Only one third of the way through this 31 daily devotional for single women, and I am loving Spellen’s encouragement! My heart and my spirit rejoiced this morning when she expressed how praise and worship are not only amazing tools to bring us into the presence of God, but that by doing so, we engage in spiritual warfare, driving back the enemy of our souls!
This is so crucial in the life of the believer! Many think that the concept of praise and worship is reserved for Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings, and is the part of the service where we sing! This is only partly accurate. Scripture does encourage us to enter His gates with singing and enter His courts with praise. We are encouraged to draw near to God and He will draw near to us. I’ve written about this so many times over the past 8 years that it’s starting to feel like a scratched record. God created us “in His image”, which means the things that we gravitate to on a healthy level, God will gravitate to even more so. This concept of affirmation of who He is, His character, what He’s done, why He’s done it, etcetera, draws Him to us as much as affirmation draws us to the person whole-heartedly offering it.
Conversely, just as we can tell when we are being flattered with an alterior motive, such as the husband buttering up his wife in the hopes she’ll let him buy the latest and greated lawn mower, so too God can tell when we are merely giving Him lipservice and not really meaning what we are saying. So our acts of praise and worship need to come from a whole-hearted place.
Yes, I did just say “acts of praise and worship”. Praise and worship requires more than our words. It requires more than beautiful melodies, as pleasing as those are to God. Praise and worship requires one to deliberately enter into that space. It is an act of the will to draw near to God. Sometimes it requires leaving behind a noisy situation to enter a quieter place such as the den or a forest path. Other times it requires shutting out the radio, the TV, and putting the phone on mute in order to enter into that secret place with just you and God. Praise and worship require action after God’s heart has touched yours and moved you to act on what lays heavy on God’s heart. Prayer has feet. Intimacy with God eventually causes one to be driven to please God by how they choose to live everyday life.
Praise and worship are powerful things and the enemy knows this. He and his minions will stop at nothing to distract, to make busy, and to fill your days with things that might be needful in the tempral realm in which we live, but that remove you from the eternal equation and cause you to lose your effectiveness in the Kingdom of God. When we draw near to God, as Spellen says, the enemy flees! He can’t handle being surrounded by the praises of God’s children!
Want to live a victorious Christian life? Make sure you actively choose to engage in praise and worship every single day at some point in your day, at least once, ideally several times in a day. If you are whole-hearted and not engaging in lipservice, God will show up. Just don’t make it all about you. Don’t let an alterior motive set in that puts you at the centre, praising God just to get what you think you need. Your wants and needs take a back seat during praise and worship. It’s not about you in that moment at all, it’s about God and God alone!
When was the last time you chose to truly tell God what you think of Him?
