Adore Him.

ACTS.

Adoration.

Confession.

Thanksgiving.

Supplication.

To Adore Him.  To accurately express who He is.  To marvel.  To worship.  To recenter and refocus.  If we saw Him as he actually was, it would naturally lead us to realize what we are…

“Indeed, how can a human being be righteous before God?

And how will he who is born of a woman be pure?

Look, even the moon is not bright,

and the stars are not pure in his sight.

How much less for a human being who is a maggot,

and a human who is a worm?”  Job 25

And then if we are faithful to confess our sins and our shortcomings before Him and we remember the Gospel, how can that not lead us into Thanksgiving?  And as we remember all we’re thankful for, we know we must be thankful too for our sufferings which are from Him for our good even as we ask him to concern himself with them, to heal us, to bind us, to redeem what’s broken.  

And it all starts with Adoration. 

i struggle with pure adoration.  As i was driving home last night i wondered…Do i really know Him well enough to adore Him?  When i begin to pray, do i just repeat lines i’ve read in the psalms?  Lyrics to songs?  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Psalms came readily to Jesus’ lips as they should to ours!  We should be steeped and deeply marinated in the psalms as we should the prophets and the law and the epistles, there are wonderful ways to express worship in all of Scripture.  

i’m not asking though do i know Scripture as well as i should, i’m asking do i know HIM as well as i should?  When i contemplate my Creator without the benefit of some amazing vista, some sanguine sunset, some staggering starscape, some infant’s newborn cry, someone’s unexpected act of love, some surprising good fortune, some heartbreak, some close brush with death, some whispered interruption of the divine in my daily grind, when i just stop, on my own, to pray, do i know this God to whom i pray enough to adore him without rote, without prompt, without muse, from the punt, from the gate, has my heart been so filled with Him from time spent with Him, seeking Him in all the ways He has given us to find Him: in His Word; in the Communion of the Saints; in His creation; in His faithfulness and good deeds; and in the seeking itself?  Am i amazed?  Am i stunned?  Am i still bowled over by Him?  Am i driven to my knees?  Am i lifted up?  Will the rocks cry out, the trees clap their hands and the oceans roar because i am dumb, mute and silent in my ignorance?  Do i know Him?  Do i love Him enough to get to know Him?

“Jesus said to him, “Am I with you so long a time and you have not known me, [my name here]? The one who has seen me has seen the Father!”  John 14