PRAISE THE LORD


"Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God" (Acts 2:46-47a)

Read: Acts 2:46–47

In his description of the early church, Luke points out new believers were constantly praising God. Their praise was a verbal expression of their sincere awe. They thoroughly understood God was behind the miracle of their salvation, and they couldn’t keep quiet about their joy.

We don’t express our joy because God is needy and must be told how great he is. We express how great he is to appreciate and experience our awe fully. The Apostle Paul describes praise as being “filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, [and] hymns, and [making] music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:18c-19). Praising God isn’t exclaiming mindless clichés—but is an outward expression of our inward experience.

God is worthy of our praise, and people throughout the Bible give God glory and honour. We can learn to focus upward from the Psalmist who says, “I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name forever and ever, every day I will praise you…Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom” (Psalm 145:1-3).y

ON THE COUCH WITH GOD TODAY

God is worthy of your daily praise. Listen to sing the hymn Praise to the Lord, the Almighty and lift your heart in grateful praise for all he has done.


Location: Londres, Reino Unido

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Danger

Image
If you’re reading this right now then be warned. This devotional to spiritual warfare is a bit dangerous, not to you, but to your way of life. If ignorance is bliss, it aims to destroy that bliss forever. Imagine living in a house infested with termites. For years you never noticed them. Just beyond reach, just out of sight, they lived, they ate, they spawned, they festered. For all those years you blindly ate, played, and slept, unaware of the lurking presence right beneath your head at night. If you live in a house full of termites is it better to know or is it simpler to live in ignorance? If you prefer ignorance, then stop reading right now. If you don’t want to know about the spiritual forces that have been eating away at the foundation of your life and family like termites, then there’s no need to go any farther. Ignorance is in fact bliss, at least for the short term. This book’s aim is nothing short of ripping up the base boards, pulling out the sheetrock and exposing the d...
Read more

Worship

Image
Text: Psalm 104.24-35 Psalm 104 starts and ends with the words, “Praise the Lord, my soul”. The beginning and the end are a proclamation of praise to the Almighty God. In fact, the whole psalm is a review of the greatness of God in creation and, therefore, a meditation on God’s providence. To consider such things, helps us to draw closer to God and worship Him. If we are sincere with ourselves, our daily situations (children, work, news, stress, etc.) can take our attention away from God. It is not easy to just plug-in and worship the Lord. I find myself missing so much of God’s creation, because my mind wanders off to my daily concerns. My wife calls me to really see the beauty around us, otherwise I would miss it. How easy it is for us to be carried away and not once lift our eyes to the Lord, and worship Him that created the earth. Let us open our spiritual eyes, God has revealed through the authors of the Psalms that all of creation is called to worship. It is not just appreciation...
Read more

Fight Together

Image
Stand . . . Take . . . Pray. Ephesians 6:10, 14, 18 The final step in successful spiritual warfare is one that is as critical as the others but it is far too easily missed. The last step isn’t a specific verse or a piece of armor mentioned, but rather a verb tense. When most Americans read the armor of God passage in Ephesians 6, we read it through the lens of our individualistic, self-focused mindset. We worry about ourselves first and foremost. As harsh as it sounds, everyone else can fend for themselves. But that’s not the intention at all behind Paul’s instructions on spiritual warfare. When Paul tells us to stand firm, to take the pieces of armor, to pray, the verb is not in the singular form, it’s in the plural. To use Southern language, it’s as if he’s saying, “Y’all stand, y’all take, y’all pray.” Why is this important? Because too often our defeat in spiritual warfare comes from the fact that we try and engage in it on our own. And please understand this: if the enemy ha...
Read more