BLOG 11/5/16. SEEKING TO RETRIEVE A TERM: ADORATION

This may be a bit of a stretch, but there’s so much confusion in our culture about the concept of God (if indeed folks even give it a thought) … but there is a term that I need to, at least, seek to re-introduce: adoration. I keep in my own prayer journal a quote on the place of adoration in our prayer life that pertains here:

“And if there were a higher stage than all it would be Adoration – when we do not think of favors or mercies to us or ours at all, but at the perfection and glory of the Lord. We feel to His Holy Name what the true artist feels toward any unspeakable beauty. As Wordsworth says:

I gazed and  gazed,

And did not wish her mine.”                (from P. T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer)

Or perhaps the lyrics of a praise song popular in some circles a few decades ago:

“Lord I praise you, because of who you are
Not for all the mighty things that you have done
Lord, I worship you, because of who you are
You’re all the reason that I need to voice my praise
Because of who you are.”

Hopefully, this points us in a direction, at least. In a culture that is so imbued with a secular mentality, which secular teachings are that the very notion of God is dismissed, and even morality is to be based on regard to the well-being of humankind in the present life to the exclusion of all considerations drawn from belief in God or the future state. Or perhaps a more grassroots practice of creating our own designer gods, where we fashion “our own god that I can believe in.”

Or another option, which reminds me of a humorous interchange reported to me a while back. There was a humorous, rustic, popular and undeniably brilliant pastor-theologian in North Carolina by the name of Carlyle Marney. He had given a lecture at a local college after which he was accosted by a brash young student who asserted: “Dr. Marney, I don’t even believe in God. I am my own god.” To which Carlyle Marney, pulling his glasses down on his nose, responded: “Son, say that again so that I’m sure I got what you said.” “Yes, I don’t even believe in God. I am my own god.” Marney is reported to have chuckled and responded: “Well, son, all I’ve got to say is that you’ve got one helluva poor one.” Seeking to be one’s own god is the inarticulate and unconscious position of a whole lot of folk, … but it leaves an aching void, that haunts them periodically.

But then there are those who profess to actually believe in the God revealed in Christian scriptures and in Jesus Christ, who reduce God to a utilitarian God, who conceive God in terms of what he can do for them. This is a distortion also. If you only want to know me for what I can do for you, and not for who I am, then that creates a very limited friendship – even a distorted one.

Adoration, then, is that discipline that puts the focus back on who God is, how he has revealed himself, and making his being and the heralding of his divine nature the center, the creative source, the authority, the creative source, the guiding line, and the final goal of our lives.

Adoration! Intimately knowing God, and growing into that intimacy in New Creation lives. Therein lies true life and true freedom and abundant life.