Deeply Loved. Keri Wyatt Kent

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СКАЧАТЬ magnify and bless God.”³ Scripture invites us to adore God: “Glorify the LORD with me; / let us exalt his name together” (Psalm 34:3 NIV).

      To name the goodness of God, his specific character traits that we adore, to shape those yearnings into specific thoughts, takes effort. As a result, we often avoid this type of prayer. Instead, we begin our prayers rudely, like a person who says, “Enough about you! Let’s talk about me!”

      If our prayer life seems stale or routine, perhaps it suffers from egocentricity that only adoration can cure.

      Philip Yancey notes:

      Why praise, then? … No message comes through more forcefully in the Bible than that the human species matters profoundly to God. God created the world with humanity in mind, set us at its center, continued to love us despite our failings, and even sent the Son on a rescue mission. And our response to all these gifts has an actual and deep effect on God… . We need not invent a compliment to make God feel good, rather we need only give credit where credit is due.”⁴

      Adoration is nearly the opposite of supplication, of course, but it is also subtly different from thanksgiving. It is focused not on thanking God for specific favors (a helpful but distinct discipline), but rather, on appreciating him for who he is. Thanksgiving acknowledges what God has done for me; adoration names who he is apart from me. Begin by simply naming the attributes of God that you appreciate: his kindness, his gentleness, his wisdom.

      Adoration carries us to an unexpected place—in recognizing the worthiness of God, we become aware of how valued we are, that we should be called “children of God” (see 1 John 3:1; Galatians 3:26). When we pray prayers of love, that love flows not only toward God but also rebounds back from him to our eager, childlike hearts.

      PRESENCE PRACTICE

      Today, spend some time praying prayers of praise and adoration. Tell God how much you love him, and you will feel that love reflected back to you, multiplied.

      When we experience true communion with God, spending quiet moments in his presence, we often find ourselves welling up with feelings of love.

      God is all-knowing, all-powerful, loving, merciful, and more. What specific attributes have you seen lately? Which ones do you need to remind yourself of because you need that particular strength of God to manifest itself in a particular situation?

      The Psalms provide an excellent primer on all types of prayer, but particularly adoration. If you feel uncertain about how to begin the practice of adoration, use a psalm as your text. For example, try using Psalm 8 as the text for your prayer:

      LORD, our Lord,

      how majestic is your name in all the earth!

      You have set your glory

      in the heavens.

      Through the praise of children and infants

      you have established a stronghold against your enemies,

      to silence the foe and the avenger.

      When I consider your heavens,

      the work of your fingers,

      the moon and the stars,

      which you have set in place,

      what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

      human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:1-4 NIV)

      Allow these words to be a springboard from which you leap into adoring God further, naming all that you admire and appreciate about him.

      

Check here when you have completed today’s Presence Practice.

      DAY 8

      COMPANION

       No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. (1 John 4:12 NLT)

      My daughter, at age three, had a small crisis of faith. “I want to believe in Jesus,” she wailed with characteristic drama. “But I can’t feel him! I can’t see him!”

      I nodded sympathetically, assuring her that many people wondered the same thing; it was normal and acceptable to question and wonder. Prayers for parenting wisdom brought this thought to my mind, which I shared with her. “Jesus gave us each other,” I said, taking her in my arms. “When you feel my hugs, when I take care of you, that’s how he loves you. That’s how he shows you how he loves you.”

      She looked skeptical at what I thought was brilliant theology. Although she continues, as a teenager, to ask tough questions of God, she does so from a place of deep faith. She recently told me she doesn’t doubt God’s existence anymore, and gets a little impatient with those who do. I told her the story of her preschool existential angst and asked her to be patient with the rest of us while we catch up.

      While we can certainly feel the love of God stirring in our hearts, one of the ways he lets us know we are deeply loved is by loving us through others.

      Psychologist and author David Benner writes, “The hunger for connection is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart… . But it is not just connections in general that we seek. In the core of our being we yearn for intimacy. We want people to share our lives. We want soul friends.”

      Isn’t that longing part of the reason you picked up this book to begin with? You long to be deeply loved, specifically and intimately. And yet, intimacy (whether with another person or with Jesus) also terrifies us because of two things: it exposes us and it asks something of us.

      Spiritual friendship is simply a relationship in which we agree with another to talk about our spiritual life. We cannot find such a friend by only focusing on our needs. Instead, seek reciprocity— a relationship that allows us both to be filled and to overflow into someone else’s life.

      In the opening chapters of Genesis, God declares, “Let us create man in our own image.” A puzzling pronoun, “us,” as if conferring with a committee. The verbiage provides a glimpse of the community of the Trinity. The image we bear is one of community: Father, Son, Spirit.

      In those same pages, all created was declared “good.” Only one thing, at least before the fall, was labeled “not good.” Simply this: “It is not good for man to be alone.” We are relational beings, made to be connected to God and one another.

      We were made to be supported, loved, chastised, encouraged, and confronted—by other people. We thrive when we receive and then give back those same things to others. In other words, you were created to love and to be loved. So often, we settle for pseudocommunity, empty fellowship in which we dare not tell the truth about ourselves. Worse, we remain unwilling to let others tell us the truth about both the strengths and weaknesses they see in us.

      Further, life change happens best in community. God designed you to live the Christian life in connection with others. God desires to show you the full extent of his love, at times, through other people. You are a part of СКАЧАТЬ