Tag Archives: Praise

With all of My Heart…

From Matt Redman’s book “The Unquenchable Worshipper – Coming Back to the Heart of Worship” (published by Regal Books Copywrite @2001 Matt Redman)

This afternoon I played Matt Redman’s song “Undignified.” It is a captivating song that gets right to the heart of King David, you know, the king who danced with all his might when he brought the the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem.

Have you ever been so overjoyed that you hooted and hollered and expressed your joy at something without looking around to see who was looking? I know I have! David was so exuberant with his worship that he became unrestricted just to dance with “all his might.” It was a public display that showed a heart that was passionate about his God.

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However, can we imagine the embarrassment that welled up in David’s wife Michal, so much that their relationship would never the same. For she came to despise David for his unruly public display of worship.

In the book Matt says:

“One of the Hebrew words for praise, hallal, means to be clamorously foolish or mad before the Lord. (That’s where we get our word “hallelujah.”) In a “reasons to be passionate” competition, the church of God should come an easy first; yet too often we find ourselves lagging way behind in this area. Isn’t it time we saw a bit more holy mayhem in our worship?”

I am in agreement with Matt’s opinion that we don’t give all the honor and praise that is due our King. We can rant and rave at sporting events and our kids games, but turn around and remain solemn before our glorious King? Heaven’s no! Let me be a fool for Christ’s sake and let my praise simply magnify my adoration for all He is and all He has done! 

KD Worship

Maybe your heart bubbles up and down when you worship the king, an expression that comes simply from your love for Him. I can only say that I hope so! I dare not judge one’s heart toward the Lord, but how exciting it would be for God to see our hearts filled with joy just to be standing in His presence and expressing our commitment and love for Him! Get engaged and give Him all you’ve got!

Lord, my heart’s desire is to give you everything in my expression of worshiping you for who You are and praising You for all you’ve done and will continue to do. Let my praise be a delight to Your ears. I will be undignified for you Lord, as I worship You with all my might!

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Oh Momma…You Set the Temperature

Psalm 37-3,4Have you ever wanted to be influential? Guess what, you really are! You set the thermometer in your home from hot to cold or pleasantly in between. As your morning, begins you have the opportunity to influence your ‘family’s’ day!

I love mornings that begin with peace. I am a morning person—I don’t fight to get up and get moving–but we all have bad days! Days when you get up and stub your toe on the leg of the bed while headed to the bathroom! And hit a pool of cat vomit on the rug just outside that place you were  heading, ARGH, try to recompose yourself now! (You may have even let some choice words slip out of your mouth during navigation to get the dampened paper towels! Don’t you just hate mornings like that?

So now what? Did I totally blow my morning? How do I go about to regroup my thoughts and move forward? Here is where if you continue blindly into the next phase of the day (breakfast for the fam?) you must make a decision!

  1. Continue without realigning your attitude and heart—won’t that help to brighten the day!
  2. Take a deep breath and remind yourself that this is just the beginning to an interesting day. Or…
  3. On your way to do whatever is next, take a few minutes to refocus with prayer and praise.

If you continue on (without dealing with the frustration that just happened,) you risk a morning with discouragement or even regret that can be passed on to your household members, be they little people or big people. And what if one of them didn’t wake up all joy-filled? Hmmm, that might heighten the tension just a bit!

Maybe you are on a mission to get to the next phase of the morning and get the breakfast started, so you just breathe in and proceed. Well you may do fine or you might fall prey to another interesting incident in the next stretch, burn the cereal you are cooking, while helping that little one dress a couple of buttons pop off (yikes, then what, you don’t have time to sew them on and the laundry is piled high!

Well, try this…how about a minute or two to where you look away from your stuff and look to the Father. Remind yourself that He is part of your day from the get go! Purposefully redirected your thoughts to the only place where peace can be your covering for the day. Does this mean that something else won’t happen? Of course not! Life happens and our responsibility is to respond in a way that will prohibit our attitude from remaining skewed (or like I say rotten!)

A beautiful place to go to get your mind off of your circumstances and on to the Father would be: Psalm 8:3-4 from the Message Paraphrase…

“I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, Moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way?”

Get your mind fixed on truth…God loves you and that is why He is mindful of you and your good or rotten morning. Praise His name for loving you and let Him know you are sorry for your stinky thinking. By praising Him your difficulties will greatly diminish in size so that you will be able to take a deep breath and brave greeting the next leg of your daily journey!

Look, I do it all the time! Often enough that I know the difference that a few moments of God-talk can make in my home, with my family and me!

Remember you are covered and God has a plan for your day! So continue on…you have set your thermometer to a pleasant 70 degrees and that should make the day get off to a lovely start!

If you need more encouragement you can visit Arabah Joy and #GraceandTruth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Sj6TmSG4w

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A Sacrifice of Praise

“I really don’t want to go there!”

“What’s to praise in this situation?”

“You’ve got to be kidding; worship when I feel the way I do?”

Have you ever been at that place where you were devastated by a situation, at the height of frustration and wondering how will you ever get turned around from thinking there is no hope, and will the end of a situation ever come? I don’t know about you, but I don’t like conflict and I don’t like when things get messy because I can’t see the way out while being in the thick of it.

When I’m frustrated and put out, my first response has been to build a wall and gather my defenses. But God has shown me over the past few years that it is out of my insecurities that I respond that way when hurt or devastated. After all, who wants to admit that “I” am wrong when it’s easier to say “they” are wrong? I don’t want to admit that I am insecure.Nyborg 0037

God began to gently show me a few things about myself a few years back that He has used to teach me and grow me up a bit. But I had to get to that place where I was willing to look inwardly at the messy stuff in my heart. When we give ourselves over to His redeeming work, He then has permission to start messing with and exposing things that are deficits and have taken up residence for far too long in our hearts.

Worship has been a tremendous tool that God has used in my life over the past several years. As I would draw closer to Him with the desire to get to know Him more, I began to see myself for who I really was. As I pulled in closer to God, I saw His majesty and my yucky, messy self–just like that passage I love in Isaiah 6 where Isaiah gets the vision of God seated on the throne. Isaiah saw how unclean and sinful he really was.

Isaiah 6:5 (The Message paraphrase) reads, “I said, ‘Doom! It’s Doomsday! I’m as good as dead! Every word I’ve ever spoken is tainted–blasphemous even!  And the people I live with talk the same way, using words that corrupt and desecrate. And here I’ve looked God in the face! The King!’”

It was a rude awakening, for sure, and that gentle revealing helped me see that the root of insecurity came from not really understanding the holiness of the God I chose to serve or my identity in Jesus Christ. You cannot walk a certain way if you do not understand or know that way. Those were some tough realizations. But then I began to sense a shift taking place in my heart as I saw myself for who I really was and then understood that Christ came to change all of the old into the new. We can have a whole lot of knowledge but never apply it.  A lot of good that does! I could see how I had become one of those weak women that Timothy talks about in 2 Timothy 3:7 “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” To put it mildly, I didn’t like what I saw but was now ready to do something about it.

Sacrifice –– it is a big word with a meaning that is sometimes glossed over. It is the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable. So is it possible that relinquishing my old behavior in exchange for His peace could be seen as my sacrifice of praise? Would I be willing to lay down my old self and offer up that praise offering, even my old, comfortable self?

Hebrews 13:15 says “Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.”

Is there anything stirring within your heart that needs a readjustment? If you sense discontentment then it is time to draw near to the heart of the Perfect One who will show you what needs to be offered up in exchange for something so much better!

It only takes a glimpse of the Holy One to see yourself as you really are, desperately in need of a Savior. As I glance back at that time in my life, I can surely praise His name for allowing me to be uncovered to discover that I had to let go of who I was and embrace Christ in me, the hope of glory. The “new” that is growing in me helps me to see just how great He really is. With excitement I can sing, “To God be the glory, great things He has done.” (and continues to do!)

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