Adoration's Role in Prayer

Sermon 409 St. Martin’s 163 (Riverway) 10/26/25

Psalm 145

New Sermon Series We are beginning a new four-week sermon series on prayer, and the psalms are going to be our guiding text. We know that we are supposed to pray, but if you ask the average Christian walking down the street, they probably have the lingering feeling that they could be praying more (or should be praying more).

It would help if prayer were like other aspects of our lives that we can measure or check off to feel a sense of accomplishment. But I think we know prayer is more nuanced than that; it is not meant to be just another task, but a continuing conversation with our Lord that lasts a lifetime.

I must confess to you that even if I remember to pray, much of the time is just stream-of-consciousness, with little to no order. They likely leave God trying to put the puzzle pieces of my scattered mind together.

What I’m saying is that my prayers don’t always feel very prayerful. A text message goes off, I remember I need to send an email, or my child runs into the room —it’s not hard to get distracted.

And so that is why we are not only rooting this sermon series in the psalms—which was Jesus’ prayer book— but we’ll also be preaching through one part of the ACTS prayer model each week.

It’s a helpful way to order our prayers: begin with adoration, which will lead you into a time of confession; from there, give thanks to God for his grace, and then offer supplications (or petitions) for you or a loved one.

The tendency I have is to go straight to supplication— asking God for protection and healing for me or a loved one – before ever praying for anything else. I may have so many requests (or demands) that I run out of time before it occurs to me to confess or thank God.

And so today, our sole focus is on how our prayers should start.

Adoration We should begin each prayer recognizing who God is. He is worthy of adoration and praise—full stop. Almost always in this life, we will praise people for what they have accomplished, the great deeds that they have done as individuals. They have earned our praise. They have shown that they are worthy of our devotion.

Not so with God. He doesn’t have to do anything to deserve our praise. He is God and we are not, and that is enough. He is outside the created order. In fact, he is the one who set in motion the created order. We, as his creatures, owe everything to him.  

We can look at many aspects of our lives and proudly claim, “I did this. I built this.” And we begin to believe that we are truly self-made. But none of us is self-made. All of us are dependent; we bear a visible reminder of this on our bodies. Our belly buttons remind us of our total and complete dependence on another, and without them, we would not have life.

The same is true, and even more so, when it comes to God. We are completely dependent on the Source of life. Even now, God holds all things together. God’s gaze is fixed on creation, his attention has not diverted, and if even for a moment he turned aside, the created order would crumble in an instant.

God didn’t create for six days and has been off ever since. We are dependent on him to keep things together, to keep this universe in order, to keep life going, to say nothing about keeping each of our lives going.

And so, God is worthy of our praise. At this point in our prayers, we don’t even need to thank him for what he has done; we simply must recognize who he is and be in awe.

He is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, and we are dust, formed of the earth and unto earth shall we return.

We did not breathe the divine breath of life into the dust; dust on its own has no breath, and yet, the Almighty One, blessed be he, chose to have dependents.

God is truly worthy of our praise.

The Changelessness of Adoration Our prayers begin in this elemental form, this awareness of ourselves and of God. Where modern folks bristle at the idea of a God demanding praise from his subjects like some egotistical king, the psalmist recognizes that a rightly ordered life begins with praising God “from whom all blessings flow.”

Our psalm of Adoration today, Psalm 145, does just that. It begins, “I will exalt you, O God my King, and bless your Name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless you and praise your Name for ever and ever.”

Reading this, it seems the psalmist is having one of the greatest days of his life and smiling as he writes this. He is beaming with joy and gratitude. But no matter what situation we find ourselves in, this should be the start of every conversation with God. 

The truth of these verses doesn’t change at all if we say them moments after receiving a terrible diagnosis, or we just lost our job, or failed that big test, or missed the game-winning shot. Imagine being in that difficult moment and the first thing that comes to mind is, “I will exalt you, O God my King, and bless your Name for ever and ever.”

Our recognition of the goodness of God should not change depending on the season or circumstance. God is worthy of our adoration at all times.

As verse 3 reminds us, “Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised; there is no end to his greatness.”

You and I are bound by limits, and we constantly get frustrated with ourselves— and with God—because our prayers are not being answered. But our frustration comes from the supplication portion of our prayers not being met. 

We focus too much on how a prayer should end, and not enough on how it should begin.

The longer there is apparent silence on God’s side, the more tempted we are to grow silent ourselves. We begin to wonder, “What’s the point of even praying if I’m not going to get an answer? Clearly, God has turned on his Do Not Disturb.”

But we must not forget that the One we are called to adore also adores us.

It’s like a bride and groom at their wedding. I officiated a wedding last night, and I was struck by how the couple looked at each other with such wonder and delight.

That is how God looks at you! It’s how he looks at his Church, the Bride of Christ. He adores each of us, and through the act of prayer, we are reciprocating that love. We are simply returning adoration back to its true Source.

So we can pray those gut-wrenching prayers in our dark night of the soul because this is not a shallow love he has for us. Eugene Peterson writes,

“All prayer, pursued far enough, becomes praise.” He continues, “Any prayer, no matter how desperate its origin, no matter how angry and fearful the experiences it traverses, ends up in praise. It does not always get there quickly or easily—the trip can take a lifetime—but the end is always praise.”[i]

The only reason we would do such an audacious thing is if we had faith in a God who is good and faithful. You would not keep praying, keep praising God in all seasons if you did not have some faith that he is good, and that he will redeem even what is broken and breaking within us and our world. And that nugget of faith is why we should adore him at all times.

Over time, our praise of God will slowly reshape our demands into humble requests; it will reform us into grateful and gracious children, rather than acting like entitled kids who think everything is owed to them or pestering widows, as in the parable we heard last week. Rather than silence-feeling-like-absence, it will feel like an understated but overwhelming presence.

Absolutely nothing is owed to us, and yet, all things in Christ have been given to us. And so we should praise, and by doing so, our desires are reordered, and we become free to delight in God because we know he is “gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness” (v. 8). And he has given all that to us in his Son.

We begin to desire God, rather than what God can do for us. That longing for God, to be near him, is the mark of a disciple: one who desires to walk with God all the days of their life. As St. Augustine once said, “Start praising now if you intend to praise forever.”[ii]

Our prayers begin with the praise of heaven, so that when we arrive, it will feel like our mother tongue.

Let us pray.

“All your works praise you, O LORD, and all your faithful servants bless you.” We are in awe of who you are, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You are worthy of all praise and glory. You are surrounded within the majesty of heaven, and yet you make yourself known to your creation. You, O Ancient of Days, are surrounded by angels and archangels who continually cry out ‘holy,’ and we are called to join in that great song. Teach us the prayer and praise of heaven, teach us to make this our song here on earth until that day when we are with you forevermore. Amen.

Photo by DNK.PHOTO on Unsplash

[i] Quoted in Prayer by Tim Keller pg. 202

[ii] Exposition on Psalm 145