Where Should We Praise?

Devotional for the Week:
SOUNDS OF JUDAH
A Musical Devotion on Praise
From Garden City

Reading:

1. Psalm 113:3
2. Psalm 22:22-25
3. Psalm 69:9
4. Psalm 96:3

Where Should We Praise?

We live in a very compartmentalized world today. What I mean by this, is we tend to isolate ourselves from others, and we tend to separate our life into little boxes and compartments (e.g. work, play, church, family, money). Unfortunately, we’ve lost the idea of everything being connected and whole—our personhood and our daily living. Praise helps us connect the dots.

Praise is an “others oriented” exercise. It’s not concerned with the self as the first priority, but its concerned with the other—both God and people. Praise is thus evangelistic and it is to be done in any time and place, and it is to be done together. We cannot isolate ourselves in our homes behind T.V. screens and claim that we hold to the whole of Judeo-Christian faith, nor can we cut ourselves off from the church and claim that we are mature Christians. Biblical faith, singing, and praise, is formed and flourishes within the congregation, and before all men from east to west.

Praise helps us keep our eyes on the other. It teaches us to prize what is outside ourselves—first and most importantly the Majesty of our God, and second the glory of God as seen in the image of the other person we are called to love and build up.

Prayer Items
RELATIVES NEAR AND FAR

1. God’s protection and guidance
2. Provision of their needs
3. Healing, Good Health and Physical Strength
4. Spiritual lives; that they may have personal relationship with Jesus Christ (to be exposed to the Gospel)
5. May they have a loving and Bible-based church family to go to every Sunday
6. Ministry involvement
7. Peace and harmony within the family
8. Healthy and vibrant relationships
9. Other requests…