Thoughts for Life: #63 How God Uses Your Praise

Dr. Wesley L. Duewel- Praise renews Your strength. Waiting on God and hoping in Him renew you spiritually and often physically also (Is. 40:29-31.) Praising God is often even more effective than prayer in refreshing, reviving, and empowering you.

Every Christian at times experiences a sense of spiritual dryness. Certainly, after a spiritual battle, there is mental and emotional exhaustion. (Google image, I will sing to the Lord)

Again and again we need an outpouring of the Spirit. Praise brings a change of mood. Praise opens an artesian well of faith and joy. Praise is one of God's means for your inner renewal (2 Cor. 4:16; Ps. 103:1-5). When you are sincere in your praise of God, praise is holy, God-pleasing, and powerful.

You will be far stronger spiritually if you build praise into your daily walk with the Lord. You will be healthier physically by making praise to the Lord a part of your lifestyle. As you praise the Lord, worry flees.

Praise drives away frustration, tension, and depression. Praise drives out the darkness and turns on God's light. Praise cleanses the atmosphere of Satan's suggestions of doubt, criticism, and irritation. Praise gives you a heavenly transfusion.

A. B. Simpson called praise both a physical tonic and a wholesome stimulant. Praise will change the atmosphere of your life, your home, and your church. A word of praise or a chorus or hymn of praise can make a home devotional time come to life. You will be daily growing in spiritual strength if you plan and practice praise constantly.

Spurgeon said, "When we bless God for mercies, we prolong them; and when we bless Him for miseries, we usually end them."

Praise clarifies your vision. Satan will try to inject his perspective into your mind before you realize it. He delights in painting things black. He magnifies molehills into mountains, darkens your sky with gloom, and makes difficulties seem like impossibilities.

He wants you to evaluate yourself wrongly. He accuses you of being unimportant to God, too weak to be used by God, a failure. He makes his forces of evil seem much larger, much wiser, and much stronger that they really are.

Begin to praise God, and you can shake off Satan's suggestions. Praise God, and the Holy Spirit will clarify your vision. Satan's perspectives are always deceitful; he only wants you to see part of the picture. Praise the Lord, and the Holy Spirit will begin to give you heaven's perspective. Praise cuts the Devil down to size and helps you recognize the falsity and hollowness of his bluster.

Praise gives you the Holy Spirit's overview of how God has been working and how God's answer is nearing. Praise lifts you above the dust of the battle and lets you look down upon it from Jesus' perspective as He sits enthroned at the right hand of the Father. Praise gives the lie to Satan's claims and shows you what God's angels see.

Praise cleanses your soul. You would be amazed to know how much prayer is hindered by the self-life of Christians. Carnality keeps thousands of prayers from rising higher that the ceiling. "If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened" (Ps. 66:18).

Sinful thoughts, carnal attitudes, and self-centeredness destroy the power of prayer. These close God's ear to our words and desires.

Scripture often speaks of people praying and God not hearing. According to James, our relation to God must be true and our motive pure before God will hear us (4:3). Pride cancels many prayers (4:6). A critical attitude, unforgiveness, and bitterness hidden in the heart block prayer. If you want your prayers to be answered, let the Holy Spirit purify you (4:6-10).

You can be preserved in purity by the spirit of praise. When Satan comes with such suggestions to your mind, cleanse your thoughts by praise. Praise turns your eyes away from yourself to Jesus. Praise washes away negativism, self-pity, self-centeredness, and the beginnings of self-idolatry. Praise makes you so beautifully clean that God accepts you as you approach the throne of grace.

(Chapter 18, pp. 139-141, italics added for emphasis)

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Let's pray-

Father, Your wisdom is what we have need of at home and at work, in all our relationships. May the Holy Spirit remind us that the fear of You is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding.

Help us remember to reverence You and to depart from evil. We appreciate Your gift of wisdom, and depend upon Your mercy is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.

We need the outpouring of Your Spirit again and again to bring a change of mood. Our praising You opens an artesian well of faith and joy. May we be sincere in our praises to You, as holy praise is pleasing and powerful to You.

We need to learn that praise gives us the Spirit's overview of how You have been working and how Your answer is nearing. Help us look down from Your throne to have Christ's perspective, as He sits enthroned at Your right hand.

We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.

Today's Bible verses-

Acts 4:12 "And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

Philippians 4:6-7 (NLT)

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Quotes for today-

~ Monica La Rose- "On our own, it's easy to feel insecure and fragile, pummeled by our fears and insecurities. But as we grow in our true identity in Christ (Eph. 4:22-24), we can experience deep peace with God and each other (v. 3), nourished and sustained by Christ's power and beauty (vv. 15-16). [ODB devotional, 5/1/2020]

“Donald Trump has done more to advance America’s national security interests in four years than any president in decades. He defeated the Islamic State, crushed Iran’s terrorist network, tightened our southern border, made America energy independent, stood up to China for unfair trade and investment practices, prodded our European and Asian allies to contribute more toward our common defense, rebuilt the American military, and brokered historic peace agreements among Israel and the Sunni Gulf states,” KT McFarland President Trump’s first Deputy National Security Adviser said in a statement to TTN. “Four more years will let President Trump finish the job. A Biden presidency would return us to the same failed foreign policies of the past, appeasing our adversaries and dooming America to decline.”

Words of wisdom-

~ When we see the various things God has created, we stand in wonder at the mighty sea to the simple, but complex butterfly. We are to remember their Creator is more of a wonder than they are! Let's see His beauty and Majesty in all that surrounds us, and be thankful.

Today's Popular post-

Begin With Praise

Andrew Murray- "Let us begin by reading the benediction of the letter to the Ephesians. It reveals the true life of spiritual blessing, and we can cry and make it our own. Let us, in quiet meditation, wait on the Holy Spirit to work faith in our innermost consciousness."

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