For anyone who longs to experience God in the thick of life's demands, Sara Hagerty's Adore: A Simple Practice for Experiencing God in the Middle Minutes of Your Day​ offers a simple, soul-nourishing practice for engaging with God in the middle minutes of your day.

None of us signed up for a conventional experience with the unconventional God, yet too often the spiritual life can become routine, dare we say, even boring.

In Adore, Sara Hagerty gives us all permission to admit "I barely know You, God," and with this honest admission, to scoot a little nearer to this familiar stranger. Adoration is the simple practice Sara discovered for starting where you are, and letting the grit of your day greet the beauty of God's presence.

Adoration is for the woman who feels frenzied and fearful in the middle minutes of her day. It is a simple practice for 7:37 a.m. when the children are waking and the dryer is already humming but also for the 12:17 p.m. lunch break and for 5:53 p.m. while stuck in traffic.

Adoration is the place where we put how we feel in front of God's Word, and watch what happens to our insides. It's what you were made for. Join Sara in this soul-stirring journey through thirty attributes of God which you can walk through at your own pace. Learn how the simple habit of adoration--in the middle minutes of your day--can help you see God with fresh eyes, and talk to Him right there. Experience a new way of engaging with God in your everyday. Adore will show you how, sweet sister!

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Now let's get to know Sara Hagerty, our author!

How can we learn to have greater adoration for God?

C.S. Lewis says (about adoration), “Begin where you are.”

Since I was a girl, I’ve wanted to “do it right.” It being … everything from my chemistry lab experiment to my Bible reading plan. Like most of humanity, I was predisposed to measure myself based on my performance; thus, I assumed God measured me the same.

But performance and prayer – as the Bible outlines prayer – don’t mix well. I can’t cry out to God, as the Psalmists do if I’m concerned that my honest cries might somehow be too emotional, inaccurate, or out-of-place. To connect with the heart of God in conversation (this is prayer), I need to start where I am.

And most days (at least, these Spring of 2020 days) “where I am” can span from being filled with anxious thoughts to exhausted under the weight of all the new information and uncertainty. Where I am is often buried in laundry and foggy about what to cook for dinner. These days, if I wait to adore until I feel good about my prayers, I won’t. 

Adoration happens best when I start where I am. Unburying myself from underneath loads of laundry, bringing my anxiety to God, and adoring Him through Isaiah 26:3. It can look like this:

I feel tired and overwhelmed. My mind is racing today, God.

But I choose to talk to You from Isaiah 26:3 and say: I adore you for promising perfect peace to your people … for affording me a steadfast mind … for enabling me to trust. I adore You that perfect peace is available to me, through you.

As I begin to see that He is the God who meets me in piles of laundry and mindless afternoons where the fog hangs low in my home, I want to adore Him more. As I experience what it’s like to talk to Him in those middle minutes and feel His Spirit lifting me, as I pray His Word back to Him, I want to go back. I want to adore again.

Who needs to read this book?

The tired, the overwhelmed, the anxious, the numb -- those of us (let’s admit it, most of us) who are not impervious to the world tilting around us – are the ones who need to read this book. All of us have a deep desire to connect with God. It’s what we signed up for when we chose to follow Him. But when the “highs” of following Jesus become intermittent – when our life gets more regular and hum-drum – we forget that that connection isn’t only available through the missions trip or the women’s conference. He wants to meet us in the middle of our life, which, these days, means the center of our anxiety, and overwhelm, and fear. 

 What do you think halts our adoration of the Lord?

When I was a pre-teen, I had a decorative Bible with a plastic cover that preserved any sign of use. Colorful ribbon page markers implied I might want to bookmark 4 or 5 different passages of this glossy-paged book.

In some ways, that Bible reflected how I saw my faith, my adoration. Conversation with God should be neat, sanitized. Cleverly marked and contained. Kept.

When I see adoration as a rote spiritual discipline or a necessary methodology that every Christian should employ in their walk with God, I don’t want to do it. I’d rather scroll Instagram – unthinking – or fill my day with tasks than talk to God from the neat-and-tidy place … when my life feels anything but neat-and-tidy.

But when I see adoration as the Psalmists laid out for us -- a vulnerable conversation with God where I am not buttoned-up, and He can receive all of me – the barriers to getting their lesson. I can talk to Him on an angry walk, when I left the house “just to get out, away from the chaos.” I can bring my heart to Him while I pull the legos out from in-between the couch pillows. I can cry to Him when I have no answers, and exhaustion overtakes me. 

To answer your question, my perception of how God wants me to engage with Him is what halts my adoration.

What would you tell your 20-something self?

Sweet girl: don’t be afraid of your emotions. You don’t need to stuff them to follow God. The more you bring them to Him, the more you get to see the glint in His eye when He looks, deep, into your wrestle. Your connectedness to God will grow proportionately to how frequently you bring your raw wrestle to Him and to His Word. (He carries emotions, too.)

Click photo to order!

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