Since school is now in full swing, I thought it would be fun to test our language knowledge but not English. Instead, I want us to see how well we doing with Spanish and French. I am going to put up five English words and you are to tell me which is the French word and which is the Spanish word. Ready? Here we go!
Slide 1 The English word is Door. Which word is the Spanish word for door and which is the French word for door? The Spanish word is ‘puerta’ and the French word is ‘porte.’
Slide 2 The English word is Book. Which word is the Spanish word for book and which is the French word for book? The Spanish word is ‘libro’ and the French word is ‘livre.’ Two more words…
Slide 3 The English word is Airplane. Which is the Spanish word for airplane and which is the French word? The French word is on the left and the Spanish word is on the right. There is an accent mark on the Spanish word though they sound very similar.
Slide 4 The final word is Love. Which is the Spanish word for love and which is the French word? The Spanish word is amor and the French word is amour.
Learning another language is challenging work just ask some of the missionaries that we support. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a person from another country? It can be enjoyable but it can also become frustrating. When we have trouble communicating due to a language barrier, it is a frustrating things and sometimes it is a serious thing when it comes to safety or health issues. So language is an important thing.
Have you ever felt the same way about prayer? Have you ever felt that you are speaking a foreign language when it comes to talking with the Lord? That either you are not being heard or that you cannot hear God?
Prayer is vital for faith in and relationship with God. We cannot hope to grow in our faith without making prayer a key part of our faith practices alongside Bible reading, church attendance, and serving the Lord. It needs to become our second language.
Slide 5
And what holds true for us as individuals also holds true for us as a congregation. Prayer is a vital part of our congregational life and we need to have weekly times of corporate prayer. (We don’t have it right now and I am very concerned about it. I am praying that the Lord will direct someone to restart our weekly prayer meeting.)
Slide 6 Someone has written, ‘The popularity of a CHURCH is measured by its Sunday morning attendance and the popularity of the PREACHER by its Sunday evening attendance. However, the popularity of the LORD is measured at the prayer meeting.’
In Luke 11 we read a passage that illustrates to us the importance of prayer as we hear the disciples request Jesus to “Lord, teach us to pray.’
Slide 7 Over the next four weeks we are going to learn, and maybe re-learn, the language of prayer and the model we are going to use is the simple but helpful outline of ACTS:
A is for Adoration
C is for Confession
T is for Thanks
S is for Supplication
And, in keeping with the return of our students to school, there will be a brief homework assignment for you to do each week.
This morning we begin with the important habit of adoring God. Adoring is, in my opinion, a rather feminine word. I don’t hear any guys say, ‘I really adore those shoes!’ I hear them say, ‘What an awesome car, man!’
Adoration and awesome, I do think, go together! We find awesome what we adore and what we adore is often awesome to us.
Prayer includes the adoration of an awesome God!
What is awesome about God? Everything is awesome about God! His holiness, his love, his justice, his compassion, his patience… all of these things remind us that we serve an awesome God. For the next few moments, we are going to hear and see various scripture passages that highlight this important aspect of prayer. When it ends I am going to ask you to share some of the things we are to adore God for.
Slide 8 (Adoration Clip from ‘Prayer as a Second Language’ series material.)
What are we to adore God for based on what we have just heard?
His creation, His character, His work in our lives are some of the things that we adore God for.
Slide 9 Someone has said that the difference between adoration and supplication or petition, is that adoration is based on who God is and that petition is based on what God does.
Quite frankly, we spend a great deal of time asking God for things, legitimate and important things to be sure. But how much time do we spend in pray thanking God for who He is? God needs to hear our prayers of adoration or praise on a regular basis.
Slide 10 Why then is adoration important? One reason comes to mind. Adoration of who God is assures us of what God does and that is life change through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
I believe that it was the missionary E. Stanley Jones who said that prayer is aligning our will with the will of God. When we adore God in our prayer life we begin then, to align our will with His will because we focus our praise and our adoration on Him and not us. Our prayer is to God not to ourselves and it is the Lord who is worthy of all praise.
I would again remind us this morning that our faith is about life change – changes in our attitudes, habits, priorities, and behaviors. We are in the ‘life change’ business. Adoration is part of our business because God, if you will, is the owner of our business and we are His employees.
Dr David Mains has written, ‘Praise in prayer is much like praise in real life except that it’s directed toward God. When you praise someone you commend them or tell them what it is you appreciate about them. You pay them a compliment.
‘I really like the way you’ve decorated your house. You played a good game. What a generous person you are. Your book was a wonderful read. I love your laugh. You look great in that outfit. What a good boy you’ve been. These are all words of praise.’
He goes onto say that such words of praise come easy for many of us but for others of us, they are a foreign language because we, unfortunately, are using to hearing (and saying) words not of adoration but of degradation, or in our common language, put-downs.
When is the last time you complimented God? When is the last time (before today) that we praised God for being God?
Our mission of partnering with the Lord to help others come to Christ and be changed through a personal salvation experience must include praise to God for who He is because out of who He is, His character, comes His action of salvation and reconciliation. God cannot and does not tolerate sin either in our actions or our thoughts and attitudes and as we read in John 3, Jesus indicates God intention for humanity, ‘God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.’
Our text for this morning includes some reasons to compliment God that we can use every day in our prayers to Him. Let’s start with verse 3
Slide 11 Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise! His greatness is beyond discovery!
I suggest this morning that we when compliment or praise God for His greatness it causes us to look upward and outward beyond our current circumstances to Him. Adoring our awesome God ‘whose greatness is beyond discovery’ is a wonderful way to gain perspective on life because it opens us up to the reality that there is more to life that the day to day because God, when He created this world, and when He created us, I believe shared a bit of His greatness with us?
Slide 12 I will meditate on your majestic, glorious splendor and your wonderful miracles.
Last week we viewed a very interesting and, I thought, challenging video clip about the challenge of noise to our lives and souls. One of the ways that we adore God, that we pay Him a compliment, is by getting away from the noise of our daily lives and meditating on God majestic splendor and wonderful miracles.
To meditate is to consider, think about, reflect, or mull over in your mind. The noise of life, the challenges and opportunities of our days, and the concerns and dreams that fill our mind need to be set aside cause us to pray and pray often.
The challenge is to turn those mind filling and soul filling issues over to God in prayer and how do we often do that? We do it by jumping into our praying that sometimes, at least for me, helps but often is drowned out again by the concerns.
What if we took time as we drove (safely and alertly I would add) and considered the natural scenery alongside the road?
What if we took time and looked out the windows of our home or place of work and saw a diminutive Hummingbird or a majestic Cardinal?
Such actions, hard to think of sometimes, are the start of prayer because in meditating on God’s glorious splendor, we are reminded that we are a part (an important part) of God’s great creation. Such ponderings, I believe, allow the Holy Spirit to move in us and help us see beyond our circumstances.
Slide 13 The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to get angry, full of unfailing love.
One of my favorite contemporary Christian songs says, ‘You have been so good/you have been so good to me/in my faithless hours/you are my strength. You are my shelter/from my enemies/you have been so good/so good to me.’
Over and over again in my life, the Lord has not given me what I deserved… discipline, punishment, abandonment. Because of His mercy and grace, He has not taken out His anger of me. What about you?
In those moments, and we all have them from time to time, when we feel insignificant, overwhelmed, or frustrated, we need to compliment the Lord on his kindness and mercy to us. In doing so, I think that we will find confession easier because as we confess our sins and shortcomings, we are more able to accept God’s great grace and forgiveness.
What do you think this morning? Have you found yourself complimenting the Lord, praising Him for these things? Are you more grateful to Him for His majestic splendor, His beyond discovery greatness, and His mercy? Such adoration, such complimenting, such praise is a vital part of our prayer life.
Slide 14 How fluent are you in the language of adoration? Is a language that we need to learn and use everyday in our life and faith.
Slide 15 Remember that homework I spoke with you about? You get to start it here. The I song I referred to a few minutes ago, You Have Been So Good’ is going to be played in a moment and as it is, take the back of your bulletin and use this time to adore the Lord. Amen.
Mains’ quote is taken from his sermon on adoration that is part of the ‘Prayer as Second Language’ series available from sermonview.com
‘You Have Been So Good to Me’ is by Lenny LeBlanc and Mark Moses © 2002 Integrity’ Hosanna Music. CCLI usage.
Power Points for this sermon and this sermon series are not available due to copy write issues.
