Praising God is Theology

What does it mean to praise God?  If you are imagining voices lifted in song, a man sitting alone with a fishing pole meditating and watching the sunrise, or a relieved parent telling everyone about their blessings when they discover their child is indeed cancer-free you are on the right track.  However this is the expression of praise not the source of it. The person who is singing God’s praises is using words that express one of the many amazing things we know about God.  The man who contemplates the sunrise praises God as one who created all and declared it good.  The parent who tells the doctors, the nurses, and everyone in the waiting room how God has blessed her praises God as the one who answers prayers and sustains his people in their darkest moments. 

Last Friday’s post was all about praise-what it does and when we do it.  Imagining ourselves in any of the above situations, it’s easy to imagine praise falling from our lips.  But as we learned last week, the people of God were prepared to praise God not just in those easy moments but in emergencies, in times of fear, and in suffering.  

How can we do that?  By being better theologians.  Theology is simply the study of God, and if we are students of God’s heart and his character, then we too are theologians.  

Praising God is theology. 

Praise the Lord!

I love Ladies Bible Class.  For nearly a year, I’ve had the pleasure of teaching a class that encompasses women who have walked with God for many years, baby Christians and women who are seeking God.  I love the class for the fellowship, the joy of studying the Bible, and because my “students” teach me things all the time. 

For instance, recently I wanted to teach a lesson on the power of prayer.  I pulled out some of my favorite Old Testament prayers for examples.  I had them lined up: Nehemiah’s prayer when he wanted God to help gain the King’s favor to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem; Hezekiah’s prayer when he spread that blasphemous letter from Assyria in front of God and insisted that God uphold his good name; Daniel’s bold prayer with his Hebrew brothers that stopped the murder of the wise men and gave the King the answer he asked for.  I had so many lovely lessons we could learn from these brave prayer warriors. 

When we finished the lesson, I asked them, “What stands out to you about these prayers?”  And they piped up, “Praise. All these prayers start with praise.”  I was stunned by their point.  Think about it.   None of these men were sitting around with nothing better to do, watching a sunrise or contemplating a mountain range.  Daniel was facing his executioner and Hezekiah an enemy army. This is the perfect opportunity to stop and praise God?

The Day Cancer Ate My Blog Post

For November, Helene and I wanted to do a few weeks on praise and Thanksgiving.  When I was thinking of what to write, I wanted to go beyond thanking God for our blessings (a good thing to do) and speak about being thankful for our trials (a hard thing to do).  


I had several verses picked out to show that we are indeed supposed to be grateful for everything, including suffering. (Romans 5:3-5; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18; James 1:2-4; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 if you are interested) It would have been a scripturally accurate blog post.  And it would have been sterile.  Empty.  I would have been speaking from the Bible with very little personal experience.  

Answering God

Nebuchadnezzar needed a miracle.  The dream was beyond disturbing; it was also beyond the ability of his army of sycophants to interpret.  He needed someone who could see into the darkness, into his nightmares and reveal the truth.   His wise men thought he was crazy; only a man possessed by the gods could help him.  He thought they were a bunch of cheats and declared either one of their number would tell him his dream or he'd kill them all. 

Praise Him, Praise Him

My prayer grounded to a halt.  I sound so silly, I thought. God, you are great; you are awesome; you are loving. I say the same things every day, and it isn't enough.  I can't wait to go to heaven, where I can praise God better.  Maybe I should just sing my praises because simple words seem so inadequate.  Does God get tired of hearing the same things over and over?  It isn't as if He needs to hear what he has done or what his character traits are day after day.

 

Heartache and Confidence: Hezekiah's Prayers

I remember the first time I prayed desperately, on my face.  My son was two weeks old, and I got a call from the doctor.  "We need you to come in; it's about your baby's newborn screenings."  Not content to wait until the doctor had an opening, I made them tell me what was wrong.  He had failed the screening for Cystic Fibrosis.  I would have to take him to the nearest Children's Hospital for further testing, but they couldn't fit us in until the next week.  For that week, I was a wreck.  I thought my faith was strong, but I was unable to stop worrying as I prayed with bitter tears.  As a loving Father, God was with me and answered my prayers.  But I could have saved myself much grief if I had prayed more like Hezekiah's second prayer and less like his first.

More than a Mansion

Some of my favorite hymns are the ones about heaven.  From "I'll Fly Away" to "When We All Get to Heaven," I love singing about the inheritance God has for us.  After a week of seeing the sin in the world, I need a recharge. Singing about peace in the valley helps me remember Peter's inspired words: 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith--more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:3-7)

What I'm looking forward to most is not the mansion over the hilltop or the streets of gold or crystal sea.  No, what I am eagerly anticipating is the Presence of God.  

Opening Our Ears

 Psalms 95

O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord,

Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.

 Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving,

Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.

For the Lord is a great God

And a great King above all gods,

 In whose hand are the depths of the earth,

The peaks of the mountains are His also.

The sea is His, for it was He who made it,

And His hands formed the dry land.

 Come, let us worship and bow down,

Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

For He is our God,

And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.

Today, if you would hear His voice,

 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,

As in the day of Massah in the wilderness,

 "When your fathers tested Me,

They tried Me, though they had seen My work.

 "For forty years I loathed that generation,

And said they are a people who err in their heart,

And they do not know My ways.

 "Therefore I swore in My anger,

Truly they shall not enter into My rest."

I have always loved this Psalm, or perhaps I should say I really like the song that goes with these verses.  Not only do I love the beat of the song, but I really appreciate the words that the psalmist penned.  There are so many great mental images represented here.  The chapter starts out with the idea that the Lord is the rock of our salvation.  I can't help but think of the wise man that built his house upon the rock and when the storms came his foundation stood firm (Matthew 7:23-25).  He truly is our unshakable foundation that stands firm through all of life's challenges.

The God Who Avenges

I have said before that the Psalms aren't my favorite reading; however, I have gotten more out of reading them this time than ever before.  As I have read this time, I have really been trying to keep in mind David's life.  This was particularly helpful when reading the 94th Psalm.  This is a prayer of David asking for the God of vengeance to shine forth.  

Thankful for Christ

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us to all of you.  No Thanksgiving week blog would be complete without an article about being thankful.  I needed a break from Ezekiel and my husband's work recently led him to an interest in the book of Hebrews, so I decided to read the first ten verses of this book over the weekend.   As I read, I was reminded of Christ's superior power, His humanity, and of the salvation found in Him.  All these are things for which we can be eternally grateful.

 

Sing of His Beauty

I have never been a huge lover of the Psalms.  Perhaps it is a carryover of my dislike of poetry.  While the division of this reading schedule has helped me not get so overwhelmed by a huge dose of poetry, I find that it sometimes makes me lose the overall flow and thought of an individual poem.  This week I read Psalms 33 which really struck a chord in my heart.  This chapter begins by telling us to "sing for joy in the Lord."