Thankful (Part 1)
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus: We need to learn to praise and worship Jesus, giving thanks to him in a manner that God desires.
Praise
Postures
Presence
Praise
When we are appreciative of who Jesus is and what he has done for us, the right response is to praise the Lord.
Psalm 100:1-5 ESV
“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”
Our goal in praise and worship is to honor our God and Father through our Lord Jesus Christ through the person of the Holy Spirit.
The aim is to glorify God, give him honor for all that he is and give him thanks for all that he has done.
As opposed to our preconceived notions and cultural norms, God lets us know specifically what pleases his heart in praise as he moves various writers to pen the Psalms by the Holy Spirit.
Do you think about the things that God says will bless his heart when you worship?
“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!”
This is where all of our interactions with God should begin, no matter what went on before you entered his space.
When we do this well, it puts all of life’s circumstances into right perspective.
It allows us to remember that when we’ve repented of our sin and put our faith in Jesus’ substitutionary death on the cross for us and his resurrection from the dead, we’ve been adopted by the maker and King of all creation!
“It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”
Subsequently, all of the goodness and mercy that is from the Father is destined to literally chase me down all the days of my life (Psalm 23), and I have a reason to want to shout in exaltation of God!
Therefore, we should praise the Lord with a right attitude - with gladness!
“Worship is not about personality, temperament, personal limitations, church background, or comfort. It is about God.”
— John Wimber
Postures
Our posture in our praise and worship matters more than we realize.
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!”
We are to enter the presence of God with thanksgiving and praise.
The question is - “what blesses God when we praise him?”
Your posture - what you do with your body - prepares your heart before God.
The Bible speaks about several postures in praise and worship that God both enjoys and prescribes:
Singing (Psalm 100)
Lifting Hands (I Timothy 1:8)
Kneeling (Ephesians 3:14-19)
Bowing (Psalm 95:6)
Laying prostrate (Deuteronomy 9:25; Psalm 38:6)
Playing Loud Instruments (Psalm 47:5)
Leaping (II Samuel 6:16)
Dancing (Psalm 30:11,12)
Shouting (Psalm 33:1)
Clapping (Psalm 47:1)
Think about what each of these postures and actions evoke in your heart and mind before God.
In the quote below, “the patient” is a Christian being tested by demons.
“The Enemy” is here represented as God, the adversary of the demons.
“The best thing, where it is possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying altogether. When the patient is an adult recently re-converted to the Enemy's party, like your man, this is best done by encouraging him to remember, or to think he remembers, the parrot-like nature of his prayers in childhood. In reaction against that, he may be persuaded to aim at something entirely spontaneous, inward, informal, and unregularised; and what this will actually mean to a beginner will be an effort to produce in himself a vaguely devotional mood in which real concentration of will and intelligence have no part. One of their poets, Coleridge, has recorded that he did not pray "with moving lips and bended knees" but merely "composed his spirit to love" and indulged "a sense of supplication". That is exactly the sort of prayer we want; and since it bears a superficial resemblance to the prayer of silence as practised by those who are very far advanced in the Enemy's service, clever and lazy patients can be taken in by it for quite a long time. At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
-Screwtape (an elder demon) to his nephew Wormwood in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters
The right posture can help us engage God and his presence.
Presence
Being cognizant of God’s presence is cultivated through praise and enables us to live in the benefits of Christ’s resurrection life.
“The most holy and important practice in the spiritual life is the presence of God.”
-Brother Lawrence
Presence has more to do with our awareness of God than his actual proximity to us (Psalm 139).
When we give God thanks and worship the way he prescribes, we receive the benefits of a walk with him - freedom in the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ (Psalm 22:3; II Corinthians 3:17).
Though at first some things may seem foreign or uncomfortable, the more we practice the “presence of God” through Biblical praise and worship, the more we become comfortable with it and are able to enjoy grace-filled lives full of thankfulness, not bitterness.
Christ’s broken body on the cross tore the veil so that you might have access to the throne of God (Matthew 27:51).
Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and promised Holy Spirit enables you to remain in this reality, no matter what you are doing or who you are with.
“The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”
Brother Lawrence, author of The Practice of the Presence of God
This is fantastic news for the stay at home mom searching for quiet moments and the high demand business person, the artist practicing their craft, the engineer coding, the salesperson preparing their products, the physician in the midst of surgery, the lawyer defending a case, the retiree caring for grandchildren, the barista preparing coffee and the student studying for exams!
Let’s enter his courts daily with thanksgiving and praise and have every encumbrance from the abundant life of Jesus shaken off as we do!
“For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher