Adventures in Prayer: Prayer of Adoration

This book!  It never ceases to amaze me.  It peaks into my heart, sees the questions, fears, and concerns, and addresses them all!   (By the way, if you’re just joining this conversation, I’m reading Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard J. Foster)
 Chapter eight is The Prayer of Adoration, and when I saw this I thought, “Uh oh, I’m no good at this one.”  You see, because I know my ACTS model, I know that I am “supposed” to begin my prayer with adoration, right?  But because I’m so wrapped up in myself, I always get adoration tangled up in thanksgiving (praising God for what He’s done for me), and then I drag myself back to just listing God’s attributes, which feels more like a Bible verses memory lesson than anything that resembles true heartfelt adoration.  So I cocked an eyebrow and dug into this chapter, unsure of what I’d find.
 A treasure!  First, Foster says we don’t need to worry so much about separating thanksgiving from praise.  True, praise is on a high plane because with thanksgiving “my thoughts still circle about myself to some extent.”  But he insists that they interweave and that we should be distracted trying to separate them. 
 Obstacles to adoration are so many.  Most—the whirl of life and its myriad distractions.  Foster’s story of a cat, scratching during a particular silent moment of a prayer meeting, hit my heart.  Everyone in the meeting was distracted by the cat and felt that they couldn’t focus on hearing from God. But one missionary insisted that he was just wondering what God wanted to say to him through the cat.  That is how we should view distractions!  How guilty I am of often viewing my precious, wonderful son as a distraction at times.  My privileged role, that of wife and mother, will be replete with these opportunities for God to speak through Dutch’s smile, his laugh, his curious questions (when he can talk!), and his brave attempts at new feats.  Paying attention to these small wonders is what inspires adoration to the God who is behind it all. 
 Secondly, we cry “encore!”  Instead of simply enjoying the pleasures that we have, we demand more and more pleasures.  Instead of simply enjoying the roof over my heart, I dream of the day when we will move out.  Tonight, I actually had the audacity to dream about the day when we might have a bigger bathtub.  Oh dear. 
 Here is the real key.  I’ve always wondered, “So how do I do this adoration thing?”  Foster sees exactly where I’ve gone wrong.  He says (as I have said!), “it seldom helps to count our blessings or rehearse the glorious attributes of God (!).  We do not learn adoration on the grand cosmic scale by centering on the grand and the cosmic, at least not at first.”  He explains that we start in the plain old nooks and crannies of life.  Today, for me it looked like this:  Taking a walk outside with Dutch, with the rain slightly misting on us, taking in the smell of rain and the green trees and sound of gravel crunching under our feet.  It was teaching Dutch (again!) how to go down the stairs once he got to the top, and being present with him, matching his high-pitched squeaks and laughs with my own.  It was putting him on my lap and bouncing on our exercise ball until he laughed so hard he had hiccups.  It was savoring the sesame flavoring in the stir fry dinner we ate tonight.  It was kissing Jeff while he had his eyes closed washing his face.  And it was sliding into our soft, warm, clean bed and sinking deep under the down comforter, silently thanking God for the luxury of a comfortable mattress.  Yes, these are very small things, but they drew my heart to thankfulness, which draws my heart to God.  These are, as Foster says, stepping stones.  Stepping stones help us to experience the pleasures of God. 
 My application is to live tomorrow, the entire day, in utter thanksgiving, as Foster suggests.  My goal is to say, not “please”, but “thank you” for the entire day.  From the moment I wake up, until the moment I go to sleep, I endeavor to ask nothing from God save the ability to praise and thank Him.  I’ll let you know how it goes …