Today my mind is thinking a lot about praise and how it needs to have a prominent place in our lives. With all of our busy-ness and stress of day to day living, as believers we need to put it to use a whole lot more than we already do. I know I need to do it more often.

The Lord is my strength and song,

and He has become my salvation;

He is my God and I will praise Him

Exodus 15:2

Having said that, today I went through my box of verses and got out all the verses in the “praise” section. These are verses that have come to mean a lot to me over the years. I ended up choosing ten of them. You may think of many others that could have been listed, but I wanted to share these with you. They are all from the old testament. I love the imagery that many of them portray.

I, even I, will sing to the Lord;

I will sing praise to the Lord God of Israel.

Judges 5:3

Praise is one of the best things we can do for God. When we praise, we are letting Him know what He means to us; what we think of Who He is; and how very much we love Him. Praise Him for giving us His Son for our salvation. The utmost gift!

The Lord lives!

Blessed be my rock!

Let God be exalted, the Rock of my salvation.

2 Samuel 22:47

When we praise, the very act itself opens us up to receiving an outpouring of the Holy Spirit into our inner most being. Now I don’t know of anyone who would say they have enough of the Holy Spirit, do you?

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness,

the power and the glory,

the victory and the majesty.

For all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours;

Yours is the kingdom, O Lord,

and You are exalted as head over all.

1 Chronicles 29:11

Our Father God is so much more than we can even describe! That is one of the reasons we can never praise Him enough. Just the fact that He gave us life to begin with is reason to praise God.

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.

Psalm 139:14

He has promised to never leave us. It is only through knowing this, that I have been able to get through some harrowing times. I can honestly say I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for that.

But I will sing of Your power;

yes, I will sing aloud of Your mercy in the morning; for You have been my defense and refuge

in the day of my trouble.

To You, O my Strength,

I will sing praises;

For God is my defense, my God of mercy.

Psalm 59:16-17

The act of creation; the very thought of it has me constantly dropping my jaw in awe. If you don’t know this already, I am in love with God’s creation. I am constantly praising and thanking Him for making our world. To think that heaven is even more beautiful, is hard for me to comprehend.

Sing O heavens! Be joyful, O earth!

And break out in singing, O mountains!

For the Lord has comforted His people,

and will have mercy on the afflicted.

Isaiah 49:13

God in His great love for me, looks at me when I am hurting and comforts me. He doesn’t just sit back and watch, because He cares for me as He does for you. I thank Him all the time for His help.

You shall rejoice in the Lord,

and glory in the Holy One of Israel.

Isaiah 41:16b

The image of all creation praising God is one that has been with me ever since I read verses mentioning it when I was younger. I can’t wait to get the chance to experience it in eternity.

For you shall go out with joy,

and be lead out with peace;

the mountains and the hills shall

break forth into singing before you,

and all the trees of the fields

shall clap their hands.

Isaiah 55:12

This next verse is my “no matter what” verse. It keeps me centered, you might say. It comes after a list of six calamities, of which Habakkuk says that even if all these things happen; I will still rejoice in God. I remind myself of this when anything happens to me.

Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will joy in the God of my salvation.

Habakkuk 3:18

In closing I will add one more set of verses for you to think about and imagine what the image of these verses might look like. These verses are from Revelation, so forgive me for including them here when I said all verses were from the Old testament. When I try to picture this with my limited human mind I get spiritual goosebumps because it is such a holy, spiritual image that forms. What an awesome picture of praise!

Then I looked, and I heard the voice

of many angels around the throne,

the living creatures, and the elders;

and the number of them was ten thousand times

ten thousand, and thousands of thousands,

saying with a loud voice:

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain
To receive power and riches and wisdom,
And strength and honor and glory and blessing!”

And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying:

“Blessing and honor and glory and power
Be to Him who sits on the throne,
And to the Lamb, forever and ever!”

Revelation 5:11-13

Until next time, God bless.

~Brenda

 

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