The Power of Praise.

After Pentecost (Proper 18 ) | Year A | Psalm 149 | Nancy Smith

There is power in praise, isn’t that true? I can be having the worst day, or maybe I’ve just woken up in a bad mood and carried a “blah” attitude around all morning, but when I begin to “prime the pump” with praise, my attitude begins to change.

Have you ever primed a pump? Years ago I lived on an old farm where my grandfather also lived. He and I would take care of the horses. There was a pasture with an old pump house that housed a pump. Below the ground was a well. Attached to the pump was a trough that would connect to a tank for the horses to drink from. So you couldn’t just flick a switch and hope water would come out. You had to pump the handle up and down. At first it felt like you were pumping air. Nothing was happening. There was no resistance, just air…. This felt like useless activity. But before long, as you continue to pump the handle, water would begin trickling out and then it would flow and fill up the tank in no time at all.

In a way, that’s how it works with praise. God’s word is filled with passages about exalting Him, singing to Him, praising and worshipping Him.

God is worthy of praise. He wants us to acknowledge who He is. Do you ever look at the stars at night and have it inspire you about God? The Psalmist proclaimed, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hand. Day after day they pour forth speech. Night after night they display knowledge.” What a story they tell, right?

In the book, “Indescribable”, Louis Giglio and Matt Redmond share some amazing statistics about our universe. I hope this will inspire you a bit:

If earth were the size of a golf ball the Sun would be fifteen feet in diameter. Put another way, if earth were the size of a golf ball, you could fit close to a million ‘earths” inside the sun. (Enough golf balls to fill a school bus).But looking. Little deeper into space we find a more massive star called Betelgeuse, which is 427 light-years away. Betelgeuse is so big that its twice the size of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. (Mind-blowing, huh?). How do you take to a God who breathes out stars that big. Put another way, if earth were the size of a golf ball, Betelgeuse would be the site of 6 Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. Imagine going into Manhattan, placing your golf ball at the base of the Empire State Building, walking across the block and seeing 5 more Empire State Buildings stacked on top of the real one, and then looking all the way back down to your tiny little golf ball on the sidewalk! You could fit 262 million Earths inside of Betelgeuse!

(Indescribable, p. 146)

God. Is. Big. If the power of the Universe is hard to fathom, how much more so is the power of the One who created it and holds it all in place!

How great is our God!

Is 45:12 “My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their starry hosts.”

“When I consider your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him?” (Ps 8:4)

I want to encourage you to take 30 minutes, or an hour sometime in the day to just get alone with God and journal your expressions of praise to Him, even as you walk around the grounds and take the beauty in.

There are at least 7 benefits to praise:

1.Worship helps us see God more clearly.

2. Worship dispels our fears.

3. Worship energizes our work.

4. Worship refreshes our spirits.

5. Worship exhausts our enemy. He hates it when we pray and praise. He has to work 10 times harder when God’s people are praying and praising.

6. Worship draws the presence of God.

7. And, as we exalt God, we are reminded of who we are: the King’s kids, deeply loved and welcomed at the throne of grace.