
Holy: God is holy. This is the only attribute of God raised to the third level in Scripture. He is not only holy, he is holy, holy, holy. Holy is not a word that we use much outside of talking about God himself. Holy means to be set apart for God alone. When was the last time you spent 5–10 minutes praising God that he is completed dedicated to himself, to establishing his glory in the earth?
Self-Existing: This is another concept that we probably know about God, but rarely spend much time giving thought to. God’s self-existence, his aseity, means that God does not need anything from anyone. He reveals himself to us as I AM. He is the source of all things and does not require anything. He was perfectly complete in the triune Godhead before creation. He does not need our praise, does not need our service, does not need anything from us. God’s self-existence is a plentiful source for prayer and praise.
Just: Deuteronomy 32:4 says that God is just in all his ways. Even as he generously pardons and forgives sins, God is just. That is what required the death of Christ. Even in God’s love for us, God was just. God’s justice is of great comfort to believers living in an unjust world.
Love: 1 John 4:8 famously proclaims God is love. As with God’s justice, God is loving in all his ways. Which means even in his justice, God is loving. We have probably all spent some time praising God for his love, but the depths of God’s love are a well we will never reach the bottom of.
Powerful: The sun is 93 million miles away, and yet it is powerful enough to burn you in just a few minutes. And it is an average to small size star among the millions of stars in our galaxy. Which is an average to small size galaxy among the billions of galaxies in the universe. And every one of the trillions of burning stars in the heavens came into existence when God simply spoke the words, “Let there be light”. And they all continue to burn because they are upheld by the word of his power at each moment. Pray on that for a while. (Yes, I know the stars came later, don’t ruin the moment.)
Wise: How many times a day do you struggle to know what to do? Decisions are hard. Even simple decisions like what to eat for dinner can be difficult. Yet at every moment God knows exactly the right thing to do. Everything he does is wise. Can you imagine not doing anything foolish ever? Can you imagine being able to consult with someone who does not do or think anything foolish ever?
Truth: God is true. There is no deceit in him at all. All that he promises comes to pass. All that he says is right. We hedge the truth, we lie, we deceive. And so does everyone around us. We have to constantly weigh people’s words for truth and accuracy. But not God. Everything he says, thinks, does, know, and IS true. I could bless God for his truth alone, couldn’t you?
There are so many more attributes we could name. So much more we could praise God for. If you have Amazon Prime, you can get Ligonier’s teaching on the Attributes of God taught by Steven Lawson for free. Or you could find the whole DVD series on Ligonier’s site. I would also recommend the book by RC Sproul, Enjoying God: Finding Hope in the Attributes of God. The more we learn about God, the greater fuel we will have for our prayers.
