In my early days of learning about prayer I heard people talk about the ACTS acronym for the stages of a prayer life: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. It made sense to me but for some reason I always wanted to skip the Adoration part and get on with the rest of the process! To be truthful, Thanksgiving didn’t come naturally either, so that left the “C” and the “S.”
Over the years I’ve come to understand more about why adoration or praise is so important in prayer. Today I’ll focus on three:
1. Praise takes our attention off of ourselves and lifts it toward God. Prayer is about a relationship with God. Jesus told us that God doesn’t need the update on our lives; He already knows everything that is happening to us. (see Matt. 6:8) The truth is that our Heavenly Father enjoys the sound of our voice and He wants to talk with us and to us.
2. Praise changes our perspective on our circumstances. When we choose to praise God we are reminded of who God is and the fact that He is still the King who is in control. We have a natural propensity to focus on our circumstances and lose our perspective on both the sovereignty and love of God. Again, Jesus taught that the solution is to keep our focus on the King and His Kingdom (Matt. 6:32-33)
3. Praise releases a divine power that silences the enemy of our soul, the devil who continually works to undermine our faith in God. Psalm 8:2 says
“from the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger”
No doubt David the Psalmist is speaking of literal children here, but we are children of God and the principle remains the same. We should not focus too much on the activity of the enemy, but we must be aware of it. We have a ‘foe’, an enemy who works overtime to keep us from dialogue with God in prayer.
Here are two simple things you can do to include more praise into your prayer life:
1. Make a choice to praise God. At the start of each time you pray, make a conscious choice to offer praise to God. We often allow our emotions or mood to get in the way of praise, but even if we don’t ‘feel’ like it, we need to choose to praise God.
2. Use the Bible to find language to express praise. The Psalms are an obvious place to start. Many people struggle with praise because they don’t know what to say. Praying the Bible greatly expands our vocabulary in prayer.
I simply cannot emphasis to you enough how important praise is to the prayer life. If you will consistently include more praise over the next month, I promise you that it will dramatically impact your prayer life!
