No 10

(Praise)

In our last study on the subject of prayer (# 229), we looked at confession; praise ought to be the next most important part of prayer.  In Psalm 50:23, we read “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me  When we praise God we glorify Him.  As we mentioned in other studies, worship and praise is very important to God; as Christians, we ought to put more effort in this area.  The Lord thought praise to be so important, that He gave us an entire book of the Bible on that very subject – the Psalms.  It is sometimes difficult to offer the praise He truly deserves so why not simply read five Psalms per day?  On the website www.profzebulon.org in the Miscellaneous items, there is a reading programme for the Psalms and Proverbs; check it out.

When we praise the Lord we say that He is good, kind, merciful; or other attributes such as holy, just and omnipotent.  With our limited intelligence and comprehension, these accolades that we use are from our human frame of reference and are thus impaired; the Lord knows this, of course and welcomes any praise we give Him. 

For example…good…what is good?  How can we truly appreciate how God is good?  Even Jesus Himself did not consider Himself to be good.  He said to one follower “And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”  Matt 19:17.  Jesus’ exhortation to this person was to follow the commandments if he wanted to enter heaven.  Praise of our Creator can be done in words (prayer & the Psalms) or in actions (obedience).  When we obey God’s Word, we give Him praise because, in our obedience, someone may notice and enquire about whom we are obeying and desire such a relationship.  The Lord gives us opportunities to praise Him when we tell others about Him.  In 1 Peter 3:15, we read “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:”   If we are used of God to confess His name to someone, three words come to mind – “Praise The Lord”.