Charles Spurgeon on Prayer - Day 10

ADORATION

To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Ephesians 3:21

In the text we find adoration; not prayer, the apostle Paul had done that. We find adoration—not even so much the act of praise as the full sense that praise is due, and far more of it than we can render. I hardly know how to describe adoration. Praise is a river flowing on joyously in its own channel, banked up on either side that it may run toward its one object. But adoration is the same river overflowing all banks, flooding the soul and covering the entire nature with its great waters; and these not so much moving and stirring as standing still in profound repose, mirroring the glory that shines down upon it, like a summer’s sun upon a sea of glass.

Adoration is not seeking the divine presence, but is conscious of it to an unutterable degree, and therefore full of awe and peace, like the sea of Galilee when its waves felt the touch of the sacred feet. Adoration is the fullness, the height and depth, the length and breadth of praise.  Adoration seems to me to be as the starry heavens that are always telling the glory of God, and yet “there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard” (Psalm 19:3) It is the eloquent silence of a soul that is too full for language. To prostrate yourself in the dust in humility, and yet to soar aloft in sublime thought; to sink into nothing, and yet to be so enlarged as to be filled with all the fullness of God; to have no thought and yet to be all thought; to lose yourself in God; this is adoration.

We should set apart far longer time for this sacred engagement. It is for our highest enrichment if we made it our daily prayer that the blessed Spirit would frequently bear us right out of ourselves and lift us above all the small concerns that surround us, till we are only conscious of God and His exceeding glory. Oh that He would plunge us into the Godhead’s deepest sea till we are lost in His immensity and could only exclaim in wonder, “O the depths! O the depths!” Turn your eyes away from all else to Him, even to the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. Consider Him only, and render Him glory.

Glory to You, Eternal One. Forever and ever You are God. May I lose myself in the fullness of Your Spirit. Amen.