What the World Needs Now: Adonai Adoration

This blog is NOT about New Year’s resolutions. But it is about something I’m convinced we should do more.

Adore God.

(I’m not talking about thanking God for all He’s done. That’s good to do, but thankfulness often falls short of adoration.)

“Doing” versus “being”

Three days before New Year’s, I talked with a friend about this. She said she was on the same page with urgently feeling the need to be with God more and adore Him.

I won’t presume to suggest a prescriptive for adoration because “how-to’s” can degenerate into legalism. Take worship, for example. Praise Him. Check. Thank Him. Check. Ask Him. Check. Tithe. Check.

Activities for God don’t equal adoration of God.

If worship is “worth-ship” (revering and giving honor to God because He’s worthy of it), then what is adoration?

And is it more “doing” or “being”?

Why worship

God decreed worship for one purpose: to revere Him. God isn’t on an ego trip in saying that. He alone is worthy of worship. Israel lost sight of that many times and worshipped things other than God. Additionally, earthly rulers deified themselves and foisted their worship on the Israelites.

King Nebuchadnezzar was big on that. He decreed that all of Babylonia, including the captive Jews, would worship his statue on cue. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said no, it landed them in a fiery furnace—to God’s glory. The event started Nebuchadnezzar on the road to believing that Adonai was the Most High God over all.

One hundred-seventy years before Christ’s birth, Antiochus IV Epiphanes declared he was Zeus manifested. He promoted the cult of ruler worship. He desecrated the Temple, forced Jews and Samaritans to worship Greek gods, and slaughtered all who disobeyed. That triggered the Maccabean Revolt.

Herod the Great’s tyrannies against the Jews preceded Christ’s birth by three decades and continued through three generations of Herods.

In contrast, the Wise Men traveled for months to worship the Christ Child. When they found Him, they worshipped Him with abandon—and adored Him.

Where does adoration fit into worship?

Intrinsic in the Hebrew and Greek words for “worship” is the notion of bowing down. On occasion, Bible translators use “adore” and “revere” interchangeably with the word “worship.” But, strangely, the Hebrew and Greek words for “adore” don’t appear in the Bible.

Hmmm.

Has our modern view of worship obscured adoration?

You may be familiar with the acronym ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication). It’s a good framework for prayer, but it relegates adoration to one step.

I submit that adoration is more than that.

Adoration is the heart’s posture before God’s awesomeness.

In concrete terms:

• Adoration is why we worship.
• Adoration is the purest, highest form of worship.
• It should be front and center in all forms of worship.
• Its sole function is to reverence God.
• It doesn’t ask God for anything.
• It doesn’t involve intercession, confession, or any other -sion/-tion.
• It honors and exalts God for who He is: the sum of all His attributes.
• It reflects God’s glory back to Him.
• Adoration is basking in His presence, reveling in who He is—without worrying what to say or how to say it.

What keeps us from adoring God?

I believe adoration gets shoved into a closet because we live in the tension between our inadequacies versus God’s omni-everything. When we trip over our imperfections on our way to worship, we don’t quite make it to God’s feet to adore Him.

We love Him, worship Him, do good things for Him. But when we ruminate on our past or present shortcomings, when we revise or reject what God says about us, then we start to think we need to muster “more” ___ [pick a godly attribute] before we can approach God unhindered. Such reasoning is a lie from the enemy, a trick to distract us from our position in Christ and squelch adoration.

Maybe adoration is in your heart but you feel uncomfortable showing it outwardly. There’s no prescription for that. God cares more about where your heart is than where your hands are.

Adoration in action

Have you ever felt God’s presence so strongly that you couldn’t express what was in your heart? The act of adoration differs for everyone. At the end of a song during one of Michael W. Smith’s concerts, he walked away from the piano, dropped to his knees, then fell on his face with his arms outstretched on the floor. Don’t get hung up on the action. Focus on its WHY. As Charles Spurgeon said, “The best rubrics of worship are those which are written on broken hearts.”

Conclusion

I don’t claim to have this all sorted, so please add your thoughts. But I’m sure of one thing:
Adoration is the heart’s posture before God’s awesomeness.

O Lord my God, the word ‘adore’ can sound foreign or old-fashioned. But You are the timeless God, creator of everything. You hold the universe together by Your power. You loved me when I didn’t love You. I owe you everything. Open my eyes and heart to know more of the wonder of You. I adore You. Amen.

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MUSIC BONUSES

Two songs to help you bask in God’s presence:

• “Awesome God”
• “Deep in Love with You”