April, 2007
Moving from Prayer to Praise
Prayer series #4
Psalm 63:1-11
INTRODUCTION: Most of the psalms are prayers and most of the prayers include praise. Throughout the Psalms you will notice the relationship between prayer and praise from David whether he was in a mountaintop experience or whether he was depressed and in a crisis situation. In Psalm 63 he happened to be in the barren Desert of Judah. He had problems and he was lonely. He probably felt he was hanging on by his fingernails. He was not standing in a beautiful sanctuary with worshipful praise and prayer time. It was the hard realities of “Monday Morning.” He had desperate things to pray about as he was surrounded by his enemies, but he did more than pray. Throughout these experiences he moved from prayer to praise and thanksgiving. I want to focus on some reasons why it is important to move from prayer to praise for us today. You may have your own ideas about what praise is. As we approach a new week, I believe that we need prayer and praise in our lives every bit as much as David or even more so. But in a way, I think that prayer accompanied by praise is very foreign to most Christians as far as our daily lives go. We compartmentalize Sunday morning “worship service” and Monday morning “work” or other activities of the week. Some people think that praise happens exclusively at church and some people think that it is when you stand for 30 minutes and say, “Thank you Jesus” or “Praise the Lord” over and over repetitiously. Praising the Lord is far more than what we do inside the four walls of the sanctuary as shown by David in the Psalms. He remembered when he was praising the Lord in the sanctuary, but it was a part of his daily life in a variety of places and situations.
What is praise? Praise someone said “is simply the response of faith to God’s perfection and anticipates His deliverance.” Moving from prayer to praise shows that we are no longer focused on the “problem” but focused on the answer or solution to the problem. As we pour out the problem to the Lord as David did in this Psalm, there should be a time when we have prayed about the problem enough. Old timers used to call it “Praying Through.” Have you discussed your problem sufficiently with the Lord that you can move on to the next stage--that of thanking and praising Him for His intervention and then moving on to make preparation for the answer?
ILLUSTRATION: Sometimes when I am discussing something with Walter I will talk and talk and talk. Hash and rehash it over and over again. Then I bring it up again and rehash it some more. Walter will say, “I thought that was settled,” and I say, “No, I’m still rehashing it!”
When we begin to praise the Lord and thank Him for the answer, it is a good indication that we have quit “rehashing” and that it is “settled.” There comes a time when we need to move from prayer to praise. Today I want to give you three practical reasons why I feel that scripture urges us to do this.
1. The Lord Tells Us To: Scripture teaches us in many places to praise the Lord for this is the WILL OF GOD. I Thess. 5:17, 18 says, “Pray without ceasing, in everything GIVE THANKS for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” There is a close link between prayer and praise here. It is an inseparable part of prayer. You can think of a bird trying to fly with two wings, but if one wing is broken, it can’t fly. So it is with prayer without moving to praise. Praise functions with prayer and puts us into His will. Remember when we talked about the Lord’s prayer--thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is one way that we can come into His will for our individual lives.
Story: Alexander Whyte, the Scottish preacher, always began his prayers with an expression of gratitude. One cold, miserable day his people wondered what he would say. He prayed, “We thank Thee, O Lord, that it is not always like this.”
You may say, “What if I don’t feel like praising the Lord when I pray?” “My problems are weighing me down. I’m just beside myself. All I can do is pray and wring my hands.” Scripture has an answer for us when we don’t feel like praising the Lord.
Hebrews 13:15 says, “let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His Name.” This means throughout our week--praise the Lord in little bits and pieces as we go from task to task. We can’t stand in church all week long praising the Lord. No, it is a part of our daily life. The Message Bible says, “The Lord takes pleasure in acts of worship--a different kind of sacrifice--that takes place in the kitchen and workplace and on the streets.”
As you praise the Lord--you decide to do this as an act of your WILL, not necessarily because you FEEL like it. In this Psalm David was in a “dry and weary land where there was no water”--no refreshing. It would not have been easy to automatically praise the Lord there.
But we need to train ourselves to praise the Lord in a variety of moods and circumstances; and when we “offer even a sacrifice of praise,” we find that it is pleasing to the Lord--maybe even more so than the times when it is so easy to do so.
2. Strength and Deliverance in Praise: David said “earnestly I seek you--My soul thirsts for you, God.” David shows us a key word here. He said EARNESTLY I will seek you.
We might say, “Oh, I don’t feel like going to church today. Oh, I don’t feel like praying. Don’t feel like reading the Bible. Don’t feel like praising the Lord. I’ll do it another day.” David could certainly have felt this way in a dry and weary land. He said, “there have been times when I have seen you in the sanctuary; and because I know about your love, my LIPS will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live. And I’ll even lift up my hands.” In spite of the dry and weary land, he offered the sacrifice of praise as he prayed. It was an inseparable part of his prayer.
Psalm 22:3 tells us that the “Lord inhabits the praises of His people.”
Psalm 33:1 says, “praise is comely (fitting for the upright.)”
Psalm 50:23 “Whoso offered praise glorifieth me.”
John 9:24 “Give God the praise.”
Psalm 71:14 “I will yet praise thee more and more.”
Praise brings strength to the weary and is refreshing.
Psalm 50:14 says to “offer unto God thanksgiving and call upon him in the day of trouble.” He responds by saying, “I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me.”
When David added praise to his prayers in this dry and weary land, I believe that he became infused with new strength. He received a psychological deliverance long before he saw the actual deliverance from his enemies and from his circumstances. He was not beat down and oppressed. He looked up and saw hope. The joy began to return to him. He said, “My soul followed hard (close) after thee,” and the last three verses speaks of God bringing deliverance from his enemies. This Psalm ends triumphantly.
I believe we often need a psychological deliverance more than we need a deliverance from our problems. We need hope. We need strength.
When you pray do you feel new strength and hope come to you? When you feel the stresses of life crowding in on you, do you feel God lifting your head up? Another one of the Psalms tell us that the “Lord is the lifter of our heads.” Praise included in our prayers brings about this psychological deliverance from all the things that press in on us. He restores our joy. Nehemiah said, “the joy of the Lord is my strength” (Neh. 8:10).
Psalm 9:1-4 speaks of deliverance in this way. “Our enemies will be turned back by the presence of God. David begins by saying, “I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart. I will be glad and rejoice. When mine enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence.”
The problems we have will begin to shrink when we bring the presence of the Lord into our situation. They will no longer seem insurmountable like giants. Deliverance and strength will come to us.
Psalm 9:4 says that praise causes God to maintain “my right and cause.” This means that we don’t have to fret and worry about what people think and do. God is the one who justifies us before others and brings us through.”
3. To Bring Expectation and Preparation for the Answer: Our inward attitude becomes our outward expression. When we praise God we help ourselves by expanding our awareness of who He is. Praise brings about a sense of expectancy. Living in a sense of praise helps us to await the answer. It is on the way. It is just around the corner. As we focus on praising the Lord, it keeps us from foolish doubting self talk. Ephesians 5:4 says, “neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor jesting which are not convenient but rather giving of thanks.”
Psalm 147:1 says, “Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises to our God--how pleasant and fitting to praise him.”
Why? Rev. 12:11
We had a preacher one time who quoted this scripture by saying, “You overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the Word of your testimony.” What does this mean?
You overcome--you become victorious by what Jesus did for you AND by what you say about it. Your praises and thanks to God along with your prayers show that you agree with God. You are not just begging and begging and begging for God to do something, but you are beginning the application of faith. Believe you receive when you pray. Like Abraham, “Count those things that be not as though they were, and they will come into being” (Romans 4:17).
CONCLUSION: Praise along with prayer is needed in order to
1. Show our obedience to do what God says to do.
2. To bring strength and deliverance
3. To bring expectation and preparation for the answer.
Let us begin to praise the Lord not only in church but in our daily lives this week.
Let us pray:
