[Monday's Devotional] - Prayer: Adoration

Prayer: Adoration This week I would like us to consider how we pray and how the different elements or types of prayer we use shape our personal and corporate prayer times. Many years ago I was encouraged to use the "ACTS" format of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication in my personal prayer times. Having a structure to prayer often enables us to focus when we encounter times that may appear "dry" or when prayer is difficult. Recently though I have been thinking what it really means to Adore, Confess, Give thanks, to supplicate and also the place of Lament in our prayer lives today. We shall consider one of these elements each day this week. Adoration Dictionary.com defines adoration as "to admire very much; regard with the utmost esteem, love and respect; honour. To pay divine honour to; to worship". Often today our adoration is given to earthly things, must-have possessions, the latest look and food being good examples. We use words so cheaply sometimes and throw away words that have a much deeper meaning and purpose than we give them.   At Christmas with the angels we sing "O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord". The shepherds and wise men too adored the Christ Child, presenting their gifts and their worship to him; but how can we adore Him today? If we admire someone and hold them in high regard we will try to emulate their behaviour and their lives. If we honour someone, we bestow worth upon them, hold their achievements in high esteem. A soldier is honoured for bravery, a charity worker for compassion, a craftsman for their skill. We honour our Lord Jesus above all because he gave up the honour bestowed upon him by His and our Heavenly Father and took the shame of our sin. He became sin for us so that we might receive honour before God. We adore Jesus when we honour Him in our lives, when we serve our communities, when we love the unloved. We adore Him in our corporate times of worship too. Psalm 95:6 says: O Come let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our maker. Let us today think how we can adore our Lord in our everyday lives and in our formal corporate worship. O Come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord. Sally Williams   Twitter Website Copyright © 2018 St. Matthew & St. Oswald's Church, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email as a subscriber to the Daily Devotionals Our mailing address is: St. Matthew & St. Oswald's Church 1a New Street Rugby, Warwickshire CV22 7BE United Kingdom Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list Want to be added to our mailing list? - sign up here!