Tag Archives: Praise

Psalms 100:4 Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise, give thanks to Him and bless His name.

This verse has altered the way that I pray. This is a command verse describing how to approach prayer. The FIRST thing that we are to do in our times of prayer is to have a time of thanksgiving and praise. It can be a simple statement of acknowledging God. It can be a simple, “Thank You” for being there and for being available. It can be a verbal acknowledgement of His mercy, or grace, or kindness, or love, or a hundred other wonderful character traits of the Father.

Starting out prayer time in this way recalibrates my attitude towards God. It also slows me down from a ‘me-centric’ prayer life. Instead of coming to God with my needs, wants and desires, it forces me to think on God. It puts my petitions, intercessions and supplications in their proper setting.

Psa. 92 says, “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to Thy name O Most High, to declare thy steadfast love in the morning and Thy faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and harp, to the melody of the lyre…” Not only does this verse provide proper instruction on ‘how to approach the King of Kings and Lord of Lords’, but it is simply GOOD for us to do so.

When you add Psa. 100:2 to the mix, “Come into his presence with singing…”, the entry point of praying to the Father is to give thanks, praise AND to sing. I am trying to do this in my private devotions. It is definitely a major transformation of my Quiet Time. It also involves MORE than just my head or the saying of silent prayers. My devotional and prayer life is becoming more vibrant, involving my heart, my mind, my voice and my soul.

This is ultimately what God wants from all of us all the time. Jesus commanded us to “love the Lord your God with ALL your heart, soul, mind and strength…” Psalms 100 gives us a number of practical clues and instruction on worshiping this way. “Come into His presence with singing…Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise….”

4044 days ago Comments Off on How to Begin a Prayer PERMALINK

Psalms 146:1,2 Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, O My soul. I will praise the Lord as long as I live, I will sing praises to my God while I have being…

I love these two verses. Four times the word Praise is used. The first time is a genuine expression of simple worship of God
The second time, he is calling on all the parts of his body, both seen and unseen to unite together to Praise the Lord. He is calling on his brain and his thoughts; he is calling on his flesh and body; he is calling on his heart and his emotions; he is calling on his will and his ambitions; he is calling on strengths, gifts and talents to unite together as one to Praise the Lord. He does NOT want to be half hearted or only partially involved. He wants it to be in whole-hearted praise.
Next, he also does not want to be ‘on and off’ again in his praise. He wants his praise to be continuous, ‘as long as I live’.
Lastly, I get the impression that until his dying breath, he will praise the Lord. “I will sing praises to my God WHILE I HAVE BEING….” Not only will he be praising the Lord, but he will do it with song. “I will SING PRAISES…”
Throughout the day, at various times, temptations will come along with various accusations from the evil one. If I don’t control either the temptations or the accusations, I will inevitably fall into sin. One way to overcome these attacks is through PRAISE. Psa. 22:3 says, “…The Lord inhabits the praises of His people…” When I intentionally start singing a praise song to God, my whole being can quickly come under submission to a Spirit-led song of praise. Satan hates this and will flee. God will envelop our minds and thoughts and we can quickly get re-calibrated back to spiritual things. It ‘gets our heads back into the game’; it snaps us out of the Satanic stupor that leads to sin and broken relationship with God.
If you haven’t memorized a verse in a while, this would be a good one to work on. Say it out loud 5-8 times. Within 3 minutes you will have it memorized.

4056 days ago Comments Off on With My Dying Breath… Psa. 146:1,2 PERMALINK