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Praise Your Way to Victory 4

Praising Your Way to Victory Part 4

 Hello again! We trust you are being blessed by this series on praising our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who made a way for us to again have fellowship with our heavenly Father. 

 To recap, last time, we talked about how you, as a born-again believer, can experience an every more intimate relationship with God than Adam and Eve because we have something they did not: the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. We also talked about the kind of praise God enjoys- the kind that is enthusiastic, heartfelt, and even spontaneous!

 This week, we want to look at something called “The Sacrifice of Praise.” Have you ever heard this term? 

 This is the praise we give God by obedience despite how we feel. It can be difficult because

sometimes it takes tremendous effort to overcome how we feel and to get into the right mindset and heart attitude to praise. 

God gave me victory over this simply by making a decision to praise God FIRST for a specific length of

time when I wake up. It became a settled matter and non-negotiable.

 The first time that I made that decision it really felt like a sacrifice but because I had made up my mind, I just did it. 

And soon became easier and easier to do this. The secret is that I don’t ask my feelings any questions. I just go into my scheduled assignment with God.

 After all, how many nurses ask themselves how they feel before giving their patients injection or

medication? 

They simply do it.

How many pilots ask how they feel before taking off on the tarmac? 

They simply do it.

How many mothers ask how they feel before preparing meals for their families?

They just do it.

How many secretaries go to office and ask how they feel before typing their daily letters and memos for their boss?

They just do it.

There are some things we just do because it’s time or our responsibility to do them. So, it should be with any of our assignments with God. Especially the assignment of praise.

 Many of us make the mistake of only praising God only when we feel loved by God and when all is well in our lives. But Beloved- this is a grave mistake, because your victory comes by choosing to not listen to what your mind and emotions are telling you about a situation. It comes by looking into the face of the One who loves you and allowing Him to show you His perspective. Our adversary, the devil, knows that running into the presence of God when we have a care is our victory, so he will try and get you to not feel like doing it. He will try to tempt you to reason it through on your own. But this is foolishness! We are expressly forbidden in His word to lean on our own understanding, but to trust God with all of our hearts! (Prov. 3:5-6)

 Do you have a bill due? Praise God, He owns the cattle on a thousand hills! (Psalm 50:10)

 Is your heart broken? Praise God, Jesus came to bind up the broken-hearted! (Luke 4:18)

 Do you need peace? Praise God, keep your mind stayed upon Him, and you will have peace! (Isa. 26:3)

 Are you afraid? Praise God, For He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. (Psalm 91:11)

 Are you lonely? Praise God, for He sets the solitary in families. (Psalm 68:6)

 Do you need wisdom? Praise God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach when we ask in faith! (James 1:5)

 Do you need forgiveness, healing, or mercy? Praise God, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, and who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies! (Psalm 103:3-4)

 Are you seeing a pattern yet? There is always a reason to praise God, no matter how bleak our situation may look.

 Lastly, let’s look at two verses about praise and the heart:

 By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. (Heb 13:15)

 For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)

 I stated earlier that I set aside time specifically for praise, but my praise is not limited only to that time. 

We see from these two verses that the sacrifice of praise is to be continuous. It is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to Him. And when we have established our hearts in gratitude, it overflows out of our hearts and finds its way to our lips!

 Which leads us to next week’s discussion- how praise and thanksgiving allows us to enter into His presence! Until then, I encourage you to practice giving God the sacrifice of your praise! Ask the Holy Spirit to help you with this. You’ll be delighted at what He shows you!

 We’ll be back next week with part five. Until then, we trust God to keep watch over you and be your refuge and strength.

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Praise Your Way to Victory 3

Praising Your Way to Victory Part 3

 Last week, we left you with a bit of a cliffhanger. We were talking about how you can know God better than if you had the chance to physically walk with Him in the garden like Adam and Eve. And I just know that some of you didn’t think that was possible, but Beloved, let me assure you, it is not only possible, but it should be the norm for every born-again Christian!

 How is this possible? With the Holy Spirit! Jesus told His disciples in John 16:7 

 “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart. I will send Him to you.”

 So we can see that Jesus Himself is telling us that there would be an advantage for him to physically return to our heavenly Father, rather than staying here on earth to be with us to walk around and spend time with us. What was this advantage? I could write an entire series of blogs just on this topic alone, but concerning the topic of praise, we can have an even greater revelation of who God is because the Holy Spirit indwells believers. He gives us a far superior understanding of why God is worthy of our praise compared to someone living prior to when God released His Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Up to that point, with the exception of rare instances when the Holy Spirit would temporarily rest upon folks, people had to lean on their own understanding of scripture.

 Having a greater revelation of God’s goodness will naturally help you praise God in a way that is far more intimate and far more enthusiastic than Adam and Eve could have ever praised God. And that in itself is something to praise God for!

 And speaking of enthusiasm, the kind of praise God desires is the type that is genuine and not ritualistic. I once listened to a young man opening a prayer service and he started by repeating the same three things over and over. It sounded to me as though he thought if he kept saying it enough, he might actually start to believe it! Now, don’t get me wrong, you can certainly repeat words or phrases- that’s what we do when we sing worship songs, but it has to come from a place of genuine belief and not autopilot. God wants relationship, not rituals.

 In fact, in Isaiah 1:13-17 (MSG), God had some pretty direct words for people who praised Him the most elaborately, but only to tick off the “praise” box so that they could be “right” with God and continued to embrace sin:

 Quit your worship charades.

    I can’t stand your trivial religious games:

Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings—

    meetings, meetings, meetings—I can’t stand one more!

Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!

    You’ve worn me out!

I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion,

    while you go right on sinning.

When you put on your next prayer-performance,

    I’ll be looking the other way.

No matter how long or loud or often you pray,

    I’ll not be listening.

 It wasn’t that God expected them to be perfect. A cursory glance of some of the greatest heroes of the Old Testament shows that they made abhorrent mistakes. The commandments were given to show them that they couldn’t achieve holiness on their own and need to put their faith in the coming Messiah. But instead, they decided that they could fool God into thinking they were keeping the law if they praised loudly and often. And God got sick of the hypocrisy. 

 Many people unfortunately do this today. They have a ritual that can include confessing their sins, going to church (where they may sing and become extremely emotional before God and the congregation), and then ignoring God for the rest of the week. But God isn’t interested in a performance. He wants a real relationship because He loves us so very much.

 So when we come to God, it’s ok that we aren’t perfect and have things we are dealing with, but we need to understand the only reason we can even come before Him so confidently is because of Jesus, who has made us righteous in Him. Not because of anything we have done. We can drop the pretense and the ritual. He’s not impressed with us if we do any of that. What impresses Him is when we put our faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ for all of our needs, including our need to praise Him.

 Next time we’re going to talk about what the Bible refers to as “the sacrifice of praise.” Until then, I encourage you to be spontaneous and enthusiastic with your praise to the Lord. Be real. As you read the Word, encourage the Holy Spirit, our Teacher, to reveal to you things that you can praise God and be thankful for. You’ll be delighted at what He shows you!

 We’ll be back next week with part four. Until then, we trust God to keep watch over you and be your refuge and strength.

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Praise Your Way to Victory 2

Praising Your Way to Victory! Part 2

 In our last blog, we started a brand new series entitled, “Praising Your Way to Victory.” If you missed the beginning, we encourage you to go back and read it first here (insert link to blog). Then come here to this page to continue in the series.

 We looked at what praise is and why it’s so important. This week we want to continue our study and further define what praise is by looking at some examples of what praise isn’t. This is important because many times we believe that we are praising God in spirit and in truth, as Jesus desires, but instead, we are coming before God’s throne with a wrong understanding.

 Precious One, if you discover you fall into this category, and that you’ve been operating with wrong understanding in some areas, there is no condemnation for you! We are all learning how to honor God and walk with Him. The fact that you are reading this blog means that you desire to please Him and have sweet fellowship with Him! James 4:8 tells us that when we draw close to God, He draws close to us! He sees your heart and will help you.

 Adam and Eve

For this blog, we’re going all the way back to the beginning in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis, we are told that God met daily with Adam and Eve to fellowship with them. 

 And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.. Gen 3:8

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and

replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and

over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And

God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face

of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to

you, it shall be for meat. Genesis 1:28-29.

 What were Adam and Eve talking to God about before the Fall? Well, before we can figure that out, we need to take a look at what they weren’t doing:

They lacked nothing, so they     weren’t asking for provision. No, they simply enjoyed what had been     lovingly provided for them. In the same way, when we’re in the presence of     God, praising Him is thanking Him for what He’s already done. It’s resting     in His provision and trusting that He will meet our needs. 

They hadn’t sinned yet, so they     weren’t asking for forgiveness. They had no feeling of shame or guilt to     overcome. There was no need to try and hide any part of themselves; they     could behold God without hesitation. Their eyes were NOT on themselves.

They hadn’t relinquished their     authority to the devil, so they weren’t asking for deliverance. They were     in perfect union with God and weren’t suffering from any type of     oppression that needed to be dealt with before they could focus on God.

They had been given dominion     over the garden, so they had no fear and they were not asking for     protection.

 Yet, Adam and Eve had constant, daily fellowship with God. He came to them every day and walked and talked with them. What could they have been talking about?

 Last week, one of our definitions of the word praise is to “highly esteem.” If you have ever spent time around little children, their curiosity and innocence is heart-melting. When God fellowshipped with Adam and Eve, they adored and reverenced Him. They asked questions and hung on His every word. Later, they entered into deception, but in the beginning, Adam and Eve esteemed God above everything else.

 Adam and Eve’s willing appreciation of God was a reflection of their being made in His image. So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created He them. Genesis 1:27.

 They could choose to praise, or not to praise. And their praise was all the sweeter to God because it came from a willing heart and not from a robotic response. 

 Redeemed From The Curse of The Law

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”) ~ Gal 3:13

 We have been redeemed from the curse, so we should be able to praise God in much the same way as the first human beings before the Fall. I say “much in the same way” because we’re in an even better position than Adam and Eve because we can know God in a more intimate way than they ever did. 

 I can imagine some of you might be scratching your heads wondering how we could know God even better when they had the chance to walk with Him in the garden daily and talk with Him.

 That’s a great question and one that we are going to cover….next week! We’re going to pause here, because we’ve given you a lot to meditate on in part two of this series. But we promise you, we will pick this up next week and the wait will be worth it! We encourage you to remember the scriptures as you take time this week to praise God and enjoy that time of fellowship with Him. 

We’ll be back next week with part three. Until then, we trust God to keep watch over you and be your refuge and strength.

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Praise Your Way to Victory

Praising Your Way to Victory

 Right now we are in a time when praise is of the utmost importance. Scripture tells us that we are in the last days, and while there is nothing new under the sun, this is the first time that many in this generation have experienced the level of adversity that we have seen in the last several months. The news is full of discouraging events, and endeavor to get our attention off of the One who is our refuge and strength, an ever-present hope in times of trouble. Praising God is one of the most important parts of your relationship with your Heavenly Creator. 

 Many articles and commentaries have been written over the years about praise, and we are thankful to those who have gone before us to bring understanding to this topic. The purpose of this blog, and the ones to follow in this series, is to give revelation of scriptural praise that exalts the name of Jesus above all circumstances. Praise that brings victory to the believer and honor to our Lord and Savior. So much of our praise is rooted in the soulish realm of carnality, and at best brings only temporary relief from the cares of this life. There is, however, a level of praise that involves entering into the presence of God through the revelation of Jesus Christ that allows the believer to praise in spirit and in truth, which guarantees victory in every situation!

 So Dear One, read on to discover how you can praise your way to victory!

 What is Praise?

In part one of our series, we’re going to take a look at what praise is, as defined by God! We also want to look at how God views worshippers. In future blogs, we are also going to look at what praise isn’t, and the different types of praise recorded in scripture. This is very important for the believer, because we want to come before the throne of God understanding the difference. It’s not that God will be upset or mad with us if we don’t fully have the correct revelation, but it always blesses God when we do things His way, as well as yields a better result for us! 

 According to ?? [please provide clarification on your source], praise means to comment, to approve, to give a favorable opinion, to glorify, and to highly esteem. When we praise God, we are honoring, esteeming very highly, and expressing our admiration of Him. Praise is an environment that is conducive to the presence of God. Psalm 100:4 tells us that we “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise (Emphasis mine).” The psalmist is using the illustration of the temple to help us understand that we can come before the throne of Heaven via having the right heart attitude. 

 God enjoys and basks in the praise of His people! In his excellent post entitled The Power of Praise, Jentzen Franklin states, 

 “You know what perfume does. It makes you smell nice: it draws people to you. In the Bible, incense represents people's praise to God. There was an altar of incense in the Old Testament Tabernacle. When the priest poured the perfume on the hot coals of the altar of incense, the scent would go up to heaven. The Bible says that God received the incense offering as a sweet-smelling savor of praise. (see Leviticus 2:) 

Of course, under the New Covenant, we don't have to sprinkle incense on a fire. All we have to do is open up our mouths and give God the fruit of our lips, which is the fragrance of Praise in His nostrils. (see Hebrews 13:15.) When we praise God verbally, it's like spraying the most expensive perfume or cologne; it goes up to heaven and creates an aroma that gets God's attention. Praise is more than making a noise. When you praise Him, you invite the presence of God, the calm of God, and the serenity of God into your life. Praise is called the oil of myrrh. Remember the wise men who came to Bethlehem when Jesus was born? They brought frankincense and myrrh, which denote praise and adoration. Learn to be a worshipper.”

 Friends of God

Beloved, God has given us so much. Praise and worship are the only things we can truly give to God. And really, they are the natural response to the love poured out for us by our Creator. King David understood this. He says in Psalm 116:17: 

What shall I give to the Lord for all He has done for me? I will offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving.

 Praise was one of the reasons David was chosen to be king over all of Israel. The following scriptures tell us that because David was a worshipper, he was a man after God’s own heart:

 But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be captain over his people. ~1 Sam 13:14

 I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all of my will. ~Acts 13:22

 This does not mean David was perfect, but he was a man of praise. Even as a youth, David spent his time praising God and composing psalms to Him while caring for the sheep in the wilderness. It is believed that Psalm 23, one of the most memorized and beloved psalms, was written during this time. 

 How Does God Respond to Praise?

Brothers and Sisters, God basks in the praises of His people! Scripture goes as far as to say that He inhabits the praises of His people! Stop for a moment and imagine if you can, that the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and of all the stars and galaxies takes up residence in the moment that the believer is worshipping Him.

 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. ~Psalm 22:3

 We’ve given you a lot to meditate on in part one of this series. We encourage you to remember the scriptures as you take time this week to praise God and enjoy time with Him. We’ll be back next week with part two. Until then, we trust God to keep watch over you and be your refuge and strength.

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Angels &co

We will be talking about angels

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Hi Everyone!