PRAISE

Participate 

The Lord inhabits the praises of his people so when we praise we are participating and Jesus is participating and therefore we are connecting and that’s what relationship is made of. 

Praise is a great way to connect with God. If you’ve ever been to a church service they always start with singing be it hymns or the Christian version of a concert, songs are like a plow to the heart they break open the ground so that the seed of God's word can find a place to sprout. 

I can’t help but quote the great philosopher Buddy The Elf when he says “The best way to spread Christmas cheer is to sing a song for all to hear”. Singing invites people to participate in something outside themselves, but what makes singing and praise different is the focus, the reason. 

Singing makes me feel better a good song can lift my spirit, change my attitude and bring a smile to my face but praise is deeper praise is all those things but then it turns the result from feeling better to knowing better. Emotions are unreliable and they can lead us to making really stupid choices simply because they don’t have a mind of their own they are compleatly at the whim of circumstance. Praise is a decision to participate in a relationship with Jesus no matter how we feel no matter what is happening and that choice leads you away from circumstance and into the will of God for your day and your life. 

So sing a song of praise today not so that you can control your attitude but so that you can participate in a relationship with Jesus and from that who knows where the will of God will lead you and what you will do from there. Praise is the doorway to the blessed life. 

Rattle and Raise 

If we stay silent the rocks themselves will cry out in praise, welcoming the king into our midst. 

Ezekiel was told to tell a valley of dry bones to become an army and sometimes I feel like I’m the one laying in the valley waiting for something to happen if you're like me then…

Hear the word of the Lord. 

“I will cause breath to enter you, and you will live.

I will put ligaments on you, place muscles on you, and cover you with skin.

I will put breath in you, and you will live.”

It’s time to live. I mean really live we aren’t dry bones we have the breath of life and we have it so we can praise with our lives.

We may start our praise in the valley among the dry bones but that’s not where we are supposed to stay. We are supposed to come alive, we are supposed to live. We are supposed to be the ones who are crying out. I don’t know about you but I don’t want some stones harmonizing with Jesus when he’s put his breath into me and given me life and a reason to live. 

We are called to raise our holy hands in prayer and I would say in praise too, laying aside anger and anxiety. A posture of praise, hands raised, is also a posture of surrender and praise is about realizing that there is a God and we aren’t him and there is a plan and it’s not ours. But that his plans are good and they offer hope for the future. 

Accept that you have the breath of God within you, a God who can restore a valley of dry bones to warriors. You are one of them. Get into a posture of praise, raise those hands and praise. 

Awake

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 

- Paul a messenger of Jesus 

Praise is a call to wake up but what are we needing to wake up from? 

Well I think we are called to wake up from the lulling of the world around us. 

As a man I can struggle with passivity it’s a battle everyday but in the battle of life I want to die standing up not laying down as an old frail man would. 

In the movie braveheart William Wallace gives a speech and asks the warriors gathered if years later lying in their beds as old men they wouldn’t wish for the chance to come back to this battle and fight for their freedom. 

Well I’m asking myself that question. I’m asking you that question. 

The wake up call is going out and praise is leading the way. 

In ancient Israel it was the singers who went into battle first. This was a declaration to the army that it wasn’t the strength of the warriors or the tactics of generals that was going to win the fight. It was God who was leading who would fight the battle first not in the physical but in the hearts and minds of the enemy. 

The reason the Scottish warriors (Back to Wallace) used bagpipes in battle wasn’t for stealth or misdirection it was to tell their enemies who was coming to fight them it was a warning. 

Praise leads the way when warriors walk it’s a declaration to the enemy that the warriors on the move are awake and ready for a fight. It’s a statement of who is marching. 

We can be raised from a valley of dry bones and participate with Jesus partnering with him in praise but if we don’t wake up from the slumber of complacency and shake off the anesthetics of streaming networks and social media apps, pick up our weapons not of destruction but of freedom and of worship we will find ourselves as truly old men frail and dying and will wish for just one chance to go back to today and fight. 

So while you're in today wake up, get up and get praising. 

Invest 

“A farmer went to plant seeds and some fell on hard ground… some fell on rocky ground… some fell on thorny ground, other seeds fell on good ground and produced 30, 60, or 100 times as much as was planted.”

• Jesus 

Praise is an investment into your own heart; it's planting a harvest of his presents in our lives. The parable of the sower is a famous one. Jesus uses it to illustrate life, it speaks to so many different stages our life go through. 

I think we are all at some point at each of the first 3 stages with God's help shifting into the 4th. 

The decision to praise God puts him first in our lives. It's the very thing that makes our lives blessable. 

Stage 1 Hard Ground. 

We all have hard parts in our hearts. Things happen that cause us to have hard hearts and this stops us from even accepting what God wants to say to us. Praise breaks up the hard ground of our hearts that stop God’s words from penetrating our lives because praise draws us closer to God and it’s he who is the gardener planting the fruit of his spirit in our hearts. 

Stage 2 Rocky Ground. 

Rocks keep us shallow in our relationship with God. Praise identifies rocks like ego, fear and pride things that stop us from having a fruitful relationship with Jesus. Praise turns ego, fear and pride on their heads and reminds us of who we are in Christ and allows him to excavate our hearts. 

Stage 3 Thorny Ground. 

Thorns choke life by sucking up the resources like the time and talent we have to give to God’s purposes. 

TV and video games can be thorns that choke time best spent elsewhere but even good things can stop us from having a great harvest. Praise will bring awareness of what needs to go and how to best deal with it. 

Stage 4 Good Ground. 

When we are participating in praise we get God's breath of life and we are restored. We wake up to his call on our lives and our investment reaps the benefits. When we praise we are investing in our own hearts to see them become ready to accept and return God's word a harvest 30, 60 or 100 times what we put in. In God's economy that’s how praise works it’s exponential.  

Sing

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. 

There is always a reason not to praise and at the same time those are usually the same reasons to praise. 

The heart of praise needs to be expressed. I think a great way is to sing our praise. 

Praising God means that we are entering into God's presence and singing is praising with some rhythm. 

Personally I love to sing and as you can see I love to write these are my favorite ways to praise. 

Singing is such a door opener not just into the presents of God but into our own hearts. I think of singing as the tilling the soil of our hearts. 

I find song to be the simplest way to enter into God's presence and to bring my praise. 

I challenge you to sing some songs outside the regular church time be it in community or on a screen. A little one on one time done regularly goes a long way to making singing actual praise. 

I know I could use more song time either listening to music and singing along or just sitting in quiet reflection however I praise when it’s with a song it's very meaningful and powerful. 

Evermore

“I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting: “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God...”

Honestly I don’t think about heaven as much as I need to but it was a pretty big part of what Jesus talked about and praise is a key part of what we are told heaven will include. Praise is one of the things that will carry past this life on earth into heaven with us. Praise transcends our lives; it's one of the only things that we do on earth that echoes into our eternity. 

What would it look like to put my focus on the eternal and not on the temporal? Would we stop trying to make the most money or have the biggest house. Would we stop comparing ourselves to the social media Jones. Letting what we admire and laud point to eternity will, for me at least, free up a ton of mental and emotional bandwidth that can be used to love on people, give hope, be joyful, and just be awesome.