Praise
This week I have been thinking about why we praise God. When we say God is worthy, it means He deserves our praise. We wouldn’t praise someone unless they were good at what they do; unless they truly meant what they did; and we wouldn’t praise someone unless they really deserved being told they were the best.
It’s a bit like when we’re at a football match and there’s lots of players out on the field, but only one of them is the best. And that’s the player that deserves to get the praise because he’s so good and he knows exactly what he’s doing and he has the victory.
We as Christians know someone who is perfect, who does deserve to be called the best and who deserves to be praised forever for what they have done because they are so good. That’s who God is, worthy of our praise!
When He created us, we were made perfectly. Everything God makes is perfect, so it’s right for us to praise Him for making us who we are. He made you just how He wanted you to be! The Bible says we are fearfully and wonderfully made and that we are made just like Him in His image.
It’s sad because we often choose to go our own way and tear up that perfect image, so we get ourselves into all kinds of problems.
Someone in the Bible really recognized how worthy God was of praise in the middle of his biggest problems. David was a shepherd boy who became a king and he wrote more than 73 out of 150 psalms in the Bible. In the Psalms the word praise comes up 137 times!
Praising God was definitely a huge part of David’s life, but he also had a lot else going on!
Like us David had a lot of things go wrong in his life. He didn’t get along with his family and some of them even plotted to kill him while he was king. He failed massively when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and even killed her husband. His work was really tough and took a lot out of him with a lot of people watching him to see if he would fail. But through all the tough things going on in his life David still chose to praise.
He wrote, “I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I will be saved from my enemies” [Ps 18]. The Bible says that David danced before the Lord! That’s why we should be so excited to dance and jump and shout in our praise so that when we sing “My response will always be to praise, no matter what comes my way” we really mean it – no matter what comes I will always choose to praise!
This week let’s praise God in our prayer:
- Thank Him for who He is
- Thank Him for the opportunity to share the Gospel with young people
- Praise Him for using SYFC to bring young people closer to Him
- Praise Him for what He can do in the year ahead
Written by Jamie McNutt, Intern for Swindon Youth for Christ