Why is adoration of God so important?

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Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglica...
Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglican Church " (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the Gospels show Jesus does many mighty works and miracles, and yet we do not see the disciples asking Him.. “Teach us how to turn water into wine,” or “Teach us how to walk on water.” Instead they ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. The disciples realized from observing Jesus that prayer was the heart of His life, and it would have to be the heart of theirs as well.

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, we find that He said “Pray this way,” and taught them the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:1). The Lord’s Prayer was not only given as a prayer to be memorized and repeated but also was given as an outline of how to pray. The first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “hallowed be Your name,” is a prayer of adoration.

How many of us are familiar with the language of adoration? Don’t we usually just jump into petitions and intercessions when we pray? Part of our problem is that the vocabulary of honor and adoration is strange to us. Here is where the Psalms are so important, for they are filled with words of veneration and exhaltation. From reading and praying the Psalms, we learn from God Himself how to praise Him.

Why is adoration so important, and why does it come first? First of all, adoration is our duty. In heaven, the angels ceaselessly praise God. Here on earth also, surely it is among our highest privileges to come into His presence and praise Him.

Secondly, adoration creates the context for the rest of prayer. If we spend some minutes praising God and worshiping Him, it will have two effects on us. First, it will remove from us any feeling of stiff formality in approaching God, but it will also remove from us any kind of “chummy informality.” Praise and reverence enable us to come boldly before Him, while affirming that He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
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