I was going through some of my saved documents this past weekend, and found this devotional excerpt I had saved about praise, to God in general. It astounded me, and still makes me think twice even now...
"Praise is not intended to compliment God. Some people have confessed quite candidly that praise seems like an effort to curry God's favor by soothing or massaging His heavenly ego. But praise is not the blind pursuit of heavenly intervention. It is an instrument of violence. It upsets the climate that furthers life's suffering, confusion, turmoil, and strife. Praise destroys the atmosphere in which sickness, disease, discouragement, and futility flourish. Praise beats out hell's brush fires and breathes heaven's life into death's vacuum."
How does one respond to that? I have always seen praise as a way of thanking God for who He is to us. But this causes me to think about praise as an "Instrument of Violence". When we praise God, when we open our hearts to Him, we are inflicting injury upon Darkness and its advances. It is uprooted and destroyed when praise enters the picture. This is one of my favorite devotions because it completely changed my perspective on it. We're not only praising God, we're waging war.
How does one respond to that? I have always seen praise as a way of thanking God for who He is to us. But this causes me to think about praise as an "Instrument of Violence". When we praise God, when we open our hearts to Him, we are inflicting injury upon Darkness and its advances. It is uprooted and destroyed when praise enters the picture. This is one of my favorite devotions because it completely changed my perspective on it. We're not only praising God, we're waging war.
1 comment:
wow man, I have never thought of it like that before. Using praise to fight the Darkness is kind of a new concept to me cause i didn't grow up doing that at all. Hopefully this year I can praise with a new mindset and with a new purpose.
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