Adoring Him

Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;

worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. - Psalm 29:1-2

O God, You are holy, and You are glorious, and You are strong.  You are a mighty God, and You are mighty to save.  Forgive me Father for how much time I have spent petitioning You in prayer, and how little time I have spent simply adoring You for who You are.  I could spend eternity praising You, and it would not be enough time.  I could spend eternity, pondering the depth of Your holiness, and it would not be enough.  You alone are worthy to be worshipped and praised and glorified.

Father, I thank you for the gift of scripture, not just because of how much it reveals about You, but because of how much it reveals how we are to approach You, and how we are to pray.  Teach me Lord, how to pray through scripture.  Teach me how to worship You through scripture.  Teach me how to ascribe to You the glory due Your name.  Please create in me a pure heart, a heart that has You at it's center, and a heart that has You as it's focus.

Father, teach me what it means to "dwell in the house of the Lord forever, and to gaze upon Your beauty" (Psalm 27:4)).  Teach us, as a church what it means to adore You in prayer.

Amen.

As we continue to learn what it means to be a praying church, we want to give you some tools to aid you in this, as well as to offer suggestions of specific things you can be praying for.  Many of us (including myself) spend far too much time "asking" God for things, and far too little time praising Him in prayer.  There is nothing wrong with petitioning God, and clearly Jesus Himself, taught us to ask God for "anything" (John 15:7).  However, to be rightly oriented to God, we would be well served by spending significant amounts of our prayer time simply adoring Him.  One pneumonic that may be helpful to you is A.C.T.S.

Adoration - spending time praising and worshipping Him for who He is and what He has accomplished on the cross, praying through His attributes, praying through Psalms of adoration such as Psalm 29.

Confession - confessing our sins to God and repenting before His throne of grace.

Thanksgiving - thanking God for His daily provision and for His immeasurable grace, as evidenced by the Gospel of His Son Jesus Christ.

Supplication - asking God ..... for anything, as you strive to abide in Him, living in light of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus.

I hope you will spend time this week using ACTS to guide your prayers.  And I hope this week your prayer time is richly blessed by Him.

In the upcoming weeks, the elders of Redeemer would ask that you be in prayer specifically for Good Friday and Easter, that many people who need to hear the Gospel would be invited to Redeemer, and that we would get to witness many salvations and baptisms, as those who hear the Gospel accept it and are saved by Him.