I will sing of your love and justice; to you, LORD, I will sing praise. Psalm 101:1

 “Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose.” –Acts 16:26.

I will sing of your love and justice; to you, LORD, I will sing praise. Psalm 101:1

Have you Ever Been to Malta?

Remember when Paul crashed on Malta
After a long and frightening storm?
He kept his faith in God alive
While his shipmates showed only scorn.

Paul never questioned God’s reasons
He simply went where God led
For he had faith in God’s goodness
And chose to praise Him instead.

Have you ever been to Malta?
When you were drowning without knowing why?
You wanted God to explain Himself
But He just left you alone to cry.

Have you ever been stuck on Malta?
Wondering just what you could have done wrong?
Because you just watched love walk out the door
When you thought your marriage was strong.

Have you had your own private Malta?
When you were begging God for His reasons?
When He seemed unavailable to take your call
To say you couldn’t survive this dark season?

Well, God doesn’t operate on reason.
So, reason is not what you need
You need to focus on who God is
And not on what’s making you bleed.

What do we know about God’s nature?
We know He will never change.
He is good and faithful, perfect and whole
No matter the depth of our pain.

Do you remember Paul and Silas in prison?
They knew nothing about their fate.
But they didn’t cry to get God’s attention
It was praise that opened the gates.

So next time you’re trying to leave Malta
And you want God to end the delays,
Remember He rarely responds to crying
But almost always responds to praise.
Linda Troxell © 02/10/2020

Have you ever been to Malta? That probably seems like a bit of a random question with which to begin a Christian blog about praise.

Unless, of course, you are familiar with Paul’s stay in Malta. If you are then you would probably assume this blog is about Paul and Malta. But you would be wrong.

The only part of Paul’s time in Malta that relates to my topic today is how he dealt with this very frightening experience.

We can learn an important lesson from how Paul and the other Apostles managed difficulty, fear and danger, as well as good fortune, happiness, and celebration; that is everything that life brought to them. They managed it all with gratitude and praise.

Remember what the Bible says in James, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” –James 1:17.

And don’t forget what Paul taught Timothy, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; –1 Timothy 4:4

This tells us that everything that comes our way in life is either already good or God can use it for good. That means that there is nothing for which we cannot be thankful.

I know it is difficult to grasp the concept of our trials as joy (James 1:2) or being grateful for difficult times. But learning how to do so will be life-changing.

Please don’t think that I am saying that I am always joyous in difficult times, because I’m not. To be honest, I often struggle with discouragement and disappointment when I receive bad news, or when something I really want doesn’t materialize.

When the enemy uses fear as a weapon against me, I often have a difficult time even keeping my lips above water.

However, I have learned how to deal with many difficulties and fearful situations calmly and peacefully if not joyously.

I would never have developed the skill of remaining positive and calm in the face of difficulty, even to the smallest degree that I have, if I had not discovered the magic of praising God.

It may sound odd to hear praise referred to as magic. But that is exactly what it seemed like when I discovered how it can change things and change them quickly.

Simply praising God can dispel fear or discouragement and inject hope in any situation. Sometimes it changes the situation and sometimes it changes us, but either way, nothing is the same once praise is introduced.

Take, for instance, Paul and his unintended sail to Malta. The ship Paul was sailing on was not headed to Malta.  But a huge storm, a Nor’easter, blew them off course and stranded them at sea for many days without food.

The crew, after being soaked by seawater and without food for who knows how long, were cold, tired, and hungry. They were feeling hopeless and were about to give up.

But Paul was not discouraged. He had spent that time praising God and thanking Him for each day they remained alive; believing Him for their delivery.

Then one night he was visited by an angel who told him they would all survive. Paul told the crew what the angel had said and assured them that they could trust his God. And he went on singing praises to Him.

They did, indeed, survive after a harrowing shipwreck on the island. Maybe the story would have turned out the same way had Paul not praised God throughout the storm. Maybe not. But we can be sure that without his singing and praising God, Paul would not have spent that time at peace, but discouraged and ready to give up like the crew.

I’m pretty sure that at least one person who reads this will think, “Yeah, but when something bad happens to me, I don’t feel like praising God, I feel mad at Him.”

Let me tell you one of the best things about using praise to change things, it works whether or not we feel like it or believe it if we just stick with it. That’s because, praise changes our thoughts, which in turn changes our feelings, which then changes our entire outlook on the world.

So, if we are mad at God because something bad or painful has happened and the last thing we feel like doing is to praise Him, we should just do it anyway.  

I can promise you that If you just begin to praise God despite your feelings, before you know it, you will begin to feel it and then to believe it.

I believe that we should begin every prayer to God by praising Him. However, like everyone, I sometimes have a difficult time feeling like I want to or even can praise Him. When that happens, I start by listening to my favorite worship songs. I’ve never been able to resist singing along and after a few songs, I’m feeling more like I want to praise God.

Sometimes, if I have the time, I go on by singing the songs by myself. Don’t think that simply singing is not praise, it is. That’s why the music part of the church service is called praise and worship. We can go on to say words of praise after or instead of singing, but it isn’t necessary. God loves music and singing. I will sing of your love and justice; to you, LORD, I will sing praise. Psalm 101:1

If you still need more convincing, about the power of praise, let’s look at another example from Paul’s experience. When Paul and Silas were in Philippi they were beaten and thrown into prison.

They knew nothing of their eventual fate nor how long they would be kept in a dark, damp, cell with their legs in shackles. It would have been easy to just give in to discouragement and give up.

But instead, Paul began to pray and sing praises to the Lord and Silas joined in. The original Greek indicates that this singing and praying was continuous and not just one song or prayer. It also indicates that the other prisoners were listening intently to something they had surely not heard before in this, or any, prison.

“Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose.” –Acts 16:26. When the earthquake subsided, the jailer was so distraught about losing the prisoners he was about to take his own life. Then, Paul called out to him that all of the prisoners were still right there in the jail.

The prison guard was so taken by the faith Paul and Silas showed, amidst their suffering, the earthquake, and all of the prisoners staying, that he converted right there and then taking Jesus as his savior. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved– you and your household.” Acts 16:30-31

Now, did God send the earthquake to free Paul and Silas? Well, if He did, they didn’t comply with God’s wishes. They chose instead to stay and encourage all of the prisoners to stay as well so that the jailer would not be punished. In turn, this caused the jailer to become a believer.

So, maybe God sent the earthquake to convert the jailer, or to reveal Himself to the prisoners. But no matter why God sent the earthquake, if He sent it at all, He didn’t send it in response to Paul and Silas moping and crying and complaining. He sent it in response to their singing His praise.

Why, you may be asking, is praise so important to God? Well, the short answer is that God created man to worship Him and praise is worship. The Bible tells us that, “…[H]e has also set eternity in the human heart.”– Ecclesiastes 3:11.

What that means is that God made us with the innate sense that there is something more important than this present life and that which we can see or touch. And along with the deep sense of something more came the need to worship. Just as God made us with a need for community and for love, He also made us with a need to worship.

Of course, his original plan provided a clear understanding that we would love, worship, and be in community with Him. But when the enemy brought sin into the world, God’s original plan was perverted.

That left man with a deep need to worship, but no understanding of whom to worship or how. So, in pursuit of fulfilling the need, man followed the lead of the enemy who, of course, led him to worship things like fame or money or power.

However, that kind of worship is futile because, much like an addiction, it is a never-ending pursuit of something that cannot satisfy our needs. Because the purpose of our lives is not to attain success, fame, money or power. It isn’t even to be happy per se.

Ultimately, our only purpose is to know the God who created us in a way that can only come through relationship. And the only means of creating a relationship is worship, which begins with praise.

From the day that God created Adam and then Eve, He has wanted to have a relationship with mankind. That desire was thwarted the minute that sin entered the world. God cannot abide with sin, so as long as man was sinful, God could not abide with man.

But instead of just writing us off, which He could have easily done, He decided to do something to eradicate man’s sin. So, in addition to covering our sins with the blood of Jesus, He gave us the tool of repentance.

If we repent of our sin, we will be forgiven, allowing us to abide in God, and He, in us. It goes without saying that in order to repent, we must come into God’s presence through prayer. The Psalms tell us that Praise is the way that we enter into God’s presence. Only then can we repent and ask for forgiveness. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. -Psalm 100:4.

Jesus knew the importance of praise in prayer. He taught the Apostles to use praise to enter into God’s presence when He taught them to say what we now call the Lord’s Prayer.

He taught them to open the prayer with praise, “[O]ur Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”-Matthew 6:9. (NASB) And He taught them to close with praise as well, “[F]or yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen.”-Matthew 6:9 (NASB)

Even when we are unhappy with God, I know that each of us can look back over our lives and name many, many prayers that God has answered. Some were not answered in the way we wanted, but they were all answered in the way we needed.

Yet, each time we don’t immediately get something we prayed for, or each time we are handed a situation that is really hard for us, we suddenly cannot find a reason to praise God.

But we all know if we will just take the time to think about it, that if God never did another thing for any of us in this life or the next, we would still have ample reason to praise Him every day all day long.

Whenever we need a reason to praise our God, we only have to remember that He gave us a gift of which we are eminently unworthy, and for which we can never be grateful enough. He sent His son to die on the cross to pay for our sins. After a gift of that magnitude, how is it that, at times, we cannot find a reason to praise Him?

It is commonly believed that praise is the product of a calm and peaceful life.  Most people believe that when their life gets better they will automatically feel like praising God. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Praise is definitely not a product of a happy peaceful life, it is the precursor to a happy life. Everyone believes they should praise God in good times. But very few understand the importance of praising Him in all seasons.

Even if we are not feeling joy at any given moment, we can still choose to raise our hands and praise God by faith. Learning how to praise God even when we don’t feel like doing it is an important skill for us Christians.

If we can lift our face to God and praise Him when things are going badly we will be showing forth our faith and at the same time making it stronger.

As we praise God, we will begin to feel the presence of His love through the peace of His presence. We will be amazed at how, in a very short time, our circumstances will no longer seem so bleak.

Once we have acknowledged God by praising Him and worshiping Him, we will find that our hearts are full of joy and our faith is supercharged.

Maybe there are times when we think we have no joy in us. Or, perhaps, not even the capacity for joy. But in Galatians 5:22 we are told that joy is a fruit of the Spirit. So, if we’ve been saved, we have been given the Holy Spirit. And if we have the Holy Spirit, we have joy. Perhaps it isn’t always active, but it’s there.

Now, we’ve looked at how praise affects us and how it affects God, so let’s talk about the enemy. Praise affects the enemy too.  Praising God will banish the devil faster than anything else.

When we are in prayer, we are very close to God. The enemy has no desire to be that close to God, therefore, he will stay away. Maybe it’s because if he gets too close he will melt like the bad witch in the Wizard of Oz. But seriously, Praise will help keep the devil away, keep God closer, and keep our souls stable. It touches every aspect of our lives.

But be careful, because a lack of praise touches every aspect of our lives as well, in the opposite way. It vexes our soul, it pushes God away and it makes our lives a playground of the enemy.

I cannot stress the importance of praise too strongly.  I hope this reading has helped you to understand a bit more about how and why praise is important, We need to praise God in the good times to express our gratitude for what we are enjoying. And we need to praise Him in the hard times to express our faith that He will bring us joy again.

I will close with perhaps the most important reason that we need to Praise God. Praise quickly focuses our attention on where it should always be, on God with gratitude for His limitless forgiveness and his eternal love. When we praise God, we shrink our egos and diminish our pride.

This allows us to tell Him that we submit to Him, we trust Him and are devoted to Him. Thus reminding ourselves and assuring God that we know we are totally dependent on Him. And we know that with God in heaven all is right with the world!

Let’s pray:
Heavenly Father, we know you are worthy of praise in the good times and in the dark times; we know you are worthy of praise always. But sometimes we have a difficult time wanting to praise you even though we know we have so many reasons to be thankful to you. Father, will you help us to remember that we need to praise you whether or not we feel like it. Help us to remember that the enemy has full access to our feelings and that through them he manipulates us to do things harmful to ourselves. Lord, whenever we are feeling sorry for ourselves, or whenever we are in a dark place, please nudge us or somehow put in our heart and our brain the need and the desire to begin praising you with our voice. For we know, only then will we change our thoughts and our outlook and remember what we are thankful for all that we could never have but for God.
We pray this in the powerful and holy name of Jesus, Amen.

Points for Pondering or for Prayer
 Or
Perhaps for Putting Pen to Paper

Have you ever heard of praising God even when you don’t feel like it or when you are feeling angry or disappointed in Him? If yes, where did you hear of it?

If yes, what was the reason given for doing so? Have you ever tried it? If you have heard of it, but have not tried it, why haven’t you tried it?

 Have you experienced praising God by yourself for no particular reason other than to worship Him?    If you have, what  you prompted you to praise Him?

Have you ever praised Him when you didn’t feel like it? Or while in a dark season?

 Will you try to write a few lines of praise for God right here right now?

If you chose to write some praise lines for God, please meditate on them and see how it affects your feelings.