Praise

This week, we will be talking about praise and what it looks like to still praise God even in the highs and lows. It is easy to praise God when everything is working out for us. We can say, “Clearly this is God,” when things are going well, our praise comes so effortlessly. What about the times when it is hard? How is our heart posture towards praising God when our circumstances look like the devil himself planned our steps and not God? I feel like I am in a place of waiting, transition, and refinement – three words we Christians love to hear. I do feel like, as a body of Christ, we are all in a similar place, which is such a confusing place to be because it can be comforting, knowing we are all in it together, yet we are all aching. In the fire, are we able to count it all joy and pour out our praise onto the feet of Jesus, not understanding what He is doing but trusting that it will all be used for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose?

It is completely okay if you are having an introspective moment right now of realizing you might not be there at this exact moment, and that is okay. I had to come to that place myself. That is a good place to be, by recognizing you have nothing to give, God can use that if you allow Him. With the help of the Holy Spirit, your flesh will come into alignment with your spirit. Especially in this season of waiting and refinement, my flesh wants to run from God and the things of God, but choosing to praise Him even when I do not feel like it, choosing to praise Him even when life gets hard, and choosing to praise Him in the middle of chaos can be so powerful. It allows us to take our eyes off ourselves and put them back on Jesus. It makes it less about the problems we are facing or the promises we are impatiently waiting on and more about who God is. When we praise, it is not us accepting defeat rather it is us taking a fighting stance. Enter praise as a battle because the three things regarding praise are that it is costly, it is unique, and it is a declaration/reminder. 

Praise is costly

What does it mean that praise is costly? As I mentioned earlier about praising despite the hardships, it is going to cost us our comfort. It is going to cost us to look beyond what is happening around us and gaze into his loving eyes of Jesus for an exchange to occur. He will give us the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness (Isaiah 61:3). Such as the woman in Luke 7:36-50, who poured out her expensive bottle of perfume onto the feet of Jesus, that was her praise, and it was costly. She was not worried about how expensive it was, whether she could afford to buy another one, or if she could only use half of her perfume and save the rest. When she recognized who He is, she could not help but wipe his feet with her tears and her hair and pour out that expensive bottle of perfume that could have been used to feed the poor.

Praise is unique

The next point about praise is that it is unique. We often think that we can only praise God through singing worship songs, which is one aspect of praise, but there are many ways that we can bring our praises to our God, such as expressing our praise through the unique gifts and talents he has placed inside every single one of us. It can be in the form of drawing, painting, writing, poems, etc. We are all his marvelous creations that are uniquely knit together in our mothers' wombs (Psalms 139:13-14), and he has placed talents and dreams inside of us that when we recognize he is the one who placed them inside of us, we can then freely give them back to the one who created and placed that inside of us.

Praise is a declaration/reminder

When we praise despite our circumstances, it is a reminder and a declaration to our souls of who God is. When we give our praises to God, it fixes our gaze back onto Him and not inward or outward, but to Him. It is also reaffirming our souls that it is well, and the keeper of our souls keeps it. When we have that reassurance, we can walk in our God-given authority and start to declare the truth over our lives and circumstances. That’s when we allow for peace that surpasses all understanding and the unmovable joy to set in.

When we look in Exodus, the Israelites, on the other hand, even after God parted the Red Sea for them to cross and destroyed all the Egyptians. While they were wandering in the desert, they began to romanticize Egypt. How often do we fall into the same cycle of romanticizing what God brought us out of, the things we were in bondage to, and enslaved to sin? But because we had few pleasures, such as an abundance of food, and now all we have is mana that falls from heaven every day, we forget that we were in shackles. We also forget the providence and grace of God in the season we are in currently when we look to the providence of God from another season.

Our praises can bring the walls of Jerrico down! In Joshua 6:1-27, tells us that the Israelites marched around the city walls once a day for six days, and on the seventh day they marched seven times, the priest blew the trumpet, the people shouted, and then the walls collapsed. When we can turn back to giving our praises to God and keep going, the walls of Jerrico can crumble to the ground in an instant. When we praise, those circumstances may not go away, but the walls we put up in our hearts for the move of God come crashing down. We think that if something physical changes in our lives, then we can possess the fruits of the Spirit. First off, the fruits of the Spirit are already ours (Galatians 5:25) if we have accepted the Holy Spirit into our lives, but what if God wants to refine those fruits through the exact situation you are walking through right now?

Thank you so much for reading. I know this was a lengthy post, you can check out my video about praise on my YouTube channel. I hope this was encouraging and a blessing to you. Until next time!