10-6-2019 Power of Praise

Power of Praise Pastor Lila Clay This month is Pastor Appreciation month. And while Pastors everywhere appreciate your words of encouragement and cards and gifts of love. I want to take today to acknowledge our chief senior pastor Jesus, for truly He is the head of the church. The scripture constantly refers to Jesus as Shepherd. In Latin, the word Shepperd is Pastor it derives from the verb “pascere”, which means to lead to pasture, or to set to graze. When you refer to Jesus as the Good Shepherd you are saying good Pastor. If we took John 10:11 (NIV) and changed the word shepherd to Pastor and sheep to people it would read like this… The rest of us, well sometimes we are hired hands, because when things get tough, we can run away. Looking out for ourselves and not the people. But not Jesus, He says in verse 14… Now many of you here are Christians, but the world out there they don’t understand why God wants our praise and our worship? They often ask why doesHe need us to worship or praise him? Now if you were asked that question how would you answer it? I can understand why they would ask that question. Afterall whenever we run into people who are constantly tooting their own horn, we think what arrogance. We consider them puffed up, even pompous in their self-important view of themselves. It is a big turn off. Nonetheless we praise people all the time. We praise actors, we recognize soldiers and politicians. We praise employees, volunteers, we even praise our kids and spouses. We praise in order to encourage, to say thank you, or just because we want to acknowledge something well done. This is why we praise God too. Because we want to say thank you, because we are acknowledging what He has done and He deserves praise as much as anybody else. Actually, more than everyone else, because He has done more than anyone else. Psalm 145:2-4 (NIV) All of us here would agree if someone did something worthy of praising then we should praise that person. Now tell me who has done more for you than God? But some in the world might still protest, they might say but God asks for us to praise and worship Him. And my response to that is so what. The guy more than deserves it and besides we need not be hypocritical here. Let us say you entered a contest and you won. You worked hard to win that event. Prepared, practiced, invested time and money, even sacrificed for it. Then during the awards ceremony, the moment you have waited for even dreamed about since you were a kid has finally arrived. Only to your shock they give the acknowledgement to someone else. They get all the credit, all the praise. You cannot convenience me you would not be upset. Would not protest, or at the very least be disappointed even heartbroken. I get it if God might want you to acknowledge what He has done and not give credit to someone else. Look God is self-sufficient. He isn’t like us. He knows who He is, He is confident and doesn’t have needs. He doesn’t need us to praise Him. He does however want us to be honest and give credit where credit is due, and if you are being honest you get that. By the way He does richly deserve it. His love for us, his blessings, his provision, His sacrifice they are all worthy of praise. I have one last question for you. What happens when you praise others even things? For example, what happens to you when you sing the praises of a beautiful sunset, a great football game, your kids or your spouse? We naturally praise things that we value all the time. We speak about things we care about with glowing words. We do it spontaneously, we do it in song, in books, in poems, in art. What happens to us when we offer praise? I think that the expression of our delight causes us to enjoy it even more. It brings us joy too. We feel closer to whatever it is we are admiring. There is an intimacy there. Tell the truth if you tell your love, or your child how beautiful they are, does it not bring you joy when you see their pleasure. Do you not delight in it yourself to see them respond to your love? You see there is a power in your praise. It draws you closer to the Lord. It helps you to acknowledge the truth. His delight causes an intimacy, as pours out His love on you as you pour out your love on Him. Praise is about relationship. It brings you into His presence and stops you from just going through the motions of playing church, being near Him in this way can create life change. It can drive away your fears as you focus on Him, chase away your blues, bring you comfort, and yes even stop you from sinning. So why do we need to praise our Lord? Because we need to be honest and give credit where credit is due, because He deserves it, and because it helps us and brings us joy too.