There’s
power in Praise!
Awesome
things happen when people praise.
God gets involved and does good things!
This brochure will show you some of the Bible
proofs for that.
1.
God’s power is released in your situation
when you praise.
Here are some Bible stories that show that at
work.
In
II Chron. 20:1-30, a good king named Jehoshaphat was
in trouble. War
had been declared against him by three armies!
What should he do? They prayed to God and God
answered them! He
told them that this battle was His and that they would
not even have to fight.
The king assigned praisers to march ahead of
the army, and as they praised (verse 22) God made the
enemy armies start fighting among themselves!
When the good army got there, all they saw was
dead bodies! And
they were three days collecting all the valuables.
Praising got God involved and He made the good
army win!
Another
story is in Jonah.
This man didn’t want to obey God and ran. That’s when he got swallowed by a huge fish.
In Jonah 2 we read of what Jonah was doing in
that belly. He
was praying to God.
In verses 9-10 he begins to praise God!
That’s when he got spit out onto dry land!
Praise is what got Jonah out of that fish!
Another
story is in Acts 16. Paul and Silas were put in jail unjustly.
At midnight they were praising God, and an
earthquake opened the stocks and let all the prisoners
loose. Do
you think they knew that an earthquake would happen if
they praised? I
don’t think so.
They were praising because of the strength that
comes when you praise.
I will show you verses for that in a little
bit. Do
you think they felt like praising?
No way! I
am very sure they felt like griping and complaining,
and maybe some groaning and moaning.
They were beat bloody and sitting up with their
arms and legs in stocks on a rat-infested dirt floor!
They wanted to be asleep on their own beds. Ugh!
But
praise in hard times is what we all should do!
They knew the power that is there.
God would do something!
2.
When you praise, God comes very close to you!
Psa. 22:3 says God inhabits the praises of His
people. It
has been asked, since God’s spirit is in us (I Jn.
4:15-16) and He’s promised to never leave us (Heb.
13 :5) then how can He come any closer?
A good answer I heard is this: Can you imagine
how the Spirit must feel when we are tense or
worrying? It
IS possible to grieve Him.
He has feelings. (Eph. 4:30) So,
imagine how He must feel when we praise God, or are
thankful? Oh yes! That is
nice. He
feels at home.
He inhabits our praises.
3.
Praise protects us from the devil. Eph.
6:16 says faith is the shield.
So when we praise, we are expressing our faith
which is using our shield and quenching Satan’s
power! In
Psa. 8:2, the King James word strength is
translated praise in other versions.
If we read it that way, God has ordained praise
to still the enemy ~ Satan!
4.
Praise makes us feel good.
Psa. 63:4-5,
here are a few of the phrases.
“My
lips shall praise Thee … I will bless Thee … My
soul shall be satisfied …”
Our automatic response to anything should be to
praise God. Psa.
34:1, “I
will bless the Lord at all times …”
Praise
is to thank, love, worship, and adore.
All are facets of praise to our wonderful
Heavenly Father!
This is not for Him but for us.
We have just read how praise gets Him to show
up with power. If
you don’t know much about praising God, read the
last five chapters of Psalms.
I have a Bible where I have gone through the
Psalms and marked with a soft lead red pencil all the
verses that are praise, or are uplifting and
encouraging. Whenever I am not up and full of joy, I go to those verses
and they lift me every time!
It’s very important that we praise God a lot,
especially when we don’t feel like it.
A
sacrifice?
In
Heb. 13:15-16, we read that praise can be a sacrifice.
It’s when we don’t feel like it.
We have no reason to be happy!
When we praise then,
it’s a sacrifice because we give up the right
to understand, or be in control, or to be proud of our
courage. When
we praise, we release the situation into God’s hands
and acknowledge that He is trustworthy.
In
a book called Prison to Praise by Merlin
Carothers, he tells people to praise God FOR the
problem, because He’s God and knows what He’s
doing. This
act releases God’s power in the situation, makes
Satan flee, and often brings dramatic results!
He finishes the book by giving lots of letters
from people telling how this works.
Word
of faith people (I am one) believe that we should
praise God IN the situation, but not FOR what Satan
did. I struggled about why God is doing such wonderful
things for people who are doing it wrong.
But praise is praise, and trust is trust.
They are getting results, even if I don’t
agree with the preposition they used.
Do
you have problems with the raised hands or the dancing
in praise? Some
of the Hebrew words that are translated praise in
Psalms are words that mean to be loud, lift the hands,
dance wildly, and be clamorously foolish. That’s what David was in II Sam. 6:12-14.
But if you keep reading, you’ll see that God
was very displeased with his wife for criticizing him.
God made her childless.
Are
you in a situation that is hard?
Praise God every time you think of it!
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