Why We Do What We Do!
Why Do We Praise Him?
Psalms 63: 3-5
Over the next several weeks we are going to be answering the question why do we do what we do here at Spencer Christian Church. We are going to answer the question, why do we sing songs of praise, why do we worship each week, why do we take communion each week, why do we take up an offering each week, why to we have a sermon each week and why is there an invitation each week. I think this will be both a good refresher of why we do what we do and also will be a good time of teaching as well. Today we start the series on why do we sing songs of praises each week. If you have your Bibles then turn with me to Psalm 63:3-5 and let’s see what God has in store for us.
3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. 4 I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. 5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
There was a preacher who was trying to sell his horse. A potential buyer came by the church for a test drive. Before you start the preacher said, this horse only responds to church talk. Go, is Praise the Lord! And Stop is Amen! So the man on the Horse says Praise The Lord and the horse begins to trot the man again says praise the Lord and the horse begins to gallop
Suddenly there is a cliff right in front of the horse and the man yells amen!! The horse stops just at the edge of the cliff the man wipes the sweat from his brow and says “Praise the Lord!!”
There is a difference between praise and worship. During the praise time we sing about God, praise relates to God’s character, who He is, we sing about his mercies, about His grace, but when we worship Him we sing to Him.
One of the things that distinguishes the people of God from all others is praise.
We, who have been born again, filled and baptized with the Spirit posses a burning and blazing desire to praise the Lord. Praise is an natural behavior for the true child of God.
Have you ever just been driving and find yourself singing praises to God? Or maybe while your working at your desk you find yourself praising Him? We find ourselves constantly praising him for life, health and strength. We praise Him for family, friends and even sometimes our enemies. We praise Him for our Mountains, and His mercies. We praise him for our troubles and His triumphs, for Ups and Downs. We praise Him in spite of life’s mishaps!
See we all can recall those moments when nobody else was around and tears start to run down our faces, joy floods our soul like sea billows rolling and deep from within us comes the sound of praise. When we truly realize who HE is and what HE has done there is with in us a burning to celebrate the awe of His presence, and His power.
For us to understand why we praise Him, then we first need to understand what Praise is. Praise comes when we come into a knowledge about God’s power. Let me put it another way. Praise is the response we have when we come to know who God really is. When we come to know Him for ourselves, and find out that He is all we need and then some. When we figure this out then we can’t help but to praise Him. So why do we praise Him in song and in word each week?
1. Because He is worthy to be praised!
God is worthy of our Praise. Psalms 18:3 3 I will call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies.
All believers are commanded to praise God! In fact, Isaiah 43:21 explains that praise is one reason we were created, "This people I have formed for Myself; they shall declare My praise." Hebrews 13:15 confirms this: "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise - the fruit of lips that confess his name."
Praise originates in a heart full of love toward God. Deuteronomy 6:5 says, "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. We know that we love God because He first loved us! Without God’s love, any praise you can offer is hollow. Love, born from a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, is an essential part of your praise.
We should not only pray to God but also learn all the more to praise God. We need to see the importance of praise from the very beginning of our Christian walk. We must praise God continuously. David received grace from God to praise seven times a day. It is a good exercise, a very good lesson, and a very good spiritual practice to praise God every day. We should learn to praise God when we get up early in the morning. We should learn to praise Him when we encounter problems, when we are at a meeting, or when we are alone. We should praise God at least seven times a day. Do not let David beat us in his praise.
One day everyone is going to praise God! The Bible says that when He comes again, all mankind will praise Him and acknowledge Him as Lord. He is King over all the earth. When we know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, our hearts long to praise His name. Philippians 2:9-11 tells us His name represents His being, describing who He is, "Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
The Bible also records:
• All nature praises God (Psalm 148:7-10).
• The sun, moon, and stars praise Him (Psalm 19:1 and 148:3).
• The angels praise Him (Psalm 148:2).
• Even the wrath of men is used by God to praise Himself (Psalm 76:10).
• Children are to be taught to praise God (Psalm 78:4).
2. We Need to Praise Him in our Victories
We have to see that praising is the way to overcome spiritual attacks. Many people say that Satan is afraid of the prayers of God’s children; he flees whenever God’s children kneel down to pray. This is why he often attacks God’s children and frustrates them from praying. This is a common attack. But we will point out another fact: Satan’s greatest attacks are not aimed at prayers; his greatest attacks are aimed at praise. This does not mean that Satan does not attack prayers.
The moment a Christian prays, Satan begins to attack. It is very easy to talk to people, but the moment one prays, Satan comes with problems. He will make one feel that it is hard to pray. This is a fact. But Satan does not attack just prayer; he also attacks the praise of God’s children. The ultimate goal of Satan is to stop all praises to God. Prayer is a warfare, but praise is a victory. Prayer signifies spiritual warfare, but praise signifies spiritual victory. Whenever we praise, Satan flees. Therefore, Satan hates our praising the most. He will use all his strength to stop our praising. God’s children are foolish if they stop praising when they suffer under adverse environments and downtrodden feelings. But as they come to know God more, they will find that even a Philippian jail can become a place of songs (Acts 16:25). Paul and Silas were praising God inside the jail cell. Their praise broke loose all the jail doors.
Jail doors were opened twice in Acts. Once they were opened to Peter and once to Paul. In Peter’s case, the church prayed fervently for him, and an angel opened the door and brought him out (12:3-12). In Paul’s case, he and Silas sang hymns of praise to God, and all the doors opened and the chains broke. The jailer believed in the Lord on that day, and his whole family was saved in a joyful way (16:19-34). Paul and Silas offered the sacrifice of praise in the jail. The wounds on their bodies were not yet healed; their pain was not soothed. Their feet were in the stocks, and they were shut in an inner jail of the Roman Empire. What was there to be joyful about? What was there to sing about? But there were two persons with inspiring spirits, who had risen above everything. They saw that God was still sitting in the heavens; He had not changed at all. They might have changed, their environment might have changed, their feelings might have changed, and their bodies might have been suffering, but God was still sitting on the throne. He was still worthy of their blessings. Our brothers, Paul and Silas, were praying, singing, and praising God. This kind of praise, which arises out of pain and loss, is a sacrifice of praise. This kind of praise is a victory.
Many times praise works where prayer fails. This is a very basic principle. If you cannot pray, why not praise? Whenever you run out of strength to pray and you find your spirit heavily broken, wounded, or sagging, praise Him. If you cannot pray, try to praise. We invariably think that we should pray when the burden is heavy and praise when the burden is over. But please bear in mind that there are times when the burden is so heavy that you cannot pray. That is the time for you to praise
3. We need to Praise because it strengthens our Faith
Psalm 106:12 is a very precious word. “Then they believed His words; they sang His praise.” This was the condition of the children of Israel in the wilderness. They believed, and they sang. They believed, so they praised. Praise has a basic ingredient—faith. You cannot praise vainly with the mouth. You cannot say in a flippant way, “I thank the Lord! I praise the Lord!” You must believe. Only after you have believed can you praise. When you have some problems or when you are sorrowful, you pray, and as you pray, a kind of faith rises up in your heart. At that moment you open your mouth to praise.
This is the living way, but do not do this in a light manner. Living Ministries puts it this way, “When a man is faced with a problem, he should pray. But as soon as he finds a little faith, as soon as he begins to believe in God and in His greatness, power, compassion, and glory, he should begin to praise. If a man acquires faith but does not follow it up with praise, he will soon find that his faith is gone. Once you have faith within, you should praise. If you do not praise, you will lose your faith after a while. You may have faith now. But after a while, you will lose that faith. Therefore, we must learn to praise.
We must learn speak and maybe sing words of praise. We have to open our mouths to praise. We should have not only a mind to praise but also actual audible words of praise. You have to praise God in the face of all your problems and in the face of Satan. You should say, “O Lord! I praise You!” Do this until you turn from having no feeling to having feeling, or from having a feeble feeling to a strong feeling. Do this until you turn from little faith to full faith. The difference is this when you make up in the morning do you say God morning Lord, or do you say Good Lord it’s morning.
Once God’s glory fills your eyes, you can believe. Once His glory fills your spirit, you can praise. You have to see that God is above everything and is worthy of your praise. When you praise, Satan flees away. Sometimes we need to pray. But when our prayer reaches the point where we have faith and assurance, we know that the Lord has answered our prayer, and we should praise: “Lord! I thank You! I praise You! This matter is already settled!” Do not wait for the matter to be over before you praise. We have to praise as soon as we believe. Do not wait until the enemy runs away to sing. We have to sing to chase him away. We have to learn to praise by faith. When we praise Him in faith, the enemy will be defeated and driven away. We have to believe before we can praise. First we believe and praise, and then we will experience victory.
In his book, The One-Minute Manager, Kenneth Blanchard recommends developing the practice of "one-minute praising," where the manager (or parent, spouse, etc.) tries to "catch someone doing something right" and then spend a full sixty seconds praising that person for the good deed. This is a lot more difficult than it appears. Where we might not find it difficult to criticize someone for even sixty minutes, many times we find it almost impossible to praise someone sincerely for a full minute. And this is true for the church as well. It seems that it can be hard for some people to Praise God. Even in our prayer time, we can sure list off the prayer needs but I think we find it difficult to come up with praises. The more we praise God for everything that He has given to us the less we will criticize others. The more we praise Him in the church the more we will see His hand and Spirit moving through the church.
Closing:
An African American minister by the name of Robert Dyson gives us an awesome picture of praise. Listen to what he says: “We praise HIM because He has been doctor when we were sick. We praise HIM because has been a Lawyer when we were in trouble, and HE has been mother for the motherless and father for the fatherless. We praise HIM because HE has been shelter from the rain, and medicine for our pain. We praise HIM because HE has been a rope of hope when we were sinking in the seas of sadness and sorrow. We praise Him because when we had fallen and couldn’t get it, HE came where we were and put His loving arms all around us and lifted us from the muck and mire of sin.
We need to praise Him, and that is why we spend a lot of time in our services praising Him because He is worthy of our praise. We have had a lot of victories and so we need to praise Him in those victories and We praise Him because the more we praise Him the more our Faith increases.
