Praising God

We may not feel joyful, but Scripture tells us in Galatians 5:22 that the fruit of the Spirit is joy. If we have the Holy Spirit, we have joy. We may not feel that joy, but we can choose to lift our hands and speak forth praise to God by faith. Learning to praise God even when everything is going badly will change our hearts, make us much more effective, and cause our faith to abound.

I truly believe that my choice to praise God, even after getting the report that my son was dead, was one of the biggest factors in seeing him raised from the dead after nearly five hours. I didn’t know what the outcome would be, but I started praising God with all of my heart and telling Him—and the devil—that regardless, I would not quit serving Him. It was at that moment that faith abounded in my heart, and I knew he would be raised from the dead. Thank You, Jesus!

We have to accept responsibility. We aren’t just elevated animals, responding to stimuli. We are created in the image of God. We can choose to say that we are going to give thanks and rejoice in the Lord. But until we do, we are victims. We will never be victors until we quit being victims. We have to get rid of the excuses and just do what the Word of

God says.

Philippians 4:6 says—
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

Do you know what the Greek word for “nothing” in that verse means? It means nothing ! It means there are no exceptions. Sure, you might have problems, but you don’t have to worry about them. You don’t have to be careful about them. You can go to the Lord in prayer with thanksgiving and make your requests known to Him.

Jesus demonstrated the right way to bring our requests to God. He used what I call the “sandwich technique,” where we sandwich our requests in between two slices of praise. We start with praise, and we end with praise. We can just look at how Jesus did it in the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9-13). He started by praising God: “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”

And He finished by praising God: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.”

That’s the way to do it.

Even in the Old Testament, believers were told to
“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name” (Ps. 100:4).

But the nation of Israel didn’t always do this. In fact, the Lord said that because they did not serve the Lord with joyfulness and gladness for the abundance of all things, He was going to bring judgment upon them (Deut. 28:47-57). This shows that God holds us responsible for rejoicing, praising Him, and being thankful for all the good things He’s given us.

We face a lot of tough circumstances in this life, and the world expects us to behave a certain way when problems come. But God told us to respond a different way—to not let our hearts be troubled. We get to choose (Deut. 30:19). We have the option of following Jesus’ words and acting on the Word of God.

I have personally felt the benefit of rejoicing in the Lord. I have seen it destroy the devil. He cannot stand it. I really believe that God inhabits the praises of His people (Ps. 22:3). God is so pleased when we look beyond the natural and see things in the light of faith. That blesses God.

Praise is not the inevitable byproduct that comes when everything is going right in our lives; it is the driving force. Praise will get our focus where it needs to be—on God. If we start praising God in the middle of our problems, our problems will shrink so much that we’ll hardly remember to bring them to God! We’ll be so busy praising Him and thanking Him for His blessings that our problems will be an afterthought.

-Andrew Wommack Ministries

Praising God