Throughout the season of Advent, we’ve been studying prayer.
Prayer is so much more than we might have thought. We can pray and ask for God’s help--help with
our lives, help for those we love. That is a type of prayer--intercessory
prayer or petitionary prayer. But there
is more to prayer than just that. Prayer
can be meditating on Scripture. It can be reflecting and examining your day.
Prayer can be celebrating Holy Communion or worship or other responsive
readings or traditional prayers. Prayer
can be surrendering to God and allowing Him to change us. At its heart, prayer is spending time with
God as a child spends time with a loving parent. And when we do, the
Father shares His love with us and teaches us and molds us into His perfect
image.
On this Christmas Eve, as we celebrate the precious baby that was
born in a manger, I want to tell you a little about another kind of prayer.
It’s called The Prayer of Adoration and it is a fitting lesson as
we pause to remember and adore the Christ-child born to save the world from
sin.
Slides – Luke 2:1-20
1 At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus,
decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. 2 (This was the first census
taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 All returned to their own
ancestral towns to register for this census. 4 And because Joseph was a
descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient
home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. 5 He took with him Mary, to
whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child.
6 And while they were there, the time came for her
baby to be born. 7 She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped
him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no
lodging available for them.
8 That night there were shepherds staying in the
fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. 9 Suddenly, an angel of the
Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them.
They were terrified, 10 but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!”
he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. 11 The Savior—yes, the
Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! 12 And you will recognize him
by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in
a manger.”
13 Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of
others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in highest heaven,
and peace
on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”
15 When the angels had returned to heaven, the
shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that
has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 They hurried to the village and found Mary and
Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. 17 After seeing him, the
shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them
about this child. 18 All who heard the shepherds’ story were
astonished, 19 but Mary kept all these things in her heart and
thought about them often. 20 The shepherds went back to their flocks,
glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It was just as the
angel had told them.
Can you imagine those shepherds that night standing before the
baby Jesus, adoring him. And later the wise men also came from the East
to bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They gave their gifts and
adored the baby who was born to be king of the Jews and Savior of the whole
world. We don’t know how many others might have laid their adoring eyes
on the baby--whispering sweet “goo goos” to him or lovingly cradling him in
their arms. It seems everyone wants to
come see a newborn baby. We can probably
imagine what it was like for them to adore baby Jesus. If we have ever
seen a newborn child or held a tiny little infant, light as a feather, if
you’ve ever seen those tiny little hands grasping your finger while looking up
at you with bleary eyes (seeing everythig for the very first time), then you
know something of the wonder of those who gathered around the manger to adore
the baby, Emmanuel, God with us.
I saw a new mother post a picture of her baby on Instagram—her
very first child. Her caption read, “I never knew I could love someone so
much. How is this possible?”
Isn’t it strange that we would be so captivated by a baby? A
baby doesn’t do anything except be “cure”; however, people still adore babies.
To behold a baby brings us joy and wonder and hope. Babies have the power to fill our hearts with
love and it’s not a selfish kind of love; it’s the kind of self-sacrificing
love that would make a complete stranger risk their life to save a baby.
God designed us to adore little babies, to love and protect them.
It is an innate part of our character to love little babies this way.
No one has to teach us. And so it
was that God came into our broken world as a tiny little baby. And the
shepherds came--men who I’m sure were rough and tough from surviving the cold
winter nights while protecting their flocks from wild animals and ruthless
thieves. They came and were overcome with wonder and awe at the sight of
a little baby in a manger. They adored
him.
We, too, are invited to come and adore Jesus. Adoration is
an act of prayer and it’s actually what we were designed to do. God
created us to love Him and be loved by Him.
All creation praises Him and we are the creations crowning glory.
To adore is as natural to the human spirit as breathing, but we
don’t always adore God as we should. There are several reason we get
distracted and don’t adore Him as we should.
We are in too much of a rush. We are always so busy doing doing
“important things” we don’t slow down enough to notice all the amazing signs of
God’s presence all around us. I wonder how many people in busy Bethlehem
failed to notice the young couple Mary and Joseph and their newborn baby. And even of those who stopped in to take a
quick look, how many took the time to really soak in the wonder of it all and
to turn their hearts to adore the glory of God who is the giver of life.
I also wonder how often we fail to slow down enough to notice the
glory of God all around and lift up a prayer of adoration to God.
We often fail to adore God, because we are stuck worshipping
idols. When I say we worship idols, I don’t mean some statue we
bow down to. An idol is anything that takes the place of the one true God, anything you turn to for the fulfillment that only God can give you. We can make an idol out of money, power, our career, our church, even our spouse or our kids. Many of the things we adore are good things, but they are bad for us when we seek fulfillment from them that we can only get from God. Idolatry is dangerous for us and for the things we worship.
So we have to slow down and we have to focus our adoration on the
One who truly deserves it. He is the One who made us. He is the source and sustainer of our
life. He is the God who loves us and daily
blesses us with signs and wonders designed to turn our adoring hearts upward toward Him. But we have to slow down and turn our eyes away from the blinking
distractions of our noisy world in order to take notice of the subtle beauty
and wonder of the Lord of all creation.
He is the One who came down from Heaven and was born in a tiny manger for us to adore. He is the One who walked among the sick and lonely and poor,
who spoke in parable that only those with ears could hear. He is the One who died on a cross to save the
world. He is the one who bore a cross, the symbol of a lost cause, and turned it into a victory worthy to love and adore.
We out to continually give thanks and praise to God. Thanks
is adoring God for what God has done for us.
Praise is even more wonderful; it is adoring God simply for who He is
without any regard for what He’s done for us. Praise is selfless
adoration of the Lord. We can give
thanks. We can praise Him. We can magnify Him. To magnify is to try to exaggerate how
wonderful God is. We sometimes brag and
exaggerate how great we are, but I bet you can never over-exaggerate how
wonderful God is. Give it a try. I
bet you can’t over-exaggerate how wonderful God is!
In his book Prayer, Richard Foster recommends we start with
simple things in adoring God. Rather jump right to the grand and cosmic
scale of how wonderful God is, look at a baby. How wonderful is the God
who would create human life and cause it to begin in a tiny little child--so
fragile and yet fully formed and amazing. Don’t analyze and study, just
be amazed at the miracle of life and adore the One who created it. As we regularly adore God as revealed in the
little things, we train ourselves to see and adore God everywhere. As we
become more filled with wonder about God, we can begin to thank and praise and
magnify Him.
Adore Him
This Christmas, I pray you will slow down and refocus. See the baby Jesus in the manger, born to save the world. Adore him. For He is God. It is what you were born to do.
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