How do we often Pray?

We plead for victory when Christ is in us as more-than-conquering life. We beg for Holy Spirit as through He were not already indwelling us, as though He were not yearning for our consent to fill and control us and produce His fruit in our lives. We pray for spiritual & emotional resources as though they were extra bonuses. We forget that they are part of our birthright in Christ.

Through Praise, we can be...

“Sorrowful, yet rejoicing”, and “Learn to triumph in Our Hope”

Through Praise You Can:

• Strengthen your Faith

• Tune into God’s enriching Presence: God inhabits the Praise of His people. He is seated on the throne of our praise.

• Activate God’s Power: Praise is that slender nerve that moves God’s mighty hand. Consider the King Jehoshophat’s battle, how the Lord had delivered him through Praise and Worship.
  

• Profit more from your trials: Praise can turn Trials into Triumphs. Praise will help us identify that ‘Distressing circumstances are God’s blessings in disguise’. Praise so that you’re faith strengthens and quality of endurance is produced in you. Praise is a catalyst that speeds up God’s maturing process in your life.
  

• Help you experience Christ ‘as’ your life: Any born again Christian is “dead to sin, but alive to Christ”. Death does not necessarily means being annihilated but being separated. It means our innermost being is separated from sin, it is no longer our nature and we no longer need to let it be our master. Our sin springs from our old sinful tendencies that are no longer our true identity.
  

• Demonstrate God’s reality in a Secular & Materialistic society: Refer Romans 11:33-34. Secularism means God and his will has no part in our lives.
  

• Overcome Satan and His Crafty Strategies: Even the highly educated have turned to Spiritism, to the occult and Satan worship. He gets us preoccupied with him in ways that seem to be strategic to our spiritual warfare. It’s a serious mistake to underestimate Satan’s power, but a tragedy to overestimate it. Any Praise thwarts Satan. Make your praise more powerful by coupling it with God’s word, which is a double-edged sword.
  

• Bring Glory & Pleasure to God: This is something no one but you on this earth or in heaven can give: “the love and adoration of your heart”. Sometimes people try to attach praise unto an indifferent or self willed life, hoping for an emotional lift or special visible rewards. And sometimes, even a disobedient Christian can get into a mood of worship or experience high while listening to Praise music CDs and cassettes. After all, pagans worshiping false gods also experience times of ecstasy. But neither a disobedient Christian nor the pagan honor the true Living God. So how can their praise be a joy to God?
  

Worship is more than emotional turn on. It includes offering ourselves to God, to be His servants, to do His will – nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. It means we radically change our goals. We chose basic life goals that are centered in Cod: to know Him better, to love Him with all our being, to do His will at any cost, to Glorify Him and to please Him.

“O Lord Jesus, my beloved, may I be a joy to thee”. Out of such surrender & worship flows the kind of Praise that fully honors and glorifies and delights God!

Giving thanks in every Situation...

(...continued from 31 days of praise)

Sometimes when we are down, we really are upset and disgusted with the situations. We sometimes feel, 'How long will this be - rejected by the society and sometimes even left by God!' At such times, do we really feel thankful? Doesn’t thanking in such a situation mean hypocrisy? How then, can we be thankful in times of distress & trouble?

The Holy Bible doesn’t command us ‘to feel’ thankful in every situation. It doesn’t command us to ‘manufacture positive feelings’. Instead, it commands us to ‘GIVE THANKS’ whether you are in good situation or in bad, whether you are experiencing high or low. A man of God put it this way: “To give thanks when you don’t feel like, it is not hypocrisy; it’s obedience”.

31 Days of Praise

A book I purchased some 3 years ago authored by Ruth Myers.. It was a good refreshing one, I found it so useful, that I just passed it onto someone and asked him to keep it passed on.. A few quotes from this..

• We need to cultivate a lifestyle of Praise which is the basic response that our Lord God looks for.
• Worship is a beautiful crown adorned with two jewels. One jewel is Praise; the other one is Thanksgiving.
• Of all the gifts we offer, the chief gift is offering ourselves.
• Praise and give thanks for three things: “Who He is; What He Does; and What He Gives.

Will put up more from this book shortly..